Born in 1983 in the northern districts of Marseille, Nadia Tighidet is a percussionist and print journalist (18 years at the regional daily newspaper La Provence, correspondent for Le Point magazine). While her path may seem unusual, it is nonetheless logical. Whether a pen or a drum finds its way into her hands, for her, everything is a matter of rhythm.

Today, Nadia devotes herself fully to music, using a vocabulary that knows no bounds. Although her early Latin influences led her to Cuban percussion, the darbuka and the bendir, the drums of her roots, gradually became central to her playing. This natural encounter led to many others; rhythm remains rhythm, each drum carrying its own history and complexities without hierarchy of style or intention. This is how a darbuka can find its place in a jazz program, a Brazilian alfaia in Algerian chaabi music.

On stage, Nadia Tighidet says she wants to serve music and musicians, and it shows. She is generous, and her presence and expressive gestures tell us about music from the inside, how it is built between introspection and communication. She listens attentively, in communion with the music, she engages in dialogue, radiant, speaks all kinds of music, and her tempo is instinctive, as relentless as it is playful. Sometimes a metronome, thunderous or whispering, she also subtly weaves her discreet touches into the most varied musical spaces.

Nadia Tighidet performs regularly with about ten different ensembles in France and abroad. She is also invited to participate in more occasional events such as the Victoires du Jazz 2025 awards, in the big band of composer, arranger, and flautist Christophe Dal Sasso, or Raï Nation 2 at the Adidas Arena Paris; the International Percussion Festival with Miniño Garay...

Nadia is a free woman, a worthy heir to the Amazigh people, since that is the literal translation of the word. And it is as a free woman that she embraces the world. For her, there is no such thing as classical music, except that all music is classical. She has been heard singing in Kabyle as well as in Corsican, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Arabic...

H.G.