VIDEO: Young Algerians use humour and social media to promote musical heritage

Syed Shayaan Bakht, Gulf Today

Algerian youth have gone viral on social media for their traditional music performance to promote their beautiful culture.

A performance by a trio known as Jbaliqs, with the lead Wassim Benyoucef Bendali, his cousins Nouceiba (percussionist, tabla) and Chafik (violinist) is doing the rounds on the internet.

They mostly put up a performance from their living room in Algiers.

Jbaliqs wrote on Instagram, “For our Identity and culture. Algerianism ???

“It's about to reintroduce our beautiful culture! Our identity, Our Algerianity!

You may have seen that playing Carmen aka Kārîmā is not a difficult thing! Here is our heritage!”

Wassim, who studied sociolinguistics, and Nouceiba, a high school student, want to introduce young people to traditional Algerian music.

They recently stood out on the Internet with their atypical music videos: Wassim Belarbi and Noussaïba Bettahare, by their stage name Jbaliqs, breathe new life into châabi, one of the most popular musical genres in Algeria. Videos that went viral and quickly made them known.

They have been musicians since a young age and have always promoted Algerian traditions, but their real web adventure was born three months ago.

Wassim, 21, and Noussaïba, 15, shared their first video on Instagram in January.

They took the stage name Jbaliqs, which represents "the Arabization of the Latin word Juba (Berber king)", explains Wassim, the initiator of the project.

We also find in each of their covers Berber sounds, "a guarantor part of chaâbi city music", insists the young artist.

Wassim and Noussaïba want to introduce young people to traditional Algerian music. For them, the best way to do it is to bring a touch of humour to their videos, which has not failed to attract the attention of Internet users.

A music video posted in November garnered over 408,250 likes on Instagram.

Jbaliqs decided to get more involved: "Now we are working on exporting Algerian culture around the world and on ways to popularize it for young Algerians, who 'did not have access, at school, to the musical teachings of this culture.”