Description:
(Born in 1949). Performer, composer and arranger. Combining modern music, Western harmonies and Maghrebian melodies, Khodja Freh favors rhythm above all. While his two brothers were involved in bodybuilding and judo respectively, Freh had asked them to intercede on his behalf with his father so that he could take up music. At the age of fifteen, he enrolled at the Sidi Belabbes Conservatory to study music theory. After a year, he began to play the saxophone, and in 1968 emigrated to France with the aim of becoming a great musician. In Lyon, while working as a laboratory technician, he got in touch with a semi-professional orchestra. His artistic work is a blend of Soul, Rhythm and Blues and Oranese music, and his songs speak of suffering, unhappiness, estrangement, insecurity, love, forgiveness and tolerance. His fifth 33 T, released in 1985, features eight tracks, including Nefsi Toubi and ya Chaghla Bali. He sang in Portugal, France, the United States, Holland...but not in Algeria. After a stay in the United States, where he met the "Les Flammes" orchestra, he deepened his research and unabashedly blended modern tunes with traditional melodies. Khalouni Nabki Ala Lyam is a long-awaited and emotional tribute to the author of the text, his father, Belhadri Khodja, a little-known poet of oral tradition.