When I first heard the 1970s albums by Areski and Brigitte Fontaine, I thought Brigitte Fontaine’s vocals were double-tracked - that she had a high, head voice and a low, chest voice and used these in tandem to unique effect. It turns out that while Fontaine’s range is wide, and she does have many forms of address, that low chest voice I believed was her own doubling is in fact Areski, Fontaine’s musical and life partner. Their two voices were just in remarkable synch.
Thanks to YouTube, I can now visualize these sounds as two people singing together. But on record, I still can’t always tell Fontaine’s solo chest voice from Areski’s. Their personae entwine, despite being very distinct - Fontaine is flamboyant where Areski is grounded. Fontaine sounds spontaneous and Areski disciplined. Fontaine is emotive and voluble, Areski so spare in his musical gestures I assumed he did not sing on these records at all.
The pair started working together in the theater, a very 1960s kind of theater that combined cabaret and the avant garde. These ephemeral works, despite long runs at the time in Paris, would seem to be lost except for hints from filmed bits of their later musical performances together. There are moments in these presentations that capture a theatrical spirit of surprise, as when Brigitte Fontaine jumps on Areski’s back to sing “Nous avons tant parlé,” a track from their 1973 album L’Incendie.
There is one short film I’ve found with bits of several songs performed in a courtyard of Marseilles, staged as if for street theater - although the only audience present is a handful of slightly anxious-looking children, and by the end of the clip the conceit of an audience has been abandoned altogether. Still, it gives a feeling for how the pair must have managed their theatrical productions.
Unlike many avant-garde theatrical performers of the era, Areski and Fontaine did leave us work in a form that was meant to last: their albums. These were deliberate constructions intended for reproduction, and they sound as fresh to me today as they always have. Their first together was a one-off collaboration with Art Ensemble of Chicago, Comme à la radio (1969). This began, too, as an encounter designed for the theater, but then moved into the studio and has since become a touchstone recording for fans of outside music. There don’t seem to be any films of the meeting between these masters of different genres, but there is a bit of footage with Areski and Fontaine rehearsing a performance of the track “L’été l’été” with other jazz musicians living in Paris at the time.
A string of albums followed Comme à la radio that were credited to the duo and produced by Pierre Barouh for his label Saravah. These are the heart of what I think of Areski and Brigitte Fontaine’s work together, although they were involved in one another’s solo projects before, during and after this series: L’Incendie (1973), Je ne connais pas cet homme (1973), Le Bonheur (1975), Vous et nous (1977), and a slightly doomed production, Les Églantines sont peut-être formidables (1980), which they disavowed on release but later remixed to their liking and retitled Baraka.
From that last we have a beautiful duo performance, preserved by French television archive INA, of the song “L’éternal retour.”
I love the percussive approach Areski takes to the guitar. Born Larezeki Belkacem in Versailles to an Algerian Kabyle (Berber) family, Areski was schooled in popular Chaabi by the musicians who visited and played his parents’ café, as well as their collection of 78rpm records. Military service took him to North Africa, where after discharge he traveled in Morocco and discovered Gnawa music, with the buzzing monodic stringed instrument gimbri. Put these influences together and you can begin to imagine how the young Areski approached the guitar. As he told an interviewer for France Inter in 2005, he didn’t understand composing with chords on a piano - “c’est le fil qui est tendu,” a thread that extends, which develops a song for him (if you accept my skills at French dictée). A thread - a wire - a guitar string? - a single line is how Areski pursued his songwriting.
These threads could evidently also be extended between songs, as in the street performance above, or between instruments. In this filmed performance from 1973, Areski shifts accompaniment from a single guitar line shadowing the vocal melody of “Déclaration de sinistre” (from L’Incendie), to half of an absurdist spoken dialogue, to a hand drum pattern played on the body of his guitar for “Moi aussi” (from the eponymous “solo” album Brigitte Fontaine, 1972).
Areski’s restraint on his instruments, coupled with the generosity of his and Brigitte Fontaine’s theatrical aesthetic, leave me as dazzled as he must have felt watching Gnawa musicians in Marrakech. Merci, Areski, for the threads you gave us to follow.
Listening to: Un Beau Matin, by Areski
Cooking: black coffee with sugar
Fantastic piece. Those Saravah albums turned me on my head as well when I first picked them up in the late 1990s. These clips are gems, too.
Oh, man, so sorry to hear of the passing of Areski -- I was so happy to discover all the reissues of his and Fontaine's records earlier this century, it's such amazing, organic-sounding music to me, I love all of it! Thanks for this compilation of videos and thoughts about him and their music together!