Biography

Zaho
Background information
Birth name	Zehira Darabid
Born	(1980-05-10) May 10, 1980 (age 43) Bab Ezzouar, Algiers, Algeria[1]
Genres	R&B
Occupation(s)	Singer
Years active	1999–present
Labels	Parlophone

Zehira Darabid (Arabic: زهيرة درابيد ; born May 10, 1980), known by her stage name Zaho (/zɑːˈoʊ/), is an Algerian-Canadian R&B singer.^[2][3]

Biography

Zahera Darabid was born on May 10, 1980, in Bab Ezzouar, a suburb of the Algerian capital Algiers. At the age of 18, she and her family moved to Montréal, Canada. Her father is an executive and her mother a mathematics professor. She has a brother and sister^{[citation needed]}.

leaving Algeria in the midst of a black decade

In December 1991, the civil war^[4] wreaked havoc in Algeria, and she was only 11 years old at the time. Cousins, neighbors, her swimming teacher, the manager of the café on her street, all disappeared. Her father, Mohamed, and her mother, Fadela, were even nearly killed in a market bombing^[5]she suffers from the state of emergency in the country and the generalized curfew^[6]. She longed for another life with her loved ones, far from war-torn Algeria. As a teenager, she dreamed of becoming an astronaut or a pilot, but soon realized that this was impossible in a country in the midst of civil war. So she began sending applications to universities abroad, but few if any arrived during the 1990s^[7] On December 31, 1998, she and her family moved to Montreal, Canadaas part of a selective immigration program, as the country was looking for computer scientists^[8]. Before moving to Canada, her father was an executive at the Ministry of Planning, and her mother a professor of operational research at the National Institute of Informatics in Algiers. She declares that her family belonged to that intellectual class that had little money and whose only wealth was education^[9]She was shocked when she arrived in Montreal, having spent her youth in a country plagued by civil war. She recounts her exile in the song Kif'n'dir, featured on her debut album Dima. After three years in Canada, the ghosts of her past resurface, and she recounts how she sometimes even has panic attacks, standing motionless and stunned in the middle of the street^[10] recalling a time when she missed a bus that exploded a few meters away^[11]. For a long time, she says, she prevented herself from returning to Algeria, and blamed herself for having left part of her family there. A few years later, she reconnected with her homeland, returning to see her loved ones with arms full of gifts^[12]

After settling in, she continued her studies in Algeria, having passed her baccalaureate at the age of 16. She studied at the Institut national d'informatique in Canada. After graduating as a computer engineer specializing in software development, she struggled to get into music. Her parents were desperate not to understand her obsession with music, even though she was valedictorian of her class^[13]

Career

Zaho learned the guitar when she was seven years old, and very quickly learned the répertoire of Francis Cabrel within 10 years. In 1999, when she emigrated to Montreal, she discovered the world of professional music with its producers and its studios. She was seen with notable names in the French industry such as Idir, Tunisiano and Soprano.

In 2008, she released her debut album titled Dima, meaning Always in Arabic.

Zaho also has a strong writing background, writing the song "Tout ce temps" for Idir. Upon hearing the song, Idir insisted that she sang the song along with him.

In 2008, Zaho represented France in the 2008 MTV EMA's and won the Best European Artist award. She is well known in France and French Canada, and a lot of other places.

Discography

Albums

Mixtapes

• Zaho: La Mixtape (2007)

Singles

*Did not appear in the official Belgian Ultratop 50 charts, but rather in the bubbling under Ultratip charts.

Other charting songs

Featured in

*Did not appear in the official Belgian Ultratop 50 charts, but rather in the bubbling under Ultratip charts.

Also featured in

• "Basta" by La Fouine, in "Bourré au son" (2005)
• "Halili" by Cheb Mami, in "Layali" (2006)
• "Un point c tout" by Sefyu, in "Qui suis-je?" (with Mina and Sana) (2006)
• "Lune de miel" by Don Choa, in "Jungle de béton" (2007)
• "Tout ce temps" by Idir, in "La France des couleurs" (2007)
• "La France des couleurs" by Idir, dans "La France des couleurs"
• "Citoyen du monde" by Tunisiano, in "Le Regard des gens" (2008)
• "Je m'écris" by Kery James, in "À l'ombre du show business" (with also Grand Corps Malade) (2008)
• "Quand ils vont partir" by Kamelancien, in "Le Frisson de la vérité"
• "T'est chelou", remix by "C'est chelou", by D.Dy in "T'aimes ou t'aimes pas" (2008)
• "Hold My Hand" (French Version), by Sean Paul (2010)
• "Heartless" by Justin Nozuka (2010)
• "Fais doucement" by Rohff, in "La cuenta" (2010)
• "Elle venait du ciel" by La Fouine in "La fouine vs laouni" (2011)
• "Indélébile" -Christophe Willem ft. Zaho (2011)
• "Ma Meilleure" – La Fouine feat Zaho (2013)
• "Shooting Star" – Tara McDonald feat Zaho (2013)
• "Du rêve" - TK feat Zaho (2020)

Awards and nominations

• MTV Europe Music Awards 2008 : Meilleur artiste français
• NRJ Music Awards 2009 : Révélation francophone de l'année
• NRJ Music Awards 2011 : Groupe/Duo/Troupe francophone de l'année feat Justin Nozuka
• Prix de La Création 2011: Chanson international 2011 feat Sean Paul
• Trace Urban Music Award 2013 : Meilleure artiste féminine
• Trace Urban Music Awards 2013 : Meilleure collaboration feat La Fouine

References

External links

• Zaho Official web site Archived February 21, 2008, at the Wayback Machine