Dahmane El Harrachi

Abderrahmane Amrani, known by the stage name Dahmane el Harrachi (Arabic: دحمان الحراشي), is an Algerian musician, pianist, singer-songwriter, of chaâbi music. Born July 7, 1926 in El Biar, Algiers, and died August 31, 1980 in Aïn Benian in the western suburbs of Algiers. He is considered a great master (sheikh) of chaâbi. His son, Kamel El Harrachi, also a chaâbi singer-songwriter, continues to bring his repertoire to life. An Algerian originally from Djellal in the wilaya of Khenchela, his father settled in Algiers in 1920 and became muezzin at the Great Mosque. After the birth of Dahmane (short for Abderrahmane), the family moved to Belcourt, rue Marey, then settled permanently in El-Harrach. The youngest of a family of eleven children, it is from the El Harrach district that Dahmane gets his nickname El Harrachi. He began playing the banjo very early, influenced by the Chaâbi singer Khelifa Belkacem (died in 1951). At 16, he performed the latter's songs. With a school certificate in hand, he became a shoemaker and then a tram conductor on the line linking Maison Carrée to Bab El Oued. He is already a banjo virtuoso and many chaâbi singers from the 1940s offer his services such as Hadj Menouar, Cheïkh Bourahla, Cheïkh Larbi el Annabi, Abdelkader Ouchala and especially Cheikh El Hasnaoui with whom he performs for the first time at the Café des Artistes, rue de Charonne in Paris in 1952. In 1949, he went to France, and for years he performed in North African cafés in cities across France. He performs the Algiers chaâbi repertoire accompanied by a banjo. He then discovered the gap between the reality of immigration and the North African repertoire of melhoun written between the 16th and 19th centuries. Author-composer, he adapts chaâbi in his own way by creating a new musical and poetic language by singing the experiences of his contemporaries.