Des hauts plateaux aux oasis : La chanson saharienne

• Main Author: Abdelhafid Hamdi-Cherif
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: CNRS Éditions 2016-06-01
• Series: L’Année du Maghreb
• Subjects: aiyai; Sahara song; Bedouin poetry; Melhoun
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/anneemaghreb/2669

This contribution proposes an introduction to the Bedouin songs of southern Algeria, commonly known as Saharan songs, or more specifically, as aiyai. Considered all too often as minor despite a rich repertoire and the quality of its performers,the aiyai is a musical genre in its own right, or rather a musical-poetic mix, based as much on its poetic texts as on its musical reflection of the nomadic lifestyle and the constant movement across the steppe, from oasis to oasis. Melhoun poetry forms the backbone of the aiyai and takes its inspiration from the environment and everyday living conditions of its nomadic practitioners. It expresses the life of the times, marked by natural cadences. In its variety and its capacity for selfreplication, in its sobriety and in its essence, this genre expresses the vastness of the geography whence it arose. Its highly simplified musicality based on one (or several) gasba (flute), conserves an essential nature which, despite extensive outside influences, casts the aiyai as the regional song par excellence, of “the wide open spaces”.