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Lounis Aït Menguellet (born 17 January 1950 in Ighil Bouammas in the Djurdjura mountains, near Tizi-Ouzou is a Berber singer from Kabylie, Algeria, who sings in the Berber language, Kabyle. Lounis Aït Menguellet is certainly one of the most popular and charismatic artists of the contemporary Kabyle music scene.

He is a poet-musician who has become something of a symbol of the Kabyle demands for recognition. Kabylie has been the setting for many fierce confrontations. Although Lounis’s songs are frequently about Kabylie and its history and its present suffering and misery, he is always quick to state that he isn’t a politician and he doesn’t get involved in politics. However, few can deny the political clout of his songs or their political and sometimes very biting and critical messages.

Many critics of Lounis Aït Menguellet's career like to see it as two distinct parts and because that is a generally accepted view it will be the one offered here. The first part is seen as being centred on the production of love songs and nostalgia. Frequently there are references to a lost love. The songs tend to be shorter than he produces today. Typical songs from this period are Thalt Ayam (Three Days) and Tayri (Love). The second part of his career is characterised by longer songs which demand close reading and interpretation – for example the beautiful and tragic Akw nikhdaa rebbi (Be cursed).

His latest album is Yenna-d Umghar (The Wise Man Has Spoken). This is characterised by more complex music and a much more careful presentation of lyrics in Kabyle, French and Arabic with a brief summary in English. The Lounis of Yenna-d Umghar is a far cry from the Lounis of the early work which is now quite hard to come by. The Lounis of Yenna-d Umghar is more perhaps accessible to European ears, at once alien and familiar. It is indeed a beautiful work, made all the more effective once the poetry is understood. When he presented his latest album on 16th January 2005 at the Maison de la Culture, Tizi Ouzou, on the occasion of his 55th birthday, he said that the artist could only draw people’s attention to their lives and appeal to their consciences. He added that it was still a mission and he didn’t consider himself capable of bringing solutions to the problems.

Despite the fact that Lounis continues to sing about the plight of Kabylie, his poetry has universality that transports it beyond the topical protest song to something far more enduring. He talks of situations and conflicts which are only too familiar to those outside of Kabylie. He may indeed be a poet for Kabylie but his poetry is at the same time universal and enduring.

It is this universality that makes it speak to the world. It is difficult to offer an effective parallel for anglophones but the closest is perhaps Bob Dylan though Lounis’s attitude to the role of the song is perhaps more akin to that of Joan Baez. Lounis’s culture is an oral one so the song in Kabyle culture acts more like the newspaper and the leaflet of European protest. Even today when more and more Kabyle are able to read and write their language rather than reading and writing in French, this aspect is still present in Lounis’s songs. The fact that his songs are now accompanied by the lyrics is an acknowledgement of the new-found written aspect of Kabyle and the presence of the translations indicates that Lounis himself is aware that his poetry has a universal application as well as being a means to publicise the plight of Kabylie to a wider audience.

• Tassadit Yacine, « Aït Menguellet chante », Préface de Kateb Yacine, Paris, la Découverte, 1989.
• Mohammed Djellaoui, « L’image poétique dans l’œuvre de Lounis Aït Menguellet - Du patrimoine à l’innovation » (Essai) - Éditions Les Pages Bleues, Alger, 2005.

Wikipedia in French has a more detailed article on Lounis Ait-Menguellet. This article is based on the French version.