Excellent introduction to Mizrahi music

By Leeor Ohayon, published by Stamp the Wax. It's here.

If you've read Amy Horowitz's excellent book, Mediterranean Israeli Music and the Politics of the Aesthetic, you will probably know much of this story. But Horowitz's book only takes us up to the early 90s, prior to the mainstreaming of Mizrahi music, the success of artists like Eyal Golan. And it mentions more recent developments, like the Jaffa bar Anna Loulou, and the fabulous singer Neta Elkayam. The article mentions one artist I was not familiar with, a pioneer figure in the movement, Ahuva Ozeri. Check out her song ‘Haikhan ha-Khayal?’ (Where is my soldier?) here.

 Anna-Lulu resident DJ Khen Ohana Elmaleh (photo Leeor Ohayon)

(the photo hanging on the right is of Salim Halali)

I particularly liked Ohayon's summary of what happened to the Jews from the Arab countries who ended up in Israel after 1948:

Mizrahi is the subsequent result of Egyptian Jews befriending Moroccan Jews who married other eastern Jewish communities from Algeria to Dagestan within the ghettos of peripheral Israel, creating the Israeli ‘ethnic other’. Mizrahi is the result of side-lined communities, uprooted, destitute and further victimised in a state that told them not to be ‘too Arab’. A state built on Ashkenazic foundations, under a Eurocentric educative system that sought to pressurise Mizrahi Jewry into leaving their Middle Eastern cultures at the border and adopting a new Ashkenazi-Israeli identity. All this subsequently resulted in a dichotomy that only served to create a form of identity-based schizophrenia amongst Mizrahi Jewry.

Cafe Gibraltar mix from Maor Anava, with Jasmin & Acher Almagribi, Raymonde, and Koko

Café Gibraltar, from the progressive Israeli online publication 972 Magazine, often presents some nice mixes. I particularly liked the first three tracks on this recent mix ("Sounds from the Other Israel") from Israeli DJ Maor Anava, whose father is Syrian (Aleppo) and whose grandmother was Moroccan. He was one of the founders of Fortuna Records, whose project is to put out rare psychedelic Middle Eastern and Israeli recordings. You can listen to some of their stuff here, including a sample of their first release, by Grazia. And you can check out a podcast that Zack from Fortuna did for Gilles Peterson World Wide here. (It has some Cheikh Mwijo and some Omar Khorshid, so it's worth a listen.)

The first track (after an introduction) is a great one, "Loumina" from Jasmin and Acher Almagribi. I really like Jasmin's voice. I can't find anything about them, but there are a number of recordings of Acher up on youtube. I particularly liked this one, a live performance of "Mahani Zine," a song made popular originally (I believe) by Sami Halali.

The electric guitar is great here. Comments suggest that the more common English spelling of this singer is El Maghribi, and that this is recorded in Morocco but that Acher is now based in Israel.

The second track is "Ash Blani Bik Tah Blitini" from Raymonde. This is Raymonde El Bidaouia, born in Casablanca in 1943, emigrated to Israel with her family in 1952, and who recorded in Israel but was also very popular back in Morocco. She gets a great writeup from Jewish Morocco here.

Here she is doing "Chouf Ghero," a really terrific song.

It was also a hit for the great Najat Aatabou, and appears (spelled "Shouffi Rhirou") on her 1991 release for Global Style, The Voice of the Atlas, and also, as "Go Find Another Guy (Shoufi Ghirou)," on her 1997 Rounder recording, Country Girls and City Women. Here's a great live recording of Najat Aatabou doing the song on Beur TV. 3 Mustaphas 3 covered quite decently on their first album (1987), Shopping. I don't know when Najat first recorded it, but presumably it was before 1987, when 3 Mustaphas 3 got their hands on it. And I assume that Najat was covering an original by Raymonde.

Finally, there is "Echo Capsses" from Koko. I have no idea who Koko is but I love the song, especially the Greek style guitar. Listen to it here. This is typical "Israeli Mediterranean Music," the hybrid musical genre created by Israeli Mizrahis. It's typical because when it was still on the margins -- the sixties through the eighties -- it was not really acceptable for it to sound too "Eastern," i.e., Arab, and so a Greek sound was a way to be acceptably, sort of, Eastern. You can read all about the genre in Amy Horowitz's great book, Mediterranean Israeli Music and the Politics of the Aesthetic. 

Finally, check out the website of Victor Kiswell, which is where Maor Anava acquires a lot of his rare music. Click on the Arabic Oriental link and you will find all sorts of amazing stuff. If you are like me you will find the prices a bit rich for your taste, but it's a way to find out about rare recordings that you will not know about. I plan to introduce some here in future.

Tomi Lapid (father of Yair) on Mizrahi music

Jacky Levi, Israeli columnist and radio and t.v. host, interviewed by Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, in her Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict: The Yemenite Babies Affair (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 63.

I remember driving one day and listening to a radio talk show, they put on a great song by Amir Benayun and then interviewed Tomi Lapid [an Ashkenazi media icon and a Knesset member]. When he was asked what he thought about the song, he said 'it was disgusting and repulsive, they say that we occupy the Arabs, but they really occupy us.' I was so shocked I almost got into an accident. This was not just a private person making a stupid comment. This was an influential key media figure. I think only then I started to understand what other Mizrahim, like Avihu Medina, are talking about, (Interview, summer 2008)

Tomi Lapid's son Yair is head of the "centrist" Yesh Atid party, which won 19 Knesset seats in the January 2013 elections.

Amir Benayun, from Beersheva, is the son of an Algerian Jew. He put out an album in 2011 called Zini, a collection of songs sung in Arabic and based on the book of Ecclesiastes. Benayum is affiliated with the right-wing of the Zionist religious camp and with Chabad.

Here's are a couple good tracks from Benayun.

Avihu Medina, of Yemeni background, is one of the giants of Mizrahi music or more properly, "Israeli Mediterranean Music." Amy Horowitz discusses him at length in her Mediterranean Israeli Music and the Politics of the Aesthetic (Wayne State University Press, 2010).