Safy Boutella (Arabic: صافي بوتلة; born 6 January 1950) is an Algerian musician, arranger, composer, and record producer who graduated from Berklee College of Music.
In 1981, back from the United States, he gave several underground concerts in Algeria, developing a music based on compound rhythms and the fusion of North African, Oriental, and Western sounds.
[1] In July 2007, he celebrated thirty years of music: Orient, Khmous Alik, Kotidien...ZARBOT concerts, named after the spinning top.
He collaborated with Rachid Bouchareb on music for Little Senegal films, Poussières de vie, Cheb, and Merzak Allouache for Salut Cousin.
Boutella has composed and staged grandiose shows (some of which are the fruit of work with the Tuaregs): Rêve Bleu in 1988, La Source in 2001 before an audience of 90,000 at the Olympic Stadium in Algiers.