Mervat Abdelhak

Dans ce récit d'inspiration autobiographique, Abdelhak Serhane nous livre le portait émouvant d'une enfance marocaine dans les années 50 au sein d'une famille très pauvre installée dans un village isolée du Haut-Atlas. Enfance douloureuse marquée par une extrême misère matérielle et affective, et dominée par la figure d'un père violent et d'une mère soumise…

Les enfants de la rue, déjà acteurs principaux de Messaouda, forment le second roman de Serhane. Mais après l'indépendance, les maux du Maroc se sont accentués. Le chômage, la répression policière, la corruption des administrations ne font qu'aggraver les inégalités…

Drummer and multi-instrumentalist Salah Ragab was a central figure in the history of jazz in Egypt. A sometime collaborator with Sun Ra, Ragab founded the Cairo Jazz Band in 1968, the same year that he became the head of the Egyptian Military Music Department. The Cairo Jazz Band was Egypt's first big band, mixing American jazz with North African music, combining jazz instrumentation and musical style with indigenous melodies and instruments, like the nay (bamboo flute) and the baza (ramadan drum). Such musical cross-fertilization was not unusual in itself; American musicians from Sun Ra to Yusef Lateef had long been fascinated by the music of Islam and North Africa, incorporating both the instruments and musical forms of the Fertile Crescent into their work. But Salah Ragab’s music presents a topsy-turvied perspective, a view from the other side of the musical equation of West meets Middle East.

In 1968, while he was also the leader of the Military Music Departments in Heliopolis, Salah Ragab formed the first jazz big band in Egypt, The Cairo Jazz Band. Some of the best musicians in Egypt of that time were members – Zaki Osman (trumpet), Saied Salama (tenor sax), Khamis El-Kholy (piano) and Ala Mostafa (piano).