Chants courtois de l'Aurès

Five years after releasing her album Chants mystiques d'Algérie (a time lapse inordinately lengthened by the health crisis), Houria Aïchi resumes her exploration of the little-known Algerian traditions’ heritage. While using the tools of her first profession as a sociologist, to guide her in sifting through the collective memory, she pursues the noble project of bringing to light and magnifying the endangered culture of the Aurès.

Chants courtois de l'Aurès reveals ten songs about men's love for women, whose peculiarity is to be explicit. The album does not evoke an ethereal ideal of an archetypal woman - loved like the dew muses over the flower, - but sings of Zina, Fatma, Louisa, Dalila, women of flesh and life.

These songs exult the feeling, the desire, and the attraction of the flesh. One can also hear the longing for the absent beloved woman and the pain thereof. Yet the poetry is not about ill-fated love or a lament over lost love. "This repertoire is joyful and does not lead to bemoaning. It exalts amorous bliss, and the joys of loving a woman."