Every other Sunday, at 8 p.m., Danyl, 25, meets on the Twitch platform to compose songs with his subscribers. In front of him, a keyboard and a microphone; behind him, a decrepit wall and, on his left, a group of laughing friends hiding behind a curtain. The singer and composer has made a specialty of mixing the music of his Algerian origins and pop or R’n’B melodies.
Some of these live studio sessions resulted in tracks featured on her third EP, Khedma 3, released on March 8. A good solution to test your musical research on your audience, break the solitude of nights in the studio and share your “work in progress” on the raï singers Cheb Khaled, Cheb Mami or Cheb Hasni.
A pale boy with coppery curls, Danyl sings in French and in Derija, the dialectal Arabic of the streets, from Algiers to Oran, from Tunis to Marrakech. He called his EPs Khedma, “the coal, the work”, but he could have called them the songs of exile, so full of nostalgia are his songs La Rouma or Bledi mon amour. “I wrote this one two years ago,” he says. It’s been a long time since I returned to Algeria because of Covid-19. I found myself far from my family, I missed them a lot and I wrote this piece. »
These images of vacations in the sun are joyful, filled with fireworks, the voices of street vendors, trips sitting in the trunk of the car. “The difference with other singers is that when I talk about Algeria, I do it from the point of view of a Frenchman,” he says. It’s more childish than the vision of someone who grew up there. »
Chopin au piano
From Kabyle and Sahrawi parents, Danyl lived between Créteil (Val-de-Marne) and the 13th arrondissement of Paris, lulled by the rap of Rim’K, from the group 113 – who signed, in 1999, the decisive Tonton du bled, story of a return to Algeria for the holidays, precisely – and by 1,2,3 Soleils, the CD of the raï music concert-event, in September 1998 in Bercy. His mother, a pianist, enrolled him at the conservatory and, for years, Danyl practiced for hours on the works of Chopin.
As a teenager, the example of his elders inspired him: “In rap, there are big basses, a rhythm that I mix with more rebeus percussion (derbouka, bendir). We had to mix raï, the music that my parents listened to, but without it sounding too much like there. You have to know where to place the cursor. » Danyl found the right balance by continuing his research even in the cabarets of Oran, on his Twitch channel and, today, in concert.
