Abdessadeq Cheqara, Ya Bent Bladi
Abdessadeq Cheqara · Ya Bent Bladi · Morocco
Abdessadeq Cheqara – Ya Bent Bladi (Ouhmane Cassette, Casablanca)
Some tapes announce themselves loudly. This one doesn't even give itself a title. The cover carries the artist's name in Arabic, four song titles, a man in a red fez, and the “OUHMANE” logo. Everything else you have to work out yourself, which is half the fun of collecting Moroccan cassettes.
The tape at a glance
Artist: عبد الصادق اشقارة, Abdessadeq Cheqara (also spelled Chekara, Chqara, Shkara and many other ways)
Label: Ouhmane Cassette (أوحمان كاسيط), which Discogs describes as a Moroccan label based in Casablanca
Format: stereo cassette, tan shell with green print, fold-out cover with a blue-tinted inner flap
Not printed: album title, year, catalogue number, barcode, and any composer, lyricist or musician credits
Collector listings for this tape give the same A1–B2 tracklist and title it Ya Bent Bladi, after the closing song. The title is a later convention, since nothing on the tape says so.
The artist
Cheqara (1931–1998) was a Moroccan singer of Andalusian classical music and Moroccan folk music, born in Tetuan, and also a violin and oud virtuoso. He came from a musical family: his father was a singer and musician in Tetuan, and his mother descended from a family of poets, musicians and philosophers.
Some milestones from his biography:
In 1961 he recorded eight nawbas of Andalusian music for a UNESCO-linked association, to preserve Morocco's Andalusian heritage.
In 1978 he became Supervisor General of the National Conservatory.
In 1991 he worked with Michael Nyman on “The Upside-Down Violin”, recorded live at the Seville World's Fair.
Wikipedia also credits him with taking Andalusian music beyond an elite audience, and claims he learned songs from Tetuani women musicians who weren't allowed to record. That last claim is flagged there as needing better sourcing, so read it as reported, not settled.
The songs
This isn't a classical nawba record. It's a set of his popular songs, mostly northern-Moroccan in flavour.
Ya Bent Bladi is the one everybody knows. A Moroccan newspaper piece says the lyrics were written by the poet Abderrahmane El Alami, and that Cheqara blended northern folk music with Spanish flamenco and Andalusian music. Wikipedia tells it a bit differently: in 1982 he met Professor José Heredia in Granada and they produced the song, a fusion of Tetuani music and flamenco. The two accounts disagree on who wrote the words, so I'd treat authorship as open. The same newspaper piece also lists the other three songs on this tape among his known repertoire.
The label
Ouhmane was one of the big Casablanca cassette houses. It also issued material by other major Moroccan acts: the NTS page for Nass El Ghiwane lists tracks credited to Ouhmane Cassette. That makes this a mainstream popular release, not an obscure private pressing.
When is it from?
I can't tell you, and I'd rather say so than guess. One streaming service tags “Allah yhdik ya ghzali” with 1982, but that's platform metadata, not a cassette date. If the 1982 Granada story is right, the tape can't be much older than the early 1980s. That's inference, not evidence. The stereo marking and the six-digit Casablanca phone numbers fit the period without proving it.
Do you have another copy, or know Ouhmane's catalogue numbering? Drop it in the comments. A catalogue number or a year on another pressing would settle this.
Covers
Tracklist
Side A
- الله يهديك يا غزالي Allah yhdik ya ghzali “May God guide you, my gazelle”
- أنا في عارك Ana f 'arek An appeal to someone's honour or protection
Side B
- يا وليدي يا حبيبي Ya oulidi ya habibi “My boy, my beloved”
- يا بنت بلادي Ya bent bladi “Girl of my country”