"we are who we are, without asking ourself who we are, because we are always here"
A humanist singer and composer in multiple forms, in love with poetry to which he dedicates his artistic career, Walid Ben Selim was born in Casablanca on a September evening in 1984, in the old medina, between the commercial port and the fish market. He was raised by his mother, a lawyer committed to social causes and left-wing activist, who was both his reference and his support in his passion for music and who enrolled him at the age of 6 at the Conservatory of Casablanca. He left Morocco in 2002, after having been one of the founders of the "Nayda" movement, to join France where he continues his studies and his passion.
Composition - Walid Ben Selim
Harp - Marie Marguerite Cano
In 2010, Walid is noticed by the Gowri Art Institute in Kerala, which invites him for a creative residency under the direction of Sajitha Shankar, it is at this time that he dives back into Arabic poetry, especially with Abu Al Alaa Al Maari and El Hallaj. Back in France, he lays the foundations of the sound creation of N3rdistan which, two years later, will be Inouï of Printemps de Bourges and revelation Visa For Music 2015.
After more than 200 concerts with N3rdistan, notably at Jazz sous les pommiers, Oslo World Festival, L'boulevard, Timitar, Journées Musicales de Carthage, Beau Regard, Les Déferlantes, Liverpool World Festival, Montreal Arab Festival, Walid returned to the studio to work on new sounds, and notably signed an original creation mixing theater and musical poetry around texts by Mahmoud Darwich. After having composed the music for several short films and the documentary "Women SenseTour", he signed, in 2018, the music for the Moroccan feature film "An Ordinary Emergency" by Mohcine Besri. He has been invited to perform at the Sacred Music Festival in Fez, the Sacred Spirit Festival in Jodhpur (India) and Recbeat in Brazil, and by the Mahmoud Darwich Foundation for a tour in Palestine.
Walid Ben Selim becomes an associate artist at the Silo and Uni'sons in 2019, with the national stage of Sète and the Opera of Montpellier, he is solicited by the Arabesques Festival to create around the work of Darwich "The dice thrower" a piece between theater and music, where he writes and conducts for the musicians of the Opera. In 2021, he signed the music of the film "Sidi Valentin" by Hicham Laasri on Netflix, followed by his feature film "Haych Maych" in 2022. In October 2022, Walid is invited to the Miami Symphony to open the Oslo World Human Right. Retrenched in a Cathar castle in the Pyrenees Orientales, he installs his sound laboratory, and records his titles by inviting in residence his artistic circle, with poetry as a diapason, to create Poetic Spaces where poets, actors and musicians are mixed.