LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Algerian singer and guitarist Souad Massi has won critical acclaim for her extraordinary voice and her songs that tell of love, exile and nostalgia, blending influences from American-style folk, Flamenco and pop with the classical Arabo-Andalusian music of North Africa.
Massi, 35, grew up in the working-class Bab El Oued neighborhood of Algiers and took up singing and playing the guitar at an early age. But the civil war in Algeria in the 1990s and the targeting of musicians and artists during the Islamist insurrection threatened to stop her fledgling musical career in its tracks.
In 1999, she was invited to perform at a small festival for Algerian women in Paris, which led to a record deal. Massi left Algeria and now lives in France with her husband and small daughter, where she enjoys huge success.
She spoke to Reuters after playing a special acoustic set at a film festival for women directors from North Africa and the Middle East in London.
Q: You come across as someone who is very friendly and open, who smiles and laughs a lot - but there is a lot of sadness in your songs.
A: Yes, but the majority of people who are sad - it's not that they hide behind a smile or a laugh - one isn't always sad. When we're sad, this marks us. I'm a singer and I sing it. A painter would paint it. Sometimes I worry that people think it's an act - but it's true that I adore talking to people. Sometimes I find that when I go into a shop or I'm on a train, people in Europe have lost the habit of talking to people they don't know.
Q: Do you think this is a trait from Bab El Oued?
A: Yes, this is something from where I come from. Now I go back and I don't know anyone, but children, adults, everyone says hello, good evening to you. You might even meet someone and they say: I have a headache, do you have any pills?
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