Mountains are high only for those who remain below!!
Abdelli

A self-taught musician and a native of Great Kabylia, Abdelli lives in Brussels since 1986. He transcends the suffering of exile in songs that are as melancholy as they are festive, which appealed to the archangels Yehudi Menuhin and Peter Gabriel. Peter Gabriel produced Abdelli’s first album in 1995 under his Real World label, a true reference in the world of ethnic music. Accompanied by the mandola – a cross between the lute and the guitar – Abdelli’s voice seizes moving and hypnotic melodies to sing hope, freedom and tolerance. His texts are poetic gems with which he turns against all forms of dogmatism and fundamentalism. The warm and multicoloured tones of Abdelli’s music renew the traditions of his native Kabylia and link with other musical cultures as can been felt through his work with Chilean and Ukrainian musicians and his duos with singers like Marta Sebesyien, Natacha Atlas or Loreena McKennitt.

The numerous concerts that Abdelli gave in various parts of the world have made him a confirmed artist. He was invited in 1995 by the late Yehudi Menuhin to the Cirque Royal in Brussels for two exceptional concerts in an event called “From the Sitar to the Guitar” with Ravi Shankar, to the Womad Festival in Reading. He was invited to the Zenith in Paris by Cheb Mami, to the Musique Métisse Festival of Angoulème, among many other noted world music festivals.

Abdelli’s story is that of a dream, a fairy tale of old wise men, the story of a child who made his first guitar with a piece of wood and fishing wire in his native village and who, one day, woke up singing from a dream: one of his faceless idols, the great composer Iguerbushen, just passed his mandola down to him and whispered, “Take the Kabyle culture to the world with this.” Abdelli remains attached to this dream throughout his life.

The young man is Berber, born in Behalil in Kabylia, Algeria. Where he comes from, it’s not a good idea to be a singer. In everyone’s eyes, he was a committed, restless poet. Clutching his guitar to his heart, the bad lot fled through the window. On the town’s podiums, he sang his nostalgic poems like all the artists of his people who’d been oppressed by the political powers since the country’s independence.

Contributed by Carine Demange