Tribute to Cheb Hasni

Orane disappeared one night,

Orane, Orane Orane, Orane

Orane it's me who loves you so,

Orane, Orane Orane, Orane

Orane, I'm nothing without you

Orane, Orane Orane, Orane

If you're walking in Paris on the 29th of September, spare a thought for a man known as the Prince of Raï. Cheb Hasni died on the 29th of September 1994. He was killed in his native country of Algeria in Northern Africa. Assassinated by Islamic fundamentalists in his hometown of Oran.

Photo of Cheb Hasni taken from: http://en.hibamusic.com/

I didn't hear the news of his death, partly because ten days earlier, volcanic eruptions had destroyed my home town of Rabaul. I and thousands of others, were in shock at finding ourselves so far away on the mainland of Papua New Guinea, while our homes were being destroyed and our families in grave danger on New Britain. The eruption of two volcanoes in the Rabaul harbour, Vulcan and Tavurvur, forced the evacuation of residents, had buried our airport and had collapsed most of the buildings in our beloved city. In that destruction was the demise of an emerging, very beautiful modern culture that was quite unique even in Papua New Guinea itself.

So the event of a murder in far off Algeria was lost to me in those days before the internet. But I guess, if I had heard this news, it would have been part of the many life changing events that were taking place in my own life at that moment. Thirty days earlier, on the 11th of August 1994, my son Jannis had been born right on the anniversary of my own father's death thirty years earlier in 1971. So I named him Toku, the name of Jannis' great grand father, my father's father. My life was full of turbulence, the birth of my son, the death of my city... In fact everything for me had always been rolled into one and this was just another of those repetitions. 

Six years earlier in 1988, I had discovered Cheb Hasni. I was about to turn 25 years old and I was making my second film in the city of Paris. At this time, there was a surge of a certain cultural movement that Cheb Hasni was a part of, which was moving right throughout France, across the Mediterranean and into Algeria itself. This movement was: "Le Mouvement Beur".

Pronounced as it is, this would seem to mean "The Butter Movement". But in fact it was a huge anti fascist, anti racism movement that saw the liberation of the dignity, integrity and pride of Arabic and Magrebian immigrants living in Europe. It was a time when I often found myself right in the middle of millions of people packed into public concert spaces right within Paris and in its suburbs. In fact I even found myself filming in Raï concerts near the Mediterranean.

"Arab" prior to this movement had been a dirty word on the lips of racists and fascists. In the "verlangue" a kind of French popular slang, where the pronunciation of all words are inverted, "Arab" then becomes "Beur" and "Beur" was a derogatory term for these particular immigrants. 

"Verlangue" itself is not a racist language. It is just an underground language that is now quite popular. The "langue" in the name "verlangue", may fool some people into thinking that it comes from the French word for "tongue" or "language". But it doesn't. It comes from the reverse of "reverse" which the concept of the language is based on. The language is really called "Verlan" - the reverse of "à l'envers".

"Le Mouvement Beur" was borne on the waves of that musical genre called Raï and drew its force from a rejection of a racist derogatory term. "Beur" itself became a term of Arabic pride in Europe up to this day. This reversal of a racist term and the rejection of racism itself had taken root and by 1988, had caught fire. The flame of this pride was carried onto numerous music and concert stages throughout France by musicians such as Cheb Khader, Cheb Mami and Cheb Khaled. 

But it was Cheb Hasni himself who drew the fury of Islamic fundamentalists back home in Algeria, when together with Chaba Zahouania in 1987, they wrote and recorded a very provocative song by Algerian standards called "Beraka", gaining much popularity with the youth of "Le Mouvement Beur" in Europe but also in Algeria where teenagers had bought about a million cassette copies. 

This drew deadly attention and a fatwa, a death warrant issued by fundamentalist Islamic leaders for Cheb Hasni to be put to death.

