{"id":24497,"date":"2023-01-16T11:53:07","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T09:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/?p=24497"},"modified":"2023-01-16T18:41:50","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T16:41:50","slug":"benjemy-the-unclassifiable-tunisian-dj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/benjemy-the-unclassifiable-tunisian-dj\/","title":{"rendered":"Benjemy : The unclassifiable Tunisian DJ"},"content":{"rendered":"

In which Sarah Ben Hamadi meets a key figure of Tunisia\u2019s cultural underground.<\/p>\n

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Sarah Ben Hamadi<\/h4>\n

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Among the most acclaimed DJs on Tunisia\u2019s underground scene, DJ Benjemy melds piano, electro, oriental percussions and poetic texts. He is at the same time an author-composer preparing a \u00a0doctoral these in modern literature. Benjemy, whose real name is Ahmed Ben Jemia, is an artist with multiple facets.<\/p>\n

Benjemy fell in love with music at a very young age. “It is these encounters that fueled my love for music,” he confides. His cousin made him listen to The Prodigy (a British electronic music group) at the age of eight. “I was smitten, literally. It was certainly my first encounter with music.\u201d New discoveries followed, among others thanks to his mother: “She made me listen to Stevie Wonder and Charles Aznavour every morning, while going to school,” he remembers, “and that must have nourished in me a love for music.”<\/p>\n

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Ahmed Ben Jemia aka DJ Benjemy, in Tunis.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From a childhood bathed in multiple influences, you can feel it in his music today. “It’s a bit of a clich\u00e9 to say that I listen to everything, but I can assure you that I have no problem waking up to Booba and sleeping to Wagner. And that range of styles, as varied as it may be, certainly has an impact on my music.”<\/p>\n

And as a matter of fact, Benjemy’s music is unclassifiable. His show “Sinouj,” for instance, is an eclectic instrumental fusion between popular and Sufi music. First started in solo with an original performance in an abandoned mine in Djerissa (northwest Tunisia), he enriched it by inviting artists of different genres, thus giving way to a performance as original as it is bewitching.<\/p>\n

For his first album released in 2020, Incipit<\/em>, he multiplied the collaborations by exploring different genres and universes. We find among others, a beautiful number in “Kont Ghalet” (\u201cI was wrong\u201d), with the rapper Kaso. “The main idea was to move between different musical genres,” he explains. “Rap has often been a music in my life and the idea of inviting a rapper on my record seemed to be essential.\u201d<\/p>\n

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