Arts Festival of Ahaggar: an edition to popularize the arts of the Sahara

According to the wish of the organizers, this theme will throw light on "the origins and method of the creation of clichés that surround the Sahara, its people and its cultural heritage",constituting the information component of this third festival dedicated to the arts of the Ahaggar.

The mode of communication in the region is essentially oral, the festival's workshops, under the direction of the visual artist Arezki Larbi,aims to encourage people to open up to other modes of transmission and other means of safeguarding  the knowledge of  local populations (painting, cartoon and photograph).

The short story workshop, designed for the transcription of a knowledge of several thousand years but buried in the memories, will be dedicated to historical accounts, including  the daily life of the population of the region under French occupation.

 following the great success of the previous edition, the festival will host this year a camp as part of the exhibition "Architecture of earth and clay," produced on the occasion of the event "Tlemcen, the capital of Islamic culture".

This exhibition aims to stress the urgency of preserving  the Ksours of the Algerian Sahara and the entire habitat which are endangered despite the restoration campaigns initiated by the population. Another objective of the exhibition presents the architectures of earth in a modern look and  to discover earth architecture through techniques to model building, modernized by architects worldwide.

With the participation of nearly twenty Algerian musical troupes, which include the works of Badi Lalla, diva Tindi, and Abdallah Mesbahi the deceased student Othmane Bali, the festive aspect of the event is enhanced by the participation of artists  from countries bordering the Sahara,  which will be both as rich and diverse.

Following Amadou and Mariam and Farka Toure, all Malians, who had already performed last year, the  blues Ténéré is coming to Tamanrasset with Tinariwen (scheduled for 17 February), The world class Malian group inspired a great interest in Saharan music. Other distinguished guests in this festival include, the Malian, Djeli Moussa Conde and Mauritanian, Malouma, whose music is a fusion of the traditional and world music, will take the stage on 18 February.

This program meets the need to highlight the music of southern Algeria and its origins, while revealing each year, the African deep dimension, common to all populations of the Sahara. The festival started as  just a cultural event on the Ahaggar and the festival organizers are now proud to have initiated the region's population into many disciplines hitherto unknown, like the astronomy program that gave birth to a local association of astronomy which plans to conduct during this event, its own workshop.

The Heritage collection work will be symbolized by teh space for "Imzad", the instrument as a musical tradition which is lost, but also by the collection of stories and testimonies that will lead to a theatrical production  and  the publication of a book of music compilations and documentary films.

This festival was established in 2010, led by the archaeologist  Farid Ighilahriz, in the holistic effort to collect, transcribe and preserve the intangible heritage of the region of Ahaggar. In line with this approach, previous editions have focused on the diversity of intangible legacy of the region and the relationship between cultural heritage and natural environment.