Cheb Hasni was born Hasni Chakroun on the first day of February, 1968. Hasni is his first name - not Cheb. Cheb just means young man in Algerian. This man loved to sing and he had a beautiful voice, with which he could do that. They say that when he was a younger boy growing up in Oran, he would sing all the way to and from school with his school bag slung over his shoulders.

Raï music, the chariot that carried the liberation of Arabic pride in Europe, is itself rooted in the Bedouin musical culture of the African, nomadic, desert people. In particular, it is rooted in the traditional music of the Kabili people of Algeria. The ancestors of these people are the Berber Africans, who had been invaded by Arabs during the Islamic conquest. By the 80s, modern musicians sought to modernise Raï using various modern influences upon the traditional Kabili music. It became something one could call pop music with Arabic styled vocals and rhythms. 

The murder of Cheb Hasni was a double tragedy for the Berber, whose original African culture was instrumental in restoring and elevating the pride of all "Arabic people" in Europe. Once again, their cultural spirit was attacked in such a ruthless manner. He was shot by gunmen as he sat drinking coffee in a café at 11:55 am, on the corner of the street where he lived with his parents.

Many Rai musicians now live in exile in Paris and elsewhere in France, no longer safe to walk in their original homeland of Algeria. For many of them Oran has finally gone away.

I have never taken my son Jannis, back to Rabaul because of the circumstances and also because when he was small, he told me that he did not want to go to Rabaul because of two things: volcanoes and sharks. Now he is older and he knows that volcanoes do not erupt everyday.

Religious fundamentalism can be very hard on people's cultures. My mother according to Catholic teachings told me to avoid films. Yet today, I'm a filmmaker and my mother passed away knowing and accepting that I had become one. She even became a star in one of the films we made. How could she avoid being an artist? She was an actress in one of the earliest women's comedy theatre groups in Papua New Guinea: the "Kivalar String Band". 

She taught me about the theatre and I spent time with her preparing the scenario for a theatre play that the two of us were to present at the Tolai Warvagira, the East New Britain cultural festival. We never did. One day maybe. Or maybe it is just the spirit of creation that she wanted to give me, which is what counts.

But I still remember the plot of that story after so many years even though we never once wrote it down. We were more concerned with the props and how to build stage objects that we could easily and quickly put up and dismantle once it would be our turn. There were theatrical competitions and prizes in those days in Rabaul. In our story there were two characters: A bad guy: me, and a good guy: my mother. My mother made me understand why each of the two characters had to go through their own part of the story and why that was important to each character.

As Jannis was growing up, he insisted that I tell him and his elder brother Leonard, a new and original story every single night. "No Reading", "No Legends" and "Not one we've heard before" was the basic command. So every night, for more than ten years, no matter what had happened during the day, I had to tell an original bedtime story. I still do not know where those stories came from. Now many years later we have seen some of our themes come out in "Harry Potter" and in that other story about the "Storybook". Why did we never record our own stories?

Anyway Jannis, I have always wanted to tell you a legend but you didn't want legends. 

So now that you are 16, I thought I could tell you the story of a legend. The Legend of Cheb Hasni. A modern hero who was killed because he made people think for themselves and made people break out of the chains of outdated ideas, oppression and ignorance. Never be afraid to be like him. He just let the flame of his own candle burn as bright as it could during his one life, doing the one thing he loved the most which was singing.

Now that they have killed him, people who feared his gift of music think they have silenced his song. Yet Oran itself will always give us the undying spirit and songs of human liberation and freedom. 

And even as the volcanoes have always buried our own people on Rabaul, we too will always rise again to sing.

The first mention of Oran for many of us was in a song which now seems to have been a prophetic foreboding of Hasni's death. The group "Les Negresse Vertes" - "Green Negro Girls" had recorded the song "Orane" in 1988.

Oran, now it's over. Oran, I shall start my life all over again.

Orane, maintenant c'est fini, 

Orane, je refais ma vie,

The resistance and the political movement for the cultural survival of the Berber people continues. In 2003, the Berber language was finally recognised and officially adopted, as a second Algerian language next to Arabic.