Blues-trans, gnawa…. Coming from Sahara, Hasna el Becharia’s music carry us away in a furious blending of wind of sands, karkabous, ancient traditions, electric guitare and tea with mint.

Coming from the Algerian Sahara, Hasna el Becharia is a woman of freedom, a “never-making concession”.
Person having a high colour, she is well known in the south of Algeria, more particularly in Bechar (her native town) where she makes wedding music for more than 30 years. Daughter and gran-daughter of gnawa musicians, she plays popular Saharan traditional songs and personal composition (some cal her “gnawa poetess) with acoustic, electric guitars and gumbri (traditional gnawa instrument, usually only played by men).
She arrived in France in January 1999 where she was invited to a festival called “Women of Algeria” (she was, with Souad Massi, one of the two new-comers who emerged from this festival). Hasna decided to stay in Paris because her situation was too difficult in Algeria. In spite of her singing of the Prophet, she disturbs. She is too free, going out alone in the evening despite the curfew, welcoming homeless women and children thrown away thanks to the “Code of the Family” (the Islamic rules which allowed man to do whatever he wants and denied elementary rights to women).