Algiers – The musician and conductor châabi, Mohamed Ferkioui, student of Hadj Mhamed El Anka who inspired the project of the orchestra and the documentary film “El Gusto”, died Wednesday in Algiers, at the age of 80 years, after a long illness, we learned from his relatives.
Born in 1940 in Algiers, Mohamed Ferkioui had taken his first steps in music within the association “El Fekhardjia” before joining the first class of châabi music directed at the conservatory of Algiers by Hadj Mhamed El Anka. He was also a very young member of the cardinal’s troop as an accordionist and then as a conductor in the late 1950s.
Installed in his father’s workshop in the lower Casbah, Mohamed Ferkioui was the catalyst for the “El Gusto” project during his meeting with the Algerian-Irish architect Safinez Bousbia in 2003 who strives to bring together Algerian musicians, Jews and Muslims who were part of the orchestra and the class of the cardinal in the early 1950s.
This adventure ended in an award-winning documentary film abroad, the recording of an album and an international tour that took the troupe to countries like France, Morocco, Tunisia, Switzerland, Belgium, the United States or the Netherlands.
Mohamed Ferkioui will be buried tomorrow Thursday in Ain Naâdja at the cemetery of El Malha.
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