Neta Alkayam covers Jacob Abitbol, "Khoti Khoti"

The great Moroccan Israeli singer Neta Alkayam covers a song from Jacob Abitbol -- father of the much better known Moroccan Jewish singer Haim Botbol. On Haim Botbol, please check out this post from the invaluable blog Jewish Morocco Jukebox. Jacob, the post says, was a respected vocalist and violin player who released a number of 45s in Morocco during the 1950s. I've not been able to find much else about Jacob. The video is, it's not surprising, drenched in nostalgia. 

Update, January 11, 2017. Here is the original, Jacob Abitbol's "Khoti Khoti Ghadroni," posted on YouTube by the inimitable toukadime.

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.

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.

Jewish North African musicians and the 1989 Toledo conference

1. A very nice tribute to Jewish North African musicians by the Israeli writer Ophir Toubul was published on October 9, 2014 by +972. Toubul discusses, among other artists, Reinette L'Oranaise, Maurice El Medioni, Al Gusto Orchestra, Salim Halali and Haim Botbol (please check out the clip of Haim singing in Essaouira, Morocco in 2013).

Touboul provides a sound cloud link to a singer I had never heard of: "Braham Swiri, who put out records in his youth yet lived the rest of his life in anonymity and sold his recordings outside the entrance to Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda Market."

The track is terrific, and I'm keen to hear more. 

Touboul mentions as well the Israeli Mizrahi pop star Kobi Peretz, and links to his recent cover of Sami Elmaghribi classic song “Omri Ma Nansak Ya Mama.” Very nice, modernized, sounds more Egyptian in style than Moroccan to my ears, and the video is bathed in nostalgia.

I was most moved by the vid Toubul posted of Israeli Moroccan singer Neta Elkayam, performing at  Tel Aviv’s Barby Club just last week. 

It's a track made famous by the Algerian Jewish singer Line Monty called "Ana Loulia." I love Neta Elkayam, but what I found particularly compelling about this concert vid is that she is backed on keyboards by legendary Algerian Jewish musician Maurice El Medioni, who moved from Marseille to Israel over the last year or so, after suffering a stroke. I was recently told by a friend who talks to Maurice regularly that his health is not so good, and that one side of his face is, at least partially paralyzed, so it was great to see him performing. (I mention Maurice in my previous post, on Blaoui El Houari. I met Maurice in Essaouira, Morocco in November 2007, when he performed at the Festival des Andalousies Atlantiques, as you can see here.) Saha, ya Maurice!

Here is Line Monty's version of "Ana Loulia." According to Chris Silver (Jewish Morocco), Messaoud El Medioni, better known as Saoud l'Oranais, recorded the song as early as 1932. Saoud was the uncle of Maurice El Medioni, and the teacher of Reinette L'Oranaise. He moved from Oran to Marseille before the Second World War, and met his end at Sobibor concentration camp (Poland) in March 1943.

Finally here's a bit more of the fabulous Neta Elkayam, doing Haim Botbol's "Alash Klam el Aar," live in Krakow. Oh, man.

2. Ella Shohat published an important piece in Jadaliyya (September 30) on the historic meeting, twenty five years ago, of Palestinians (including PLO officials) and "Jews of the Orient," in 1989. It provides an important compliment to the Touboul piece, dealing with the wider political and historical context. Please read it; I find it impossible to summarize. But I liked this bit:

"One beautiful evening that left a mark on us, embodying what is usually dismissed as “nostalgia” and “sentimental clichés,” was when the Jewish-Moroccan-French singer and composer Sapho graciously delighted us with her singing. I would reflect back on that moment a few years later when Sapho performed Umm Kulthum's legendary song “al-Atlal,” and when she released her album “Jardin Andalou” that fused rock, Arabic, and Andalusian elements. While a long-time supporter of Palestinian rights, Sapho, after that visit to Toledo, began to engage the music of the Judeo-Arab world in which she was raised. To stand up for justice in Palestine was all the more momentous when drawing on the complex memories of Sephardi/Arab-Jews."

I am familiar with Sapho's music, but had not known she was known as a supporter of Palestinian rights. Here's her version of "al-Atlal."