here is a three-piece suit, shirt as white as his hair. Enrico Macias, 80 years old, a veteran of the folk-song French, who made the beautiful days of the issuance of Marita and Gilbert Carpentier, was fired the Olympia on Saturday night, in front of an audience totally in unison.

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«It is in the family,» he said, several times, with its slight hint of accent. Behind him stand his son Jean-Claude, a man-orchestra and a musician of exception, and his little daughter Julia, one of the four singers of the ensemble. But his family, are also those who have been following since the 60’s, and know all his songs by heart. They are, this evening, accompanied by their children, or their grandchildren, lulled by the hits of Enrico. A lot of Pieds-Noirs, of course, jewish or not, but who know how to chant the directory as a person. The singer was the first, in France, to sing of the sea, sun and friendship and to put words to the pain of those who have «left everything» in Algeria.

Enrico Macias on the stage of the Olympia with his band. Berzane Nasser/Berzane Nasser/ABACA

At the bottom, you can see Michel Drucker, Gérard Darmon and Jean-Pierre Elkabbach, same generation, and sometimes, even history. The Olympia is also filled with fans of arabo-andalusian music, with which Macias has returned there ten years, and that he has mastered thanks to his father-in-law, the late sheikh Raymond.

The concert is organized in two parts. The first, high in colors, place the tubes that everyone in the world picks-claps hands: The sun , bitter Orange , Toi Paris tu m’as taken in your arms or northerners . Farewell, my country , became the anthem of the Pieds-Noirs, is picked up with the singer Kendji Girac, the young star of gypsy, in which Macias said recognize. Although banned, the phones come out of pockets for film the duo.

Manifesto against intolerance

After the intermission, and the long thanks, and a must for this singer, sentimental and generous, Macias reappears clad in white – the color of Algiers. He attacks the sequence with The beggar of love , a staple of bar-mitsvas. And then he slips in the eastern music, mixing Arabic, Hebrew, and French, accompanied by the orchestra Al orchestra. All the world delights in its flight is controlled, to the sounds of ouds.

as Everyone knows, moreover, that the succession of pieces arabo-andalusian is a manifesto against intolerance. So stubbornly, and in the name of the past, Algeria refuses to allow the singer to visit his native land. It is a suffering for Macias, who has reached the age of memories, and would like to review Constantine. A double boycott, from an obscure city councilman to the city of Saint-Denis, of algerian origin, and of the collective Morrocan academy and cultural boycott of Israel – has also tried to throw a dark shadow on this 26th Olympia. Penalties lost: Enrico Macias will announce, on stage, a concert at the Megarama in Casablanca, on the 14th of February, evidence that the Moroccan authorities did not take into account the oukase of the collective. And if Algeria refuses to him, he made it up on stage on Saturday night, with Meriem Beldi, beautiful singer of Chaabi – a genre of popular algerian-, accompanied by Syrine ben Moussa, another golden voice of tunisia.

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In all, the concert lasted for two and a half hours, a feat for this man who displayed almost 60-year career. While the audience poured out on the sidewalk, Macias and his band were expected at the restaurant of couscous, The Red Ball, a few blocks away – a must of the genre.

*another date is planned tonight in Paris, before Casablanca, Marignane, Saint-Chamond (42), and Yerres (91).