I am having great fun with the feed-back of this blog. Reaaaally bhoys !!! And as i know everyone is expecting me to ramble north and south about irish music and singers, i decided to go a very different way (for today !) and bring instead some surprises to make it more interesting... aka “the unknown side of me”, ah ah... You'll find below some clips of a DVD i brought back from France and just recently took out of the shelf again. Memory lane : Idir is a musician and singer from Algeria. He is a proud berber and is the number one ambassador of the Kabyle culture in the world. Exiled in France, he had a very big hit with his song “A Vava Inouva” back in 1976. That was when i first heard him, i was 14 and instantly mesmerised by the LP of the same name. A Vava Inouva has been re-recorded many times, a fantastic version is to be heard on his “Identités” duet album, where he sings it with Karen Matheson, of Capercaille. What i love in Idir, apart from the fact that he dresses in black, plays the guitar, is in his sixties, sings the ballads like no-one and is committed to a number of causes, (any similarities with other people is merely coincidence) is his talent to mingle all sorts of music styles and generations. Genuinely open-minded and musically empathetic, he is respected by rap to traditional musicians of all ages and colours. He has just released an album called “The Colours of France”, i'm looking forward to it. There’s one of his older songs on the Ipod radio here, and more to check on Youtube if interested. And no, he's not singing in gaelic...
Ok ok, j’avoue que je m’amuse bien. Aujourd’hui, un clip de quelqu’un que j’admire beaucoup : il s’habille en noir, la soixantaine, joue de la guitare, met ses tripes dans ses chansons et est plutôt engagé du côté de la veuve et des opprimés, vous voyez qui je veux dire ? Ben non, justement, comme je sais qu’on m’attend au tournant, j’ai décidé de surprendre, na ! Enfin, surprendre, c’est beaucoup dire : Idir, c’est un stable de chez stable, depuis mes 14 ans et son 33 tours « A Vava Inouva » (merci cousine Nadine). Berbère et fier de l’être, c’est le grand monsieur de la culture Kabyle en France, dont il porte haut les couleurs et la tradition, même et surtout quand il chante et invite des rappeurs, des rockeurs et autres jeunes voix marginales à enregistrer avec lui. Il vient de sortir « La France des Couleurs », vous voyez ce que je veux dire ? (non, je ne l’ai pas encore, mais c’est pas pour autant une indirecte aux copines en France) Je viens de ressortir des étagères un DVD d’un de ses concerts : bon d’accord il parle beaucoup mais quand il chante c’est un délice. Et sa bande de copains n’est pas mal du tout sur scène. Mon album préféré, à part le premier, est « Identités », un album de duos, de Karen Matheson (Capercaille) à Maxime le Forestier, en passant par Zebda et Gilles Servat ! Il a l’esprit et le coeur larges (Michèèèèle, y’a un « s » à « large » dans ce cas là ???) le Monsieur...Plein de clips sur Youtube évidemment. C’était difficile de choisir.
Estoy demasiado floja en este momento para presentar a Idir en español pero si fuese necesario mandenme un comentario y lo haré, no problema.
Breaking news : Yesterday, a “survival parcel” hit the shores of Chile and my mailbox (or was it a “revival parcel” in these times of need ?) Long gone are the days when friends and family at “home” spent eleven months lovingly preparing a parcel to be sent once a year at Christmas time. It was filled with all these precious goods imposible to find in Chile at the time, Nivea crèmes, “Petit Lu” butter cookies and the likes of them. This was never too much of a habit in my own family, but I still remember Gisèle and her tights, bought in Tati (not even silk) and sent to her on a weekly basis by the love-of-her-life who lived in France. (Good she’s not reading that !) Gosh, does this make us dinosaurs ? I’m only talking of the late eighties / early nineties in case you wonder…
First one to name the pub wins a pint ! (C' était avant que Michèle ne m'apprenne à enlever les dates sur les photos...) 
