In North-African Darija, El Mizan means the groove, the balance, that shaking thing. The band was formed according to crossed trajectories in 2018. First, Anouar Kaddour Chérif (mandola, vocals) freshly arrived from Algeria met the guitar player and composer Romain Luder through the Geneva music scene. The Swiss and Moroccan multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Sami Grar joined in right after, and the band settled in Lausanne, at the heart of alternative migratory routes. Then, the clarinetist Damien Converset and his East-Asian and Balkan skills poped in, as if to affirm a transversal artistic fraternity. Finally, the powerful polyrhythms of the Egyptian drummer living in Paris Samuel Boutros completed the band’s set up.

El Mizan draws from its great cultural mix of North-African sounds, exulting with a Maghreblon rock, punctuated by ballads with elegant vocal harmonies, intoned in Darija, this great dialect of the Maghreb region. It is an immense energy that this unique cultural assemblage sends out: hymns to freedom, to the melancholy of exile, odes to the wisdom of the elders and to the exalted dreams of new generations. Live, the space turns into a night of musical fervor where popular memories arise, made of heady rhythms with jazz, rock or chââbi sounds, where ranges mingle do not care about borders and build bridges between the East and the West. The first EP „Nirani“ was released in 2019, when the band foamed and set the stages of French-speaking Switzerland in fever, like just before other groove warriors. the Tuaregs of Tinariwen. In 2023, El Nizan released Harba, literally escape, that of too tight shackles and generally everything that limits the horizon.

The L.P Horbo means evasion in Arabic. The album expresses a deep desire to escape, to get out of oneself, to get off the ground. The different compositions dig tunnels between the vulnerability of men and their forces, their wisdom and their madness. Authentic and intimate texts in a hybrid Arabic that relates as much to current tragedies as to ancestral celebrations. A world of contradictory images embodied in a tender and powerful eclectic music.

Anouar Kaddour Chérif: Mandole, voix
Sami Grar: Basse électrique, voix
Romain Luder: Guitare électrique
Samuel Boutros : Batterie
Damien Converset: Clarinette, Lausanne

Webseite: elmizan.bandcamp.com

Die Veranstaltung findet als Abschlusskonzert des EthnoKino Film Festivals statt.

Infos zum Festival: www.ethnokino.com