In acknowledgement of his brother’s talent, as one of the most important pillars of the Lamachhaheb group, Larbi Batma, the star of the legendary Nass El Ghiwane said: “The poetry of my brother Mohammed is better than mine”.
Mohammed Batma was born in 1951 in Hay Mohammadi in Casablanca, in a family whose origins go back to Ouled Saïd in the Chaouia region. Similar to the rest of his family members, Mohammed Batma has been interested in poetry and music since he was a young boy. He was unable to complete his studies, but he joined associative structures and theater groups at the end of the 1960s.
He embarked on a professional artistic career at the beginning of the 1970s by joining the group Tagadda, before joining the group Lamachhaheb, in which he was able to create his most beautiful songs that made the history of the group and enriched the song list of “Ghiwanie”, which Mohammed Batma was obsessed with.
With Lamachhaheb, he achieved his first success with the song “Amana”, which he wrote and composed and which was very well received by the public, before other successes were repeated with other songs such as “Dawini”, “Rsami”, among other works that served as the voice of the oppressed people.
Mohamed Batma was a full-fledged artist. He wrote, composed and sang with a strong, lively and heart-breaking voice. In just a few years, he had become a key member of Lamachhaheb and its distinctive character, yet he was always able to maintain his simplicity and humility. He was nicknamed “the Monster of Poets”.
He also took a chance on the novel, and he had begun writing a long dramatic serial entitled “The Land of the Rock”, whose events took place in the Moroccan countryside with which he was in love. But this project remained unfinished due to the death of Mohammed Batma in 2001 from a devastating cancer.
His death left a deep wound in the hearts of his fans, including his own children, Tarik and Khansa Batma, who also embraced an artistic career like their father and mother, the artist Saida Birouk, also a member of Lamachhaheb.
Be the first to comment