Cheikh Hamada

Cheikh Hamada (in Arabic: الشيخ حمادة) whose real name is Mohamed Gouaich is an Algerian singer, born in 1889 in Blad Touahria, near Mostaganem (Algeria), and died on April 9, 1968 in Mostaganem. He is the essential figure of Oranese Bedouin song.

Cheikh Hamada is the eldest son of a peasant from the large tribe of the Medjahers. When his father dies, Hamada is 17 years old and becomes the head of a family of four children. He works as a farm laborer and excels in the art of hunting, hence his nickname, Hamada, also the diminutive of Mohamed.

Around 1910, after being suspected of poaching, Hamada left his village with his family and settled in Mostaganem, in the popular Tijdit district, not far from Kadous El-Meddah, the poets' square. A famous café there welcomed poets from the Dahra and Mascara mountains region, including the great Menouer Ould Yekhlef.

At that time, Hamada's head was already full of melodies from the tenors of the ancestral Ch'îr el Melhoun of Sheikhs Ould Laadjal, Caïd Bendhiba and Dahmane. In 1912, he began to frequent, in the Derb district, the headquarters of the Es-Syidia Cultural Association and that of the Croissant where he met Sheikh Saïd Belkacem. It was in these circles that he opened up to other musical genres, such as Chaâbi, Arab-Andalusian music, Hawzi, soaking up their rhythm and tone. Hamada, an outstanding singer, brought back to the city the traditional Oran Bedoui from the countryside, and single-handedly revolutionized the musical tradition of the Bedouin genre by mixing urban poetry between Hadri, Hawzi and Aroubi in his compositions where the Gasba was reworked with two flutists instead of three, and to which he brought the musical touch of his tribe of Medjahers, with harmonic Arabic influence. This style thus influenced the Chaâbi repertoire which came under its influence in Bedoui mode. The particularity and genius of Hamada, endowed with a desire for advanced musical research, lay in the fact of having perceived and modernized the ancient Aroubi genre into a much more modernized genre accessible to all audiences, urban and rural. He made known this music based on ancestral Bedouin poetry from the Maghreb and a harmonic Arab influence, thus bringing together the countryside and the city. He thus expanded the movement throughout Algeria and beyond.

He would draw on and study the ancient repertoires of Arab-Andalusian poetry and Melhoun throughout the Maghreb, particularly among the Zenet Berber tribes, which he would later rework in his own way, including the song Hajou Lefkar Sidi, covered by Hadj Mhamed El Anka, also enhancing the other common musical genres of the time.

Unlike many Europeans at the time, who openly neglected this musical genre because it was modal and not tonal, Béla Bartók was extremely touched by it during a two-year trip to Algeria (1913-1915). Hamada recorded his first record in 1920 and subsequently continued to make records in Algeria, Paris and Berlin, this was the beginning of a long and rich discography estimated at more than two hundred 78, 33 and 45 rpm records, and a repertoire of nearly 500 titles.

He became famous with the songs Boussalef Meriem followed by others such as El Youechem, Aid El Kebir, Ya Bouya, etc. This led him to perform throughout Algeria, in neighboring Morocco, and also participated in a folk music festival in Brussels in 1936 and performed on the stage of the Olympia in Paris. His song Ya Dalma (The Unjust), from a poem by El-Habib Benguennoun, was covered by the Constantine singer Mohamed Tahar Fergani. This classic was also recognized for its qualities as a reference on the part of Chaâbi artists such as Hadj Mhamed El Anka, Maâzouz Bouadjadj and others in the field of the Chaâbi style.

A close friend of Hadj Mhamed El Anka and Hadj Boudissa, another Algerian artist of reference, Cheikh Hamada used to, during dinners rich in philosophical exchanges with poets, musicians such as Hadj Lazoughli, Hachemi Bensmir, Abdelkader El Khaldi, exchange, work together on Qsāyid (poems)5. A precursor of a wave in its new form of the Aroubi genre, and one of the founders of the Gasba music movement, he will receive several artists at his home including Maâzouz Bouadjadj, El Djillali Bensebbane, explaining to them, sometimes, for long hours, a tone, a stanza, the hidden meaning of a word, a verse, a Qasida.

Cheikh Hamada was very marked by the horrors of colonialism and the colonial belittling of the Algerian people as citizens of the last rank. During the Algerian War of National Liberation, he will lose two sons resisting the occupation.

Cheikh Hamada, an essential figure of Bedoui Oranais song and Gasba, who was part of the Algerian and Arab musical ferment of the interwar period, is today considered by some to be one of the founders of the Rai music movement. He died on April 9, 1968 after returning from the pilgrimage to Mecca.