Neta Elkayam and Maurice El Medioni do Line Monty's "Ana Loulia"

A YouTube video published on December 31, 2015, featuring Maurice El Medioni on keyboards and vocals, and Neta Elkayam handling the vocals, beautifully. The two of them will be featured in concert at the Havana Music Club in Tel Aviv on January 13, in a "Latino-Algerian" show. Wish I could be there. 

 

I've mentioned both of these artists in earlier posts, but briefly: Maurice El Medioni is the renowned Algerian-Jewish pianist from Oran (Wahran), Algeria, who has performed with many artists, and also as a solo artists, in the course of a career that was launched in the 1940s. He had a stroke back in late 2012 or 2013, which is the main reason he relocated to Israel from Marseille, but he seems to still be going strong, and ilhamdulillah. Neta Elkayam is a young Moroccan-Israeli singer based in Jerusalem, who is one of the foremost Mizrahi artists keeping alive the flame of Jewish Arab Maghrebi culture. 

Here is Line Monty's version of "Ana Loulia," accompanied on this recording by, I believe, Maurice El Medioni. (And here is a more recent version by Line.) I'm not sure when this great Jewish Algerian singer recorded the song. You can read more about her here, on the French wikipedia.

recommended Middle Eastern music for your hols: Syria, North Africa, El Ghorba

More great stuff I've come across:

1. Sabri Mudallal (Moudallal), live in concert in Cologne (1988) and studio recordings (1989).

This two CD set is available to download here, courtesy the music blog Oriental Traditional Music from LPs & Cassettes. Sabri Moudallal (1918-2006) was one of the twentieth centuries most renowned singers hailing from Aleppo, Syria. He was both a muezzin and a singer of the distinctive Aleppo genre of music, the wasla 'suite.' He is probably best known outside of Syria as a vocalist with the al-Kindi Ensemble. Essential reading on Aleppo's music scene, including a discussion of Moudallal, is Jonathan Shannon's Among the Jasmine Trees Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria.

2. A collection of recordings, courtesy the music blog Arab Tunes, by Cheikha Habiba Saghira dating from the seventies and eighties. Habiba Saghira is one of the great rai cheikhas. The set commences with the song "Nebghi Nechreb" (I want to drink). It concludes with "Yasker Ou Yebki" (He drinks and cries). You get the idea. I posted photos of a couple Habiba Saghira record jackets awhile back, here. 

3. Courtesy the music blog Phono Mundial, a mixtape of music of El Ghorba or exile, a "cassette" composed of two "sides" of Maghrebi music. Side A is a set of music, produced mostly in France, dating from post Algerian independence. Great tracks from the likes of Abranis, Doukkali and Mazouni. Side B is a bit more contemporary than Side B, with some great twist, yé-yé, rock'n'roll and Kabyle fusion, from the likes of Karoudji, Mazouni (again), and Rachid et Fathi. It also includes a song very dear to my heart, Bellemou's "Zerga ou Mesrara," with vocals from Hamani Tmouchenti, one of the original pop-rai songs. I've written about it previously here and here. (Phono Mundial claims the recording of this Bellemou track was done in Marseille. I wonder...) [Correction, December 30, 2014: apologies to Phono Mundial, who say the track was issued in Marseille, and not recorded there. So cool that it was issued there!]

4. Courtesy Jewish Morocco, a mixtape for Hanukkah (or any other holiday you like, in fact), titled "Mazal Haï Mazal: Eight North African Tracks to Light Your Soul On Fire." It is not free, it's $5, or more, if you'd care to donate to Jewish Morocco's digitalization project. You won't find these rare tracks elsewhere, by such renowned artists as Albert Suissa, Reinette l'Oranaise, and Zohra El Fassia. I'm particularly excited about getting my hands on a recording of  Blond-Blond's "La Bombe Atomique." Read more about this collection here.

Happy holiday listening!

Jewish Algerian Mixtape

Jewish Morocco's Chris Silver is in Algeria. He prepared this terrific guest mixtape for Afropop Worldwide. Please listen: you will immediately be sucked in by the amazing vocalizing of Salim Halali on the first track, "Layali Maghrabi." Beautiful.

Here's the link to the posting on Afropop Worldwide.

And Silver's longer discussion, plus the track listing, at Jewish Morocco.

Or, just go right to the music (which you can also download for free):

Did Lili Boniche play Judéo-Arabe music?

No, he said.

«Est-ce qu'on dit d'un musulman qu'il joue de la musique islamo-arabe? Je joue de la musique arabe, un point c'est tout»

(I would like to get my hands on the original source for this quote...)

Lili Boniche disco

In a previous post I wished that Jewish Morocco's post on cover cheikhs had provided the name of the Lili Boniche disco track he referred to. And now he has supplied it. The track in question is "Le renard du desert" (the Desert Fox, i.e. Field Marshal Rommel?!), the B side of this 45". It was released in 1976 on the French Carissima label.

Unfortunately I've not been able to find the track in question. The 1976 version of the A side, "N'oublie jamais tes parents" (Never forget your parents), I've not found either. But here's an updated version, from 2003. And an earlier version (but from when?) is available on his Anthologie album.

Now, how about the outfit he's in here? And that bow tie?! As for the two flags (Israel, Algeria), a pairing which would not please many Algerians or Israelis, that is symptomatic of the two incongruous pulls on the identity and loyalties of an Algerian Jew ("The Crooner of the Casbah"), based in France ever since the 1950s or '60s. Lili Boniche (b. 1921) passed away in Paris in 2008.

A great introduction to Boniche is the album he recorded with Bill Laswell in 1999, Alger, Alger (APC), which, alas, is now out of print.