Hasna El Becharia

Biography

Hasna El Becharia (in Arabic حسناء البشارية), born June 28, 1950 in Béchar (Algeria) and died in the same city on May 1, 2024, is an Algerian singer and multi-instrumentalist specializing in diwane music and guembri player. She has established herself as a monument of this music. Born Hasniat Hosni, she is the daughter of one of the masters of the diwan from Erfoud (southeast of Morocco) and an Algerian mother from Béchar. In 1972, she formed a group of four with her friends. They first distinguished themselves in the wedding celebrations in Béchar which they hosted for the women. In 1976, they were the stars of a huge concert organized in Béchar by the National Union of Algerian Women (UNFA). In January 1999, Hasna arrived in Paris, following an invitation from Cabaret Sauvage as part of the Femmes d'Algérie festival. Hasna El Becharia gained recognition throughout the South-West of Algeria, in an exclusively male universe, in the town of Béchar which contains some of the secrets of desert blues. Hasna has long played only for her own people, refusing to export her music beyond her “natural” borders. There was no question of even recording a record for fear of distorting the funds of this fertile tradition. Until she arrived in Paris in 1999, invited as part of the Femmes d'Algérie festival: the singer coupled with an astonishing guitarist immediately delighted the audience. This is the beginning of a new story which will soon establish it on international stages, following the recording of a first album supervised by guitarist Camel Zekri. On the program for the woman nicknamed the rocker of the desert: trance music enhanced with blues accents, rhythms that twist and turn... Ten years later, the heiress signed a second and highly anticipated album, Smaa Smaa, engraved in the stones of her childhood: an old ksar, these ancient granaries which dot the desert, where the memory of the sands is preserved. The ideal place to summon, in a calm voice, the saints who irrigate each of his compositions, to evoke this universe at the limits of the sacred and the profane. Like a constantly renewed revelation. After several years in France, Hasna returned to Bechar and continued to perform internationally, notably in Canada in 2013 and 2014, where she recorded an EP at the beginning of 2020: Les Couleurs Du Sahara, before then performing dates in Algeria . In 2022, director Sara Nacer dedicated a multi-award-winning feature documentary portrait film to her entitled “La Rockeuse Du Désert” (2022). Guest of honor at the Atri Desert Experience, the first electronic music festival in the dunes of Taghit, Hasna El Becharia sets the scene on fire with her musical training from Béchar and marks the undeniable return of the Desert Rocker. Selective discography: Djazaïr Johara (Label Bleu, 2001), Smaa Smaa (2010), Les Couleurs Du Sahara (2020).