Souad Massi & Rachid Taha in concert, Africa Express, Liverpool, March 6th 2008

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Africa Express

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The 5-minute Interview:
Souad Massi, Singer and songwriter

February 22, 2008 -- Souad Massi, 35, is a singer songwriter who lives in Paris. She has just released her new album 'Acoustic' and will be one of more than 35 African and Western acts, including Damon Albarn; Baaba Maal; Reverend and The Makers; Rachid Taha; Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly; The Aliens; Hard Fi and Amadou and Mariam, appearing at the Africa Exprez show on 6 March at the Olympia in Liverpool.

If I weren't talking to you right now I'd be...

Cooking, cleaning and packing, as I am travelling to London tomorrow to work in the studio with Paul Weller, which I'm really looking forward to. Then, on Saturday, I'm doing a solo acoustic show in London, so I'm running about to make sure everything is done before I travel.

I wish people would take more notice of...

The bringing up of children. As parents, it's the one priority you have. Today, people seem to run around working for material things, yet forget to give time to children.

A phrase I use far too often is...

"Ce n'est pas grave" (it's no big deal).

A common misperception of me is...

That I live the life of a star, when I have a very normal life. I love being with my family and spending time in my garden.

The most surprising thing that happened to me...

Was the day I played my first show in France in 1999, having been invited from Algeria to go to Paris and perform at Le Cabaret Sauvage as part of the Women of Algeria festival. Afterwards I was approached by Universal and asked to sign for them, which changed my life completely.

I am not a politician but...

Because of my singing, I have the privilege of being able to have my opinions printed in the media. I follow politics around the world and use the voice I have to talk about some of the many injustices there are.

I'm good at...

Listening and talking to people. I think I am very sociable.

I'm very bad at...

Cooking cakes. I try, but they are never good.

The ideal night out is...

The Nuit de la Musique (festival) in Paris, going from one concert to another.

In moments of weakness I...

Eat chocolate.

You know me as a singer but in truer life I'd have been...

Working as an architect, as that is what I studied.

The best age to be is...

Twenty, at that age you are carefree.

In a nutshell, my philosophy is this...

Better to have regrets for having done something than having not done it.

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Just A Minute with Algerian singer Souad Massi

LONDON, February 26, 2008 (Reuters) - 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 neighbourhood 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?

Q: When you write your songs, what inspires you?

A: It depends. For example, there are plenty of songs on the first album [Raoui - 2001] where there were very intense, difficult moments. That's when you write, when you get the idea and then develop it. For example, "Le Bien et le Mal" ("Good and Evil") was a song that I wrote after I saw the floods in Algeria. I was sad, sad because I said to myself - we've had a civil war, problems, an economic crisis - I was under the impression that we were a cursed people. This hurt me a lot.

Q: What do you think about always being labelled a world music artist?

A: Now it makes me smile...At the beginning I thought that they just couldn't be bothered to make the distinction: She's Arab - she makes world music. Senegalese, Russian - it's all world music. As long as you're not English or French, what you do is world music. That's why I say it's a racism problem.

Q: But you say that now it makes you smile?

A: Yes, because I have some distance now - I have nothing to prove. And there are some virtuosos, real virtuosos that are (classed as) world music - it doesn't matter.

Q: Yesterday you were in the studio with Paul Weller. How is it to collaborate with him?

A: He is someone very spontaneous and I like that. He told me he discovered my albums and he said he adored one of my songs - "Ghir Inta" ("I only love you") - and he made a version of it, which is magnificent...It made me happy to meet a legend like him who is so nice, who has such a drive to make music. Yesterday, we worked until three in the morning. We were tired but he didn't want to leave the studio. He had an idea and he wanted to follow it to the end.

Q: Are you going to play with (Blur singer/songwriter) Damon Albarn again?

A: He invited me to a workshop he did called Africa Express in December 2006, and we're going to do it again in March (March 6 at the Liverpool Olympia). I like these workshops because there is a stage, and there are instruments and you play and sing when you feel like it. He invites you and you do as you please. It's good because Albarn has a certain global status and he does things for Arabic and African music - it's a great undertaking by him.

