Ferhat Mehenni

Ferhat Mehenni (March 5 1951 in Illoula - ) is a Kabyle singer and political activist, the leader of the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie, and is very well known in his native Kabylie.

Having graduated from the University of Algiers with a degree in political science, Mehenni made his first steps into the world of music in 1973, by winning the Algiers Modern Music Festival's first prize. It was soon after this success that he began an illustrious career as a protest singer. He was notably hostile against the Algerian government and Islamists; these attitudes led to his being arrested 13 times, imprisoned for three years, and tortured by government employees. After the Black Spring massacre in Kabylie that emerged after Algerian gendarmes killed a young Kablye man, Masinissa Guermah in detention, he established the MAK, Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie, a movement for the autonomy of Kabylie. It has been said that his direct approach to Kabylie's political and social situation was what provoked the assassination of his son (Améziane Mehenni) in 2001.

His music is highly politically and individualistic. He has produced several albums but most of them are difficult to come by in Europe but these are ones that can be found with some searching:

Chants d'acier d'amour et de liberté - Songs of steel, love and liberty (1994)
Chants du feu et de l'eau - Songs of Fire and Water (1996 and 2001)
Tmurt n Leqvayel (Hymne à la Kabylie) - Hymn to Kabylie (2002)

It is important not to think of Ferhat as some kind of Bob Dylan protest singer. Ferhat, like Lounis Ait Menguellet and Matoub Lounes, comes from an oral tradition where the song acts like the newspaper or political leaflet in European society. Many of the Kabyle have in the past not been able to read and write Kabyle though they have been literate in French and sometimes Arabic. Even today, when more and more Kabyle can read and write Kabyle, the song is still part of the oral tradition and very powerful as a means of communication. It can be very difficult for western audiences to understand the power of the song in an oral tradition even when a written tradition exists in a different language. Ferhat has to be viewed primarily as a political activist who because he lives in a society with strong oral traditions, uses music to convey those ideas. It is quite difficult to separate the two strands of his fame.

Ferhat Mehenni is the author of a book: Algérie : La Question Kabyle, published in 2004 in which he explains his ideas about the autonomy of Kabylie.