Atmani

M'hamed Aït Athmene was born on 11 September 1945 in Zaknoun, a village in the Ath Bouaakache area of the Ouacif district, high in the Djurdjura mountains of the wilaya of Tizi Ouzou. He was an only child and lost his father when he was five; he was brought up by his mother, his grandmother and his maternal uncle, Ahcène At Akil, who paid for his schooling.

His childhood was shaped by the Algerian War of Independence. According to the Dictionnaire des musiciens et interprètes algériens, the French army regularly emptied Zaknoun of its inhabitants to search the houses, suspecting the village of helping the fighters of the National Liberation Army. After primary school he enrolled in 1961 at a youth training centre in Ouacif, but left it in the last days before independence. As a teenager he played the clarinet and the harmonica before buying his first guitar.

In 1965 he fell ill and spent nearly two years at the Sidi Belloua sanatorium on the heights above Tizi Ouzou. There he began to write poetry and composed his first two songs, "Tebghidiyi i yi bghighkem" and "A Rebbi sled a kehkugh". Fully recovered in 1968, he went to the studios of Chaîne II, the national Kabyle language radio station, and performed "Tebghidiyi i yi bghighkem" on "Ichenayen u zekka", the programme for new singers run by Chérif Kheddam. It made his name.

The same year he met the singer and composer Kamel Hamadi, who wrote several songs for him, including "Ethrebayed el mahna", "Ya latif" and "Dounit amlahmoun", released as 45 rpm singles on La Voix du Globe. He then settled in Blida, performing at public galas, family celebrations and traditional ceremonies. In 1971, during the Eid al-Adha holiday, he played to full houses at the three main halls of Algiers, El Mouggar, Ibn Khaldoun and the Atlas, in a tour billed as Chants kabyles.

Marked by the Berber Spring of 1980, he released in 1981 the album "Ayarraw Imazighen" included "Lasnam", dedicated to the victims of the October 1980 earthquake at El Asnam, among them 72 people from his native Zaknoun. In 1985, when the single-party state was pursuing activists of the Berber Cultural Movement, he released "A Tamurt Imazighen", featuring his sons Lakhdar and Nourdine, then aged 14 and 13. It contained "Azul ay idurar n tmurt nagh" (Greetings to the mountains of our country), written on an idea by Ali Zamoum.

During the dark decade of the 1990s, like many Algerian artists threatened by terrorism, he went into exile in France, and he later lived between France and Algeria. His recordings, spread over more than sixteen albums, include "Truh temziw", "Mliyi", "Kfan lehdur", "Awitsrun", "Si Mohand u M'hand" and "Nouara".

He married at the age of 24 and was the father of seven children and a grandfather. Two of his sons, Lakhdar and Nourdine, sang on his 1985 album before giving up music. Friends knew him as Dda Hamiche, and he liked to say that he drew his inspiration from the mountain, adhrar. Le Matin d'Algérie described him as a man of great uprightness who preferred the company of modest people.

Atmani died at his home in At Ouacif at around 8pm on Friday 30 October 2026, aged 81. His death was reported the next day by Le Matin d'Algérie and other Algerian media. The cause of death was not made public.

Atmani is placed in the line of the great voices of Kabyle song, alongside Slimane Azem, Cheikh El Hasnaoui, Chérif Kheddam, Kamel Hamadi and Akli Yahyaten. In September 2016 the culture directorate of Tizi Ouzou organised two days of tribute to him at the Maison de la culture Mouloud-Mammeri, with an exhibition of his photographs and records and testimonies from Kamel Hamadi, Lounès Kheloui and others. In March 2018 the Tifra festival in the wilaya of Béjaïa celebrated his fifty years of career. Le Matin d'Algérie wrote that his work would long accompany the struggles and hopes of those who carry the Amazigh flame.