ALAOUI Amina
Gharnati - En concert

S 62606


Music & Words
Marocco

 

Amina Alaoui, interpreter of Arab-Andalusian music and worldwide ambassador of this tradition, combines singing, composing and musicological research in order to deepen and further master her art. Her creativity and desire to renew are based on her own traditions.

Amina Alaoui was born in Fez in Morocco and comes from an aristocratic family that is strong on Moroccan academic and popular traditions, but also from a contemporary intellectual and artistic environment. From the age of six, her family taught her Arab-Andalusian music. She learned to play the piano and was initiated in European classical music by Mohamed Abou Drar, a conductor that graduated in Germany (1972-1976). Amina also studied at the conservatory of Rabat (1979-1981) with Ahmed Aydoun and M. Ouassini. She studied modern dancing with Marie-Odile Loakira (1972-1979); Vera Likatchova (1979-1981) gave her lessons in classical dancing. In addition to studying classical piano, she studied traditional Arabic-Andalusian music and Moroccan and Middle Eastern dance.

When she was only ten years old, her first poems were published. After she graduated from the Lycée Descartes, she studied philology and linguistics at the University of Madrid and Granada (Spanish and Arabic).

In Granada, Amina did personal research on Arab-Andalusian and oriental music and afterwards she specialised in Arab-Andalusian music and more specifically gharnati style music. When she moved to Paris in 1986, she learned the basic principles of gharnati music from Rachid Guerbas and especially from Ahmed Piro in Rabat. Henri Agnel taught her European medieval music and she was initiated in Persian classical music by Djallal Akhbari, with whom she gave a few concerts.

 

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