Cheb Mami

Mami, now longer a kid, had to help support his large and poor family (he was one of nine children). Naturally responsible and serious, he had no difficulty in practising the Arab maxim, "a little for my God and a little for my heart". During the week he worked as a welder in the Société Nationale du Métal factory, then left Saïda each weekend, attracted by the nightlife of Oran where, at marriages and other feasts, dressed in his robe of lights, he metamorphosed into a "cricket". Eventually the group "Al Azhar" (The Flowers) spotted the prodigious kid and hired him. He made his debuts in the licentious cabarets of Oran’ corniche, at the Macumba, the Mon Château and the Biarritz clubs, where Algerians went to get drunk and dance the night away to the devilish rhythms and lewd lyric of the raï groups.