Opening Concert: Souad Massi featuring Youssoupha

It wasn’t written in the stars that Souad Massi would become a well-known songwriter. Born in 1972, she grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Algiers; she listened to Arabic pop music on the radio and Western rock. Flamenco entered her life, and she sang in a metal band. This was considered immoral, and she was threatened by fanatics. In one song, she describes Algeria as a beautiful woman, bound and silenced. One could read this as a self-portrait: When she performed at a festival in France in 1999, with melancholic, poetic songs, she was celebrated. She stayed. Album after album emerged, situated between chanson and Arabic soundscapes, folk and rock. Her story has also made Massi a political role model—a woman who, against all odds, forges her own path, crosses musical and geographical boundaries, and undermines patriarchal structures through her actions. It is not only in France that she has risen to become a megastar.

In cooperation with the Karlstorbahnhof in Heidelberg