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ABOUT
Hend Zouari (Qanun player and singer)

Doctor in Musicology at the Sorbonne, Paris

Author, composer, performer

A path... A destiny

Hend Zouari, of Tunisian origin, is nicknamed "The Princess of the Qanun." She comes from a family of musicians. Very early in her childhood, her father taught her the Qanun. Later, she became the top student of her class at the University of Sfax, where she received a presidential prize of Tunisia, which allowed her to migrate to Paris to pursue her studies in musicology at the Sorbonne.

Paris is the actual starting point of the artistic career of Hend Zouari as a soloist on an international scale. She has made many tours and multiplied her artistic collaborations with Souad Massi, Tim Supple, Kamel Wali, André Manoukian, Goksel Baktagir, and Lena Chamamyan. In 2009, she released her first album, "L'envol," a mixture of Oriental and Iranian music with flamenco. She fights to stay in Paris and develop her music. Hend Zouari's curiosity and openness to other musical cultures nourish her creativity, revealing a new style of composition and Qanun playing.

For Hend, Paris is a true crossroads of encounters that enabled her to enrich herself with other musical styles. However, she keeps a nostalgia for Tunisia, the memories of childhood, and the cultural heritage that has been transmitted to her.

The album "Bledi" by Hend Zouari is the succulent and eclectic fruit of her history, her journey from its beginning, which makes her an artist without frontiers and a citizen of this world through her music and her universal texts.

The color of the album "Bledi"

Between hope and nostalgia, "Bledi" represents for Hend Zouari the identity of each person in relation to his land, his country, his "bled." Hend is not limited to the cultural borders of her native land, Tunisia. Her vision of the world is open. She has created connections and exchanges between musicians of different cultures, and she communicates through her music messages of love and peace in the world.

"Bledi" is an album where Hend Zouari delivers a part of her intimacy. Most titles are related to a particular event in her life. Hend takes an anxious look at the current world and expresses it through her committed texts, co-written in several languages with Pauline Paris and Betty Rojas.

Hend pays homage to the great Tunisian revolutionary poet, Aboul Kacem Chebbi, by making adaptations of his poems on some titles. This album reveals several messages and defends human values, human rights, feminine beauty, love between peoples, and children victims of war.

Hend Zouari was surrounded by musicians from several cultures who brought different colors to the album, such as Didier Malherbe's Armenian duduk, the oriental and Mediterranean sounds of Lucien Zerrad's oud, Wassim Derbel's darbouka and daf, and Zied Zouari's violin, as well as the contribution of Western sounds with electro-rock sounds by Julien Tekeyan's drums, Thierry Fanfant's and Pauline Paris's bass, Lucien Zerrad's electro-rock guitar, and Betty Rojas's Latin percussion sounds.

"Bledi" is an eclectic album with multiple musical rhythms that stick to the identity of Hend Zouari and her openness to the world.
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