I would drive out to Sidi Fredj on the beaches to the west of Algiers, or even further west to Zeralda, to watch him perform in the 1970s and 80s, but I never got the opportunity to talk to him.
But in 1982 I got my chance when I found we were staying in the same hotel in Luanda, Angola, where he had come for a number of shows to cheer up the suffering Angolans fighting against Jonas Savimbi and his National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) fighters who were being armed, controlled and directed by Apartheid South Africa and the American Central Intelligence Agency to destabilise the young People's Republic of Angola.
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