Banning Eyre spoke with Souad by telephone in December, 2005, about her album Honeysuckle (Mesk Elil), then just released on Wrasse Records.  Here’s their conversation.

B.E:  Tell me a little about the album as a whole.

S.M:  On this record, I wanted to say certain things in the songs, to talk about things that touch me.  Each time I go to Algeria, I am inspired to write, and that’s why I talk a lot about nostalgia in this album.  Musically, I tried to get to the essentials.  I didn’t want anything too sophisticated.  I wanted to center on a very roots sound, and that’s what we tried to capture in the studio.

B.E:  Had it been a long time since you visited Algeria?

S.M:  I was there a year ago, just before recording, and I am going to return next week.

B.E:  Talk about how visiting home inspired this particular set of songs. 

S.M:  On that trip, I was very inspired.  If ever I don’t know what to write, I go to Algeria and things come to me in a very natural way. 

B.E:  I suppose one example would be “Hagda Wala Akter,” “There’s Worse.”

S.M:  This song began when I was ran into an old friend in the street in Algiers.  She carried with her a photograph that made her cry, and I didn’t understand because it should have made her smile.  After we spoke for awhile, she told me about some very sad events in her life.  She really touched me, and I wrote this song about her.

B.E:  There is so much sadness in these songs.  It seems a paradox, because I remember you as such a warm, sunny person. 

S.M:  It’s true that there is a disconnect between me when I sing on a CD and when I sing on the stage.  On the stage, I am happy.  I love being on stage.  I love the contact with people.  That makes me happy.  When I am writing songs for an album, it’s not the same thing at all.

B.E:  There’s a line in the song “Kilyoum (Soon)” that says, “My fear is that tomorrow, at home, They’ll see me as a stranger.”?

S.M:  It’s happening already.  Each time I return they look at me as a stranger.  I feel their looks.  I feel that they don’t know me.  They watch what I do.  They are curious.  And it’s crazy because in France, I am a stranger.  And now at home, we are also strangers.  We no longer feel at home.  For example, our young people are treated as immigrants in France.  They are treated as immigrants in the country of their parents [Algeria], and now they are also immigrants in France.  This is one of the problems behind the recent disturbances in the neighborhoods of Paris.  People are trying to understand what happened.  Well, a big part of it is that so many of these young people don’t know where they belong.

B.E:  What was your experience of all that?  Were you in Paris?

S.M:  Yes, I was in Paris, and it was very, very tough because there was real conflict between these people who live in le cite, and the people in the government.  Because the people in government do not understand this phenomenon.  They don’t often come and see what it is like there.  They live really removed from this injustice until the moment of explosion comes.  I live in the suburbs, way outside Paris.  I went into the city to work and I couldn’t find a taxi home.  They said, “Where you live, it’s too risky.  People are burning things there.  I won’t take you.”

B.E:  In the songs, a lot of the sadness is about love, romantic love.  But there is also this kind of geopolitical sadness.  Where is my home?

S.M:  Yes, I ask myself that question often.  In France, I have so much opportunity, privilege, good health care, and much more liberty as a woman than I could have in my own country, for example.  But on the other side, since leaving Algeria, I have evolved a lot.  I have changed.  Now, I am looking for middle ground between the life I had in Algeria, and the one I have in France. 

B.E:  Your history is different than that of other Algerian singing stars.  You really made your success abroad first, not at home.  How are you seen as an artist in Algeria now?

S.M:  They recognize my talent, but not much.  My records are pirated on the black market, but I don’t have real status as an artist.  I am heard on radio and seen and television, but when it comes to my rights and living as an artist, apart from being pirated, I have nothing.  But this is the situation in Africa, especially in the Maghreb.  There is a real mafia who exploit our work, who earn their livings on the backs of artists. 

B.E:  I suppose the fact that your records are sold on the black market at least indicates that people do want to buy them.  You do have an audience there, don’t you?

S.M:  Of course.  Absolutely.  Algerian people love music.  But why can’t we give it to them without also suffocating artists? 

B.E:  Talk about the song “Ilham (Inspiration).” 

