Souad Massi – Ghir Enta

httpv://youtu.be/sYStxC90iqE

Souad Massi's music has an amazing lineage, steeped the tumult of her native Algeria and its rigid cultural mores. From a 2005 profile by The Independent:

From the beginning, she was drawn to wildly different musical styles. "I listened to folk rock and hard rock," she says, "and then, later, pop music and, I guess, world music. But at first, it was basically through movies, the spaghetti westerns." Joan Baez, who played Algiers in the 1970s, was a formative influence, as was the flamenco and jazz guitar that her uncle played, and even, incongruously, the country star Kenny Rogers. "Folk rock has been a big influence," Massi says, "and I was inspired by the poetry in the songs of that time, its rich metaphors and phrases that had double meanings. I pushed myself to work in the same way."

She learnt guitar with the help of her older brother Hassan, and her first professional gigs were with a short-lived flamenco group, before she joined the Algerian rock band Atakor. She stayed with them for seven years, touring a country where musicians were routinely shot by Islamists and army alike, and playing festivals picketed by extremists, patrolled by armed police and, more often than not, torched by the crowd itself. The Big Chill they were not.

The first time I heard this – I don't even know where I came across it – I was transfixed. The album versions more enchanting than this performance (a clever fella on YouTube dubbed the studio track over this same video), but this is still very nice.

I don't know all the words to the song, but I'm translating the refrain from the Russian translation on this video:

No one but you
No one but you
No one but you
Has entered my heart

No one but you
No one but you
No one but you
In my heart only you

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