Q: Your songs explore themes such as love and immigration. What will you write about next?

A: Yesterday with Paul Weller - it was crazy because there are things that are very private that one daren't say to those who are closest to you. You may be in a taxi or at the hairdressers and everything spills out. I never understood how that happens. Paul Weller is great and he said to me, so what are you going to talk about now? I've been touring for seven years. I've given many concerts, I've travelled a lot, I have a young daughter, and for the first time in my life I am on a break. I went to Algeria...I took a break to understand what is happening to me, to analyse my work, to correct my errors, to learn, to re-learn how to live because you lose yourself a bit when you travel. When you give, afterwards you have nothing left.

Q: So what did you write about?

A: When I saw Paul I said to him I would like speak about a good friend of mine who I respect and love very much who is living an enormous injustice and at the same time speak about what is happening in the world through her, to find metaphors, find unspoken things. I wrote about that - but I thought I wouldn't be able to write. He just gave me a piece of paper and said "Go!" I said: "Now? But I need time." He told me to go then, and I wrote the song. It did me good, because I think about it a lot. It's called "Laisse-moi en paix" - "Leave me in peace".

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Africa Express at the Liverpool Olympia

March 8, 2008 -- Had the posters named those rumoured to be coming, it might have been a different story. But in north Liverpool – where word of mouth had yet to convey what was coming to town – Africa Express was barely a source of intrigue. The latest instalment of Damon Albarn and friends’ musical adventure sold out only on the night. Even Chico & the Cheeky Girls met with greater advance interest when they played here a couple of years ago.

When it comes to seven-hour musical extravaganzas, there’s usually something to be said for knowing what you’re getting for your money. But Africa Express’s successes to this point have all been predicated on the belief that the magic happens when you leave your comfort zone behind. Over seven chaotic hours, the best moments occurred when musicians and audience united in that realisation. Richard Archer, the Hard-Fi frontman, gazed on in amused awe at the Algerian rai star Rachid Taha as he daubed the group’s version of The Cure’s Killing an Arab in appropriately Middle-Eastern colours.

Therein lay a recurring theme. British artists would come on and do something that they had rehearsed, and their African counterparts would do something spontaneous and extraordinary with it. After coming on to play the clipped Cossack pop of Take Me out, Franz Ferdinand and their new chum Baaba Maal were reduced to delighted sidemen as Mali’s Bassekou Kouyaté divined miraculous intricacies from the strings of his ngoni and Maal’s drummer thumped out an astonishing display on the tama.

Familiar faces went down predictably well – and there was no shortage of them for a version of Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy that featured Taha, Maal, Terri Walker and a stunning beatboxing display from the Roots’ Scratch. No less heartening was the reaction meted out to musicians – in particular, the beatific acoustic blues of Senegal’s Wasis Diop – of whom much of the audience will not have heard previously.

However, for one increasingly inebriated Africa Express player, such understated delights had long been since left behind as the show reached its conclusion. In two weeks, Damon Albarn turns 40 – but at 3.05am, there was a present for which he could no longer wait. As Taha and his band whipped up a percussive desert storm, he barked Rock the Casbah in the manner of someone who wouldn’t rest until his request had been granted.

By the time 25-odd people lurched on to the stage to join in with Taha’s rai version of the Clash song, the lack of night buses and, no doubt, the irate texting of babysitters forced many to leave. On the way out they may have noticed another poster – for an imminent cage-fighting event – which promised “a gladiatorial spectacle without parallel”. Should the Africa Express charabanc ever roll this way again, it could do far worse than lift those words for its own posters.

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And most regrettably, Souad wasn't there !!!

Strange event. The London organisers assuming that their "viral marketing" techniques would create the necessary intrigue in a city dripping with good music said more about English regional misunderstandings than the event said about global understanding! But it had some great moments, after 2 hours of murky sound drove a lot of people home early on, and Rachid was on form.