If you are interested in 'Arab-Andalusian' music and particularly malouf, the variety played in Constantine (and Tunisia), and if you're interested in Cheikh Raymond Leyris, as well as those who've played a major role in keeping this tradition alive, please check out Taoufik Bestandji's website, it is a major resource. Bestandji comes from a musical family, and his grandfather,
Cheikh Abdelkrim Bestandji, was one of Raymond Leyris' teachers. Bestandji is probably best known internationally for the recording of Raymond Leyris' music that he did with Enrico Macias in 2000, Hommage à Cheikh Raymond. (I wrote about Raymond and Enrico and the album in “Against Hybridity: The Case of Enrico Macias/Gaston Ghrenassia,” published in Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg, ed., Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture (2005).
Bestandji is also an accomplished singer and oud player in his own right, so please check this out too.
When Gaston Ghrenassia left Algeria for France in 1961, he hoped to continue his musical career by playing the ma'louf repertoire of his master, Cheikh Raymond Leyris, in the company of his father Sylvain, who had accompanied the cheikh on violin. But French audiences greeted their performances with hostility and racism. So Gaston opted to try to make a career for himself by playing a more mainstream and acceptable genre. In Constantine, he had not only mastered ma'louf, learned through his apprenticeship of Cheikh Raymond, but he also had performed French variety music, particularly the sort of Mediterranean-inflected variety performed by the likes of Luis Mariano, Charles Aznavour and Dalida. In addition to playing with Cheikh Raymond, as a teenager Gaston joined a gypsy musical ensemble in Constantine. The band was led by a singer named Enrico, and in the group Gaston was known as “little Enrico.” While on the boat taking him into exile from Algiers to Marseille, Gaston composed a song about his sorrow over leaving Algeria, called “Adieu Mon Pays.” He recorded the song for Pathé-Marconi in 1962, adopting the recording name Enrico. He planned to use the last two syllables of his family name, Nassia, as his second name, but the Pathé-Marconi secretary with whom he spoke on the phone transcribed it incorrectly, so “Adieu Mon Pays” was released under the name Enrico Macias.
In October 1962, the song was broadcast on a national radio program focusing on the pieds noirs, the European Algerian settlers who left Algeria after it gained independence. It became an immediate sensation, selling 50,000 copies in just a few days, and Enrico Macias became the singer, in France, of the pieds noirs, who had only just left what they regarded as their “pays.”
During the course of his career from the sixties through the eighties, Enrico performed and recorded music that was frequently tinged with Andalusian sounds. On occasion, in concert, he would play ‘ud for one number, or feature belly dancers, or spotlight his father Sylvain on Andalusian violin for one song. He did not feel able to experiment in this vein a great deal, and the Andalusian element remained at the level of frills and embellishments rather than forming the musical basis for his work. Too emphatic an Arabic sound invariably incited negative reactions from French audiences. But if there were pieds noirs in the audience, they would greet Macias's use of Andalusian features (and even vocals in Arabic) with enthusiastic applause and shouts of approval.
In 1972 he put out the album À La Face de l'Humanité, which included the track, "La Fête Orientale." You can listen here. Enrico sings in French, and only adds "Arab" vocal embellishments at one point, at around 2 minutes into the song. But the instrumental opening of the song sounds like it is the start of an Arabic song, and it has this feel at the end as well. And right before Enrico shifts briefly into Arabic mode, we also hear very "Eastern" sounding ululations.
In March 1972, Enrico performed the song on television, in a quite different version, which you can see here.
The version here is twice as long as the original. And it opens with a slow, improvised introduction, known as the istikhbar or mawwal that is typical of Andalusian music. It starts with a refrain on violin from Enrico's father Sylvain Ghrenassia, some improvised oud playing from Enrico, a bit of improvisation on the qanun, and then vocals from Enrico, singing in French about the "fête oriental" but in Arabic style. The ensemble is a typical traditional Andalusian one, and the players are all dressed up in fancy "Oriental" style, seated on the floor in traditional style. The set has all the trappings of a staged "Oriental" scene as well. After the mawwal, Enrico proceeds to perform "La Fête Oriental" as he recorded it, but with the backing of an Andalusian orchestra.
The lyrics are as follows (grabbed from here).