S.M:  Ilham, that is to say “Inspiration,” is a song that my brother wrote the original melody for.  I then composed the words.  So I am making a small homage to my brother, who is also a musician and who still lives in Algeria.  He is deeply inspired by gnawa and Berber music, so I put a lot of that feeling into this song.  Because my brother is a big fan of that music.  Also, because he is the old brother, he has been through some pretty tough things.  So I sing for him that way as well. 

B.E:  Even the sound of your voice is a bit different on this particular song.

S.M:  That’s right, because I was trying to imitate the singing of the Berber.  They sing that way, and when I imitate it, lots of people don’t even recognize my voice. 

B.E:  Tell me about this lovely duet with Daby Toure, “Manensa Asli (Miwawa)”?

S.M:  I kept running across this artist at concert stages where we played, and each time I heard this song, I said to myself that I would really love to work with this artist.  I was crazy about the song.  So we spoke a lot, and I saw that this was a person who valued his roots and his culture, though he lived in Europe.  He told me that this was the idea of the song and that really interested me.  So we recorded it together.  We used a little sabar [Senegalese, Wolof percussion] in it.

B.E:  In one sense, you are freer than many African artists—I mean those who are captives of a home audience with fixed ideas.  If you were a rai singer, your audience would expect certain things and that can be limiting.  You seem to operate free of all that.  You can put the music together as you like.

S.M:  That is a choice.  It is up to an artist to know what he or she likes.  Sometimes it just comes to you.  An artist has to breathe.  I have to break the chains, cross the borders, and not be afraid to try other things, and be interested in other things.  Why must someone who plays jazz play only jazz.  And why must someone who plays African music play only African music.  At the same time, I respect artists who make those choices.  But for me, I have to do more than that. 

B.E:  There’s another very sad song here, “Malou (Why is My Heart Sad?)”  It has a different sound.

S.M:  That’s true.  I took off on fado music a little in this song.  Because in Algeria, we love fado and flamenco.  The Arabo-Andalus influence has been a big part our culture.  The theme of this song is this.  I wrote about an old woman who has many regrets in her life.  She has become old with all these regrets and that inspired me to write this song.

B.E:  Musically, the songs on this album are very different, but there is a unity to the set.  The musical textures are very detailed.  How do you work in the studio?  Is it all in your head, or do musicians contribute ideas?

S.M:  That’s true.  In the beginning, it is true that I come with a program.  I have arrangements in my head.  We have had rehearsals.  I know more or less what I want.  But it’s true, afterwards musicians propose ideas and we try them.  If we like it better, we do it again. 

B.E:  Is any musician in your band especially important in that way?

S.M:  In truth, on this album, I did all the arrangements.  But I did work with a co-producer named Jean Lamoot and he also gave me some ideas. 

B.E:  Tell me about the other duets here, other than the one with Daby Toure.  There are two others with people I don’t know.  Let’s start with the English language song, “Tell Me Why.”

S.M:  Pascal Danaé is an English-Martiniquan artist, I believe.  I met him in England.  I listened to his music and I wanted to work with him.  Daby Toure, as I said, I met him at festivals.  Now, the third one, “Khalouni (Let Me)” with Rabah Khalifa is a bit rai roots.  I love the voice of my percussionist so I created this song with him.  He was the inspiration for this song. 

B.E:  You say that’s roots rai?

S.M:  Roots rai is not like commercial rai.  It uses more traditional instruments like the bendir, the ney, the gasba—that’s a flute used in the old rai music, and we also used the galal a typical percussion instrument of western Algeria. 

B.E:  We’ve been working on a program on the real history of rai.  It seems the music’s origins are a bit misunderstood.  What was your early experience of this music when you were growing up? 

S.M:  It’s not their fault that they don’t understand this, because Khaled made the music known with “Didi.”  It is rai, yes, but it is very modern, very commercial.  It promoted Algerian culture, and thanks to him, we had a hit.  But people don’t know the real rai.  It’s not their fault.  The real rai started with Cheikh Harada, for example—I don’t know if you know her.  This was real poetry accompanied by the bendir and the gasba.  It told histories and included poems.  That was it.

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