At the center of the controversy is Aqli Yahia

At nearly 90 years old, the famous Kabyle singer Aqli Yahyatene is at the center of a lively controversy in Algeria. The artist denied that the National Copyright Office (ONDA) rejected the songs on the album he had just finished recording.

The album has eight songs, four of which are in Kabyle and several in Arabic, the 62-year-old writer explained to the TV channel.

But ONDA did not accept the recording of some of them due to copyright question. “I was told the commission rejected them, I don’t know why,” he says.

His agent, who intervened in the same media, did not even reveal the reasons for the rejection, content to recall the singer’s long career, his patriotism and his revolutionary past. “Nobody recorded an album at 90,” he notes.

The case has led to many speculations on social networks. Censorship, exploitation, misunderstanding?

According to journalist and former director of Liberte Hassan Ovali, this will be a copyright case. Two songs on the album were rejected by ONDA as they did not belong to the singer. One is the work of the late Dahmane El Harrachi and the other is of Maghreb heritage.

Singer and radio host, Belaid Tagrawla, well aware of what is happening in the artistic scene, explained that Yahyatene did not appropriate the two songs for his part, but announced them as the first and North African under the name Dahmane El Harrachi. The second is inheritance. So the rights go to the legal heirs. “Dda Aqli Yahia himself was misled. All his songs are accepted by ONDA,” Belaid wrote on social media.

Aqli Yahiyatane was one of the most prolific writers of Kabil song. In a 62-year career, he has a rich repertoire of songs in Kabyle and Algerian Arabic, the best known of which is undoubtedly the famous patriotic song “Ya Lmenfi”, which has been covered by many singers, including Rachid Taha and Cheb Khaled. It was Yahyatene Mujahid who knew the prisons of French colonialism.