Idir

Idir (in Amazigh: ⵉⴷⵉⵔ, in Arabic: إدير), whose real name is Hamid Cheriet, was born in 1949 in Aït Lahcène, 35 km from Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria. He is an Algerian singer, songwriter, and musician who performs in the Kabyle language.

Idir was born in 1949 in the village of Aït Lahcène, in the Djurdjura Mountains of Kabylia. The son of a shepherd, he grew up in an environment where Berber poetry and culture held a central place, where the Kabyle language was spoken, and where local traditions nourished his musical imagination. From the outset, his world was marked by the voices of the women around him: “I was lucky enough to have a grandmother and a mother who were poets,” he would later say, summarizing the importance of female voices in his artistic development.

Idir studied geology and initially intended to pursue a career in the Algerian oil industry. He turned to music by chance in 1973 at Radio Algiers when, stepping in at the last minute to replace a sick singer, he performed a lullaby he had composed. This performance quickly became his first radio hit, Rsed A Yidess, whose title means “May Sleep Come.” Shortly after, he recorded A Vava Inouva, another lullaby that would become one of his most iconic songs. Its success was immediate and extended beyond the borders of Algeria.