Alléluia, c'est la fête orientale
Venez chez moi, je suis heureux
Laissez venir tous mes amis, tous mes parents
Et pour qu'il n'y ait pas d'oubli
Laissez la porte ouverte
Alléluia, que les foulards des femmes
Alléluia, dansent de joie
Alléluia, il faut de la musique
Car on est là pour s'amuser
Les musiciens ont dans leur cœur nos souvenirs
Et sous leurs doigts c'est le bonheur qui rythme la musique
Alléluia, suivez bien la cadence
Alléluia, des cris de joie
Alléluia que le festin commence
Tout le monde est là, n'attendez pas
Que l'on apporte les plateaux chargés de fruits
Une montagne de gâteaux, du vin et des galettes
Alléluia, c'est la fête orientale
Restez chez moi toute la nuit
Alléluia c'est la fête orientale
Alléluia toute la nuit
The lyrics could describe any kind of "Oriental" feast day, Jewish or Muslim. Note that the women are described as wearing foulards, or headscarves -- something that both Jewish and Muslims would have worn on traditional feast days.
And here is another TV appearance of Enrico on oud and his father on violin, doing another "Oriental" number. Unfortunately I'm unable to identify the song.
Update, May 22, 2018: It's "La Folle Espérance, a
song based on a folkloric Arab melody that Cheikh Raymond used to play. The
song's lyrics praised Sadat's November 1977 visit to Jerusalem, and asserted,
“we [Muslims and Jews] are brothers.”
A list of songs in Arabic that Enrico has performed or recorded over the years can be found here. Some are available for listening. Unfortunately the information is not very detailed. I intend to do more hunting and research.
One of the things I wrote about was the appearance of Enrico Macias in Egypt in 1979, at the invitation of Anwar Sadat. I only just discovered that the concert he gave on September 22, 1979 at Gazira Stadium was actually released as an album, called Enrico Macias en Egypte, on the Phillips label, that same year. Ah, the marvels of discog.com and YouTube.
Here is the discographical information, and you can listen to the entire recording on YouTube here.
And here is the tracklist:
A1 La Musique Et Moi A2 Aux Talons De Ses Souliers A3 Solenzara A4 La Folle Esperance B1 Le Grand Pardon B2 Kelbi-Btala B L'Oriental B4 Oumparere
Below I've excerpted what I had to say about Macias' visit to Egypt in 1979, and I discuss the song "La Folle Esperance" and the role it played in the trip. He only performs two "Oriental" tracks here: first, "Kelbi-Btala," which he describes as an "Algerian classical" number, featuring Enrico's father Sylvain Ghrenassia (who used to back Cheikh Raymond Leyris) and oud playing from Enrico and second, "L'Oriental," which he originally recorded in 1962. "L'Oriental" was originally made famous by the great Algerian Jewish singer Lili Boniche (I'm not sure in which year). It was composed by the Tunisian Jewish artist, Joseph Hadjedj, better known by his performing name, José de Souza. Here Macias gives it a more "Oriental" inflection than he did on his original recording of 1962, when, as he outlines in his autobiography, he was trying to make it as an artist in France and in order to do so, it was necessary to downplay his Algerian-Arab heritage. Here's what I wrote in 2005:
In September 1979, Egypt's President
Anwar Sadat organized a festival of peace, on the first anniversary of the Camp
David Peace Accords. The Egyptian government invited Enrico Macias to
participate, and contacted him--significantly--via the Israeli government (Monestier, Enrico Macias, 178). Clearly, President Sadat did not see
Macias as simply a knee-jerk backer of Israel. During the seventies, Macias
continued to insert small doses of Arabic music into his live performances and
his recordings. In 1977, he composed and recorded “La Folle Esperance,” a song
based on a folkloric Arab melody that Cheikh Raymond had played. The song's
lyrics praised Sadat's November 1977 visit to Jerusalem, and asserted, “we
[Muslims and Jews] are brothers.” Macias reports that, when he first performed
the song, on French television, it was a big success, and that the studio
audience included many Maghrebis, who clapped and sang along enthusiastically (Macias, Non,
je n'ai pas oublié, 327). Another song Macias composed in the
early seventies, “Le Grand Pardon,” expressed his hopes that the “sons of
Abraham” would achieve peace. In a 1974 interview, Macias went so far as to
assert his sympathy for the Palestinians, because they had been uprooted. He
did not agree, however, that the Jews were responsible for the Palestinians'
dispossession (Monestier, 145).
Macias
writes that when Sadat met him in Egypt, he “said first he invited me because
his people like me. But he also said to me, 'I made peace with Israel, but I
want also to make peace with all Jews in all the world, and for the moment you
are the representative of these Jews'” (Richard Cromelin, “Macias: Singer for the
Dispossessed,” Los Angeles Times,
November 22, 1985, part 6, p. 1). The fact that Sadat chose an Algerian
Jew who spoke Arabic to represent world Jewry at the peace festival, rather
than an Ashkenazi, is certainly significant; this was not a choice based on
European notions of Jewish “representativeness.” Macias was warmly greeted in Egypt
where, despite the boycott, his music was well known due to the underground
market. In Egypt, Macias did not simply perform his variety hits, but felt
comfortable enough to indulge in his Arabic repertoire. At a private concert,
for instance, he performed a song by one of Egypt's most beloved stars, Farid
al-Atrash, in Arabic.Macias played his third show in Egypt at
Gazira Stadium for the general public, with his father Sylvain joining the band
on violin. The crowd of 20,000 was enthusiastic, knew the lyrics to his songs,
and went wild when Macias took up the 'ud (Monastier, 183). Macias and his father were invited to an
audience with Sadat at his winter palace in Ismailiya, and Macias performed a
few songs for the small gathering, including “La Folle Esperance,” which he
sang in Arabic. Macias has called his encounter with Sadat “the crowning
achievement” of his life (Monastier, 183).
(If you want to know my entire "take" on Macias, you'll have to check out the book chapter.)
Dalida, born in Shobra, Cairo, to Italian parents. Enrico Macias, an Algerian Jew, born Gaston Ghenassia, in Constantine, Algeria. Both huge stars in France. Part of the secret of their successes was that their music sounded a bit exotic, but for them to have used their background in the Arab world as more than frills would have been met with racist hostility. The Arabness therefore manifests itself in small doses. As in this case, in some sort of variety show, where Enrico greets Dalida in Arabic, with "Ahlan wa sahlan Dalida, salamaat salamaat" (welcome Dalida, greetings, greetings). She responds, "Ahlan wa sahlan ya Enrico, ezzayyak? Kuwayyis, ilhamdou lillah?" (Welcome Enrico, how are you? Well, thank God?"(The clip is not dated, but perhaps it's after Dalida recorded her string of hits in Arabic, starting with "Salma ya Salama," and so now it was somewhat more acceptable for stars like her to refer to their Arab roots -- in her case, cultural roots.)
They proceed to do a duet of Dalida's first hit, from 1956, "Bambino." Watch Dalida do the original here, back in the days when she wore her hair dark.
It's worth recalling that Jean Dujardin does a version of "Bambino," in Arabic, in his hilarious spy spoof, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies. You can check that one out here.
Enrico did not record in Arabic (other than some hints or a few words) until 1999, when he released his terrific Hommage à Cheikh Raymond, his tribute to his teacher and father-in-law, the grand master of malouf, Raymond Leyris.
And then there is this clip, of Dalida with another great French star, Claude François. They open by speaking of the fact that they both were born in Egypt, and that one of Claude François' parents was Italian. They then proceed to sing some duets in Italian.
Claude François (author of "Comme d'habitude," the original of "My Way") was born in Ismailiya, Egypt, in 1939. His father worked as a shipping traffic controller in the Suez Canal. The family left for France in the wake of the Tripartite Aggression (a.k.a. Suez War) of 1956.
Dalida recalled her first meeting with Claude François in 1963, when they became friends, thus: “Nous nous sentions tous les deux déracinés...Ensemble, nous parlions en égyptien” (We both felt uprooted...Together, we used to speak in Egyptian -- i.e., Egyptian Arabic). (Catherine Rihoit, Dalida, 1995, p. 344)
Professor of Anthropology, University of Arkansas. Author of Memories of Revolt: The 1936-39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past. Co-editor of Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Popular Culture and of Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity.
