When Idir sings, hearts open up because his melodies come from far, far away. From where the Kabyle soul vibrates in all its purity and splendour. The words are strung together like pearls, some more beautiful than others, forming magical and sumptuous necklaces that guarantee eternity to this Kabyle people who refuse to disappear despite the uninterrupted murderous assaults of so many enemies.
The unanimous tribute that the whole world is paying to Idir today is also addressed to the values that he carried above all else, starting with the Kabyle identity and culture that he had never stopped defending and, by extension, to his deep Amazigh roots. He was their best ambassador. Sober, serene and measured, he knew who he was, where he came from and where he was going. He did not cheat with his own people and had unlimited respect for his ancestors, whose message and legacy he passed on to us in a very beautiful way. He did not cheat with others either, because his aim was not to lie to them about his reality, but to tell them what a majestic and noble people he came from, and to denounce the inadmissible denial of his existence by Algeria.
Today, this same official Algeria which, in the name of the racist ideology of Arab-Islamism, has always tried to stifle Idir’s voice, and all the voices that echo it, pretends to shed crocodile tears in an attempt to de-Kabylise him by Algerianising him. Each time it seizes the memory of a Kabyle opponent it is systematically to turn it against Kabylia.
Idir, like so many other Kabyle singers before and after him, whom Algeria banished from his native land when he was only 26 years old, and whom it has never stopped fighting, including in exile, rightfully belongs to the Kabyle people, to the Amazigh peoples, and to all humanity that respects his work and his language.
If, as early as 1972, with “Vava Inouva”, he had succeeded, on his own, in culturally deconfining Kabylia, which was under a political blanket, he had understood that three notes of music were enough to shake the edifice of lies built in the name of an Algeria created from scratch.
As on every occasion when the curtain rises to let the truth come out into the open, voices driven by a primary anti-Kabylism are raised and smoke screens are dispatched to explain to us what Algerianity is, what Amazighity is, what our history is and even what our … Kabylity is!
The watchword is clear! Never give Kabylia the opportunity to express itself, never give Kabylia the opportunity to breathe, never give Kabylia the possibility to bury its own in serenity.
This time, with the immeasurable pain of the loss of our Idir, which only Kabyles felt as the loss of a son, a brother or a father, the reasons to be proud come from these messages of respect and recognition to the man, and through him, to Kabylia which he had never stopped cherishing and whose message he had naturally carried to the four corners of the planet.
In a world in turmoil that is preparing for imminent upheavals following the pandemic, the Algerian system is panicked because it sees its end approaching fast. It sees the wall of lies it has erected crumble and the foundations of its ideology take on water from all sides. A simple tweet from the French army staff was enough to destabilise a country that is no longer even able to envisage a future in the new, inescapable global reconfiguration that is fast approaching. The sauve-qui-peut will soon take the place of this false assurance that the puppets waved by the government try to display without much conviction.
Finally, we say TANEMMIRT (THANK YOU) to Idir for having carried the voice of Kabylia so high and so strong, for having contributed to show the way to Kabylia in a world that, from now on, will not be made without it.
Text published on Siwel the day after the death of the immense IDIR. It was three years ago !
By Ferhat Mehenni & Aksel Ameziane
IDIR OR THE VOICE OF ETERNAL KABYLIA
