Blaoui Houari

Blaoui Houari was born on 23 January 1926 in Oran, Western Algeria, then French Algeria.[1][2][3] His father, who owned a bar in Oran, played the Kwitra.[2] Houari left school at 13 to work for his father.[2]

Houari began his career as a singer-songwriter in the 1940s, when he first played music at weddings and circumcision ceremonies.[1] He also composed songs and played the piano, the guitar, the mandolin and the accordion.[1] He released his first album in 1955, which included a cover of Benyekhlef Boutaleb's song Rani M’hayer.[2] In 1986, he released Dikrayat Wahran, an album about Oran.[2] Over the course of his career, he recorded over 900 songs and released over 100 albums.[1]

With Ahmed Wahby, Houari co-founded El Asri, a musical style which blended traditional Arab music with Bedouin rhythm and Oranian dialect.[1][3] For example, he turned Abdelkader El-Khaldi's poems into songs.[1]

During the Algerian War, Houari was arrested by the French army and detained in Sig for his pro-Algerian songs.[2][4] When Algeria became an independent nation in 1962, he became the head of Oran's public radio and television stations.[2] In 1970, he conducted the Algerian National Orchestra at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan.[1]

Houari died on 19 July 2017 in Oran, at the age of 91.[1][2][3] He was buried in Oran's Ain El Beida cemetery.[2][3]

Houari is considered as the "precursor of raï music."[5] Indeed, his music influenced many raï performers, including Khaled, who covered some of his songs,[1][6] as well as Houari Benchenet and Cheb Mami.[2]