On the Amir Khaled street in Bologhine (former Saint Eugène), a seaside corniche at the exit of Bab El Oued and stretching to the Franco beach, where the philosopher of “Dzaïr” and its sufi poet Himoud Brahimi (Momo) used to soliloquy the Casbah “Ya bahdjati”, It wouldn’t occur to you that there’s an entrance at the foot of a mountain. It leads you to deep stairs which bring you down to what resembles a cave or a grotto with a view on a rocky beach. A group of Chaabi music aficionados transformed the place into an artistic “Marsam” (a sort of a retreat) and it became a destination for the inhabitants of “El Bahdja” to “Yssallou H’moumhoum” (entertain their worries) on Thursday and Friday evenings. 

To those who ask how long this musical genre called “Chaabi” will resist this continuous and stunning digital development and the flood of artistic and cultural forms it pours into our native culture, the answer is simple. This musical style which was founded by Cheikh El Hadj Mohamed El Anka in the 1920s is deeply intertwined with the celebrations of Algerians, Algerines especially, with their weddings and circumcision parties, and with their amiable, closed sessions. 

But “Chaabi” continues to exist as well because it occupies a great space in the daily lives of a group of artists and aficionados. They dedicate it to glee, research and meditate about  the poetic corpus of the Chaabi repertoire (El Malhoune poems) as well as its musical corpus (Chaabi music) in all its subgenres: Sanâa, Hawzi, Aroubi, as well as other genres such as Andalusian flamenco, Greater Sudan Gnawi, to American black music like jazz and blues which Chaabi was able to absorb. 

I had the chance, a week prior, to be invited by a friend, Cheikh Sid Ali Lahcene, to a concert he was playing at that Marsam which the “Sal H’moumek” association took as a headquarter. Chaabi music has always constituted “the margin of official culture”, and the “Sal H’moumek” Marsam is, geographically, a margin of the margin, on the frontiers of the beach of “Santodji”, according to the pronunciation of older Algerine ladies. 

It is a place that looks like “El Mahatta” cafe, located in one of the stores under the road leading from Port Saïd Square to the Martyrs Square and which overlooks the train station and the port of Algiers. It is to this cafe that Mohamed El Anka used to come as a child and bring the Ramadan Iftar to his uncle who used to work near the place. One day, the cafe owner “Ammi Rabah El Fahham”, noticed him outside nodding along to the rhythm of the music being played inside the cafe, so he invited him in. And thus his journey with Chaabi began. 

The beautiful thing about this Marsam and about the “Sal H’moumek” association is that it is a meeting place in a time when places where artists and aficionados can meet became scarce, as expressed by one of the members, Lamine Bayou. 

In this Marsam, Chaabi artists and their bands from all over the capital and its surroundings are scheduled. These artists have come a long way in their art, in weddings and concerts, but they come and insist on playing here at their own expense. Their only goal is to meet fellow artists and aficionados. Those who visit the association’s Facebook page can see the great number of Chaabi artists who played in the Marsam on Thursday and Friday nights. 

On the evening I had the chance to visit, Cheikh Sid Ali Lahcene was playing. I knew him in the early 1990s when he was teaching the first class of Ankaouia at the Abane Ramadan cultural center in Algiers. He belongs to the Ankaouia school and can play on all instruments. He went through the trouble of coming at night from Kolea to Bologhine in order to play that night. He was accompanied by a band that was gathered with great difficulty, but which included seasoned musicians, among which some who attended the first classes of the El Maoussilia association under the late Sid Ahmed Serri. That is the case of the tar player who came from Berraki. Others were the students of Ali Debbah, “Alilou”, such as percussion player Abdelghani Helouat, and others. 

During that evening Cheikh Sid Ali Lahcene took us on a tour of El Malhoune corpus, from Cheikh Sidi Lakhdar Ben Khellouf and his great repertoire, praising the Prophet and imploring him, to “Ben Messaieb” and Cheikh Kaddour Ben Achour and his poem “Essardjem”, and from Cheikh Touhami El Madaghri and his “Didjour” to the poems of Turkmani and the “Insrafs” such as “El Haoua Qad Malak Fouadi”. A repertoire that included both serious and humorous texts to rhythms that began with “Djember Arak” and ended with “Djarka”. 

Despite the suffocating heat and humidity which turned the Marsam into a hot bath that got everyone drawing in their sweat, the warmth of the artistic encounter made them forget all heat, and drowning in the sea of “Nidam” (a poetic measure) saved them from any other drowning. 

For years now, the ministry of Culture has been organizing “The national festival of Chaabi music”. I attended all editions of the festival which were held until the festival was canceled under former minister Azzedine Mihoubi, then reinstated under current minister Soraya Mouloudji, with Abdelkader Ben Daamache as its governor. 

When the festival was taking place every Ramadan at the Mohieddine Bachtarzi theater, the “Gourari ” cafe was located a few dozen meters from the theater, before it was closed. And as during every Ramadan, other musical concerts were organized in parallel. There was no comparison to be made. Except on the opening nights of the festival which was attended by officials, the “Gourari” cafe attracted more people and aficionados. It was more authentic. And in short, more representative of Chaabi music. 

Since the festival came back, talk began about efforts to classify this authentically Algerian music genre as a Unesco immaterial heritage, just as it happened with Raï. I believe that any efforts that neglect places like Marsam “Sal H’moumek” and keep other cultural associations which work on cultural and musical heritage on the margin and far from the spotlight, and neglect to study those artistic, marginal meeting places socially and anthropologically, put us on the margin of the goal behind this project.