El Gusto by Safinez Bousbia

Algeria,Ireland,UAE

A story about memory through beautiful music plays well in Safinez Bousbia’s El Gusto. This is a tale of times lost, and the reweaving of history, through the resurfacing of a music: Chaabi, the sound where “Arabic classical music and Al-Andalus meet the casbah.” It was 2003 when Bousbia was wondering through Algiers, entering a mirror shop where she met Mr. Ferkioui. The 83 year old man told her his own story as a Chaabi musician. In the 1950’s, Chaabi was not only a sound, but a place where Arabs and Jews would meet in casbah as one, living and playing together in bars, religious celebrations, and also, just for the sake of it… for ’el gusto’.

As one of the musicians says, "Chaabi can make you forget weirdness, hunger, thirst and sadness". When the National Liberation Front (FLN) launched the Algerian War of independence in 1954, Chaabi could be heard at any corner of the country. Through the madness of war, the casbah commenced deep transformation: bars were closed (or worse, bombed), streets emptied, and music started to be frowned-upon. "If one of my brothers is on his way to die, why would I chant?" Chaabi musicians could no longer find their place: the Jewish musicians fled to France, a safe haven for them, ’with the guitar in one hand, and the bag in the other’. Arab musicians, who couldn’t work playing, employed themselves in petty jobs as a mean to sustain their families. In time, Chaabi got itself lost in memory with pre-independence Algeria.

Upon hearing this story, Bousbia set herself to find the original Chaabi players, now scattered through Algeria or France. It took her two years to assemble a 42-piece band naming it ’El Gusto’ (Spanish for ’the thrill’), most of them trying to figure out how the last forty years went by. Upon their debut in Théâtre du Gymnase in Marseille, they created an international phenomenon which took off quickly, playing in large venues like Paris-Bercy, or London’s Barbican, giving ’El Gusto’ musicians new air, and new lives. Through a brilliant soundtrack and great use of archival footage, it’s an accomplished story and a must see for music buffs.

Miguel Fernández Flores