Habiba Messika, Arab Nationalism, Baidophone

 Habiba Messika on the front cover of L'Éclaireur du dimanche, 3 February 1929. Courtesy Gallica-BnF.

The invaluable Chris Silver has published yet another piece on Tunisian-Jewish singing star Habiba Messika, in History Today. What struck me about it in particular was what we learn about Messika's recordings for the Lebanese record label Baidaphone, headquartered in Berlin, in 1928. Messika was able to take advantage of the company's excellent recording equipment, but also, Silver informs us,

recording in Berlin had another advantage: she could do so away from the watchful eye of the French authorities. While she continued to make records with suggestive titles, like ‘Ala sirir el nom’ (‘On my bed, spoil me’), she also recorded a number of marches dedicated to King Fuad in Egypt, King Faysal in Iraq and the Bey of Tunis, Muhammad VI, as well as anthems extolling Egypt and Syria.

Silver continues:

With Baidaphon, Messika seemed to strike a nationalist rallying cry. At the end of one such recording, ‘King Fuad’s March’, Messika and her orchestra could even be heard shouting ‘Long live the King’ and ‘Long live Egypt’ alongside thunderous applause. Hearing of Egyptian sovereigns and sovereignty, Tunisians could imagine their own. This record and others in a similar style would be her most popular in terms of sales. That popularity quickly drew the attention of French officials.

 Three months after Messika's tragic murder in 1930, Silver informs us,

French officials in Morocco began receiving urgent messages from civil controllers across the country. Messika’s records – purchased widely and listened to in communal settings like cafés – were stirring up nationalist feelings. Intelligence agents found Moroccans singing along to Messika’s music, ‘in-sync with the phonograph’, while accompanying themselves on oud. In response, French authorities imposed draconian policies to slow the import of, and soon ban, Messika’s discs across the Maghreb.

What I wanted to add to Silver's discussion about Baidaphone and French authorities is that French colonial authorities' worries about the company's recordings only increased during the 1930s.

A bit later in the decade of Messika's death, colonial police became further alarmed by the travels undertaken during the 1930s in France's North African colonies by “Doctor” Michael Baida (who founded the company with two brothers and two cousins 1906). Accompanied by his German sound engineer, Baida signed recording contracts with local artists and established a network of distributors for the company's discs. The colonial police suspected the “doctor” of being a German agent, but they were never able to tie him directly to any political activity. But so concerned were the authorities about the role of imported music in the spread of dangerous ideas that in 1938 they forbade the import into Algeria of records in any “foreign” languages (including Arabic), and the French Army banned all Baidophone records from the cafés maures it used to hire for the purpose of entertaining “native” troops in North Africa as well as in France (Rebecca Scales, “Subversive Sound: Transnational Radio, Arabic Recordings, and the Dangers of Listening in French Colonial Algeria, 1934-1939.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 52(2):398-399, 414, 2010).

The move made by the French authorities in 1938, of course, was motivated in part by the fact that since Messika's death, the Nazis had taken power in Germany, where Baidaphone was headquartered and where Michael Baida lived (in Berlin). And no doubt the Nazis had no problem with Baidaphone's promotion of recordings in Arabic that were critical of French or British colonialism. How interesting it is that, prior to the rise of the Nazis, a Jewish-Tunisian artist played an important role in Baidaphone's subversive music production.

Robert Crumb plays his North African 78s

The iconic cartoonist R. Crumb is well-known as a collector of 78s, many of which he has picked up during his residence in southern France, where he has lived since 1993. (He owns around 5,000 of them.)

He has appeared a number of times over the last year on John's Old Time Radio Show, most recently to play a number of 78s in his collection recorded by North African musicians.

It's really an amazing show, and the music quite remarkable. I was quite surprised at how good those old 78 rpms sounded. I highly recommend that you download the podcast and listen repeatedly.

Some of the artists on the session are quite well known, such as the Jewish-Arab singer Habiba Msika from Tunisia, about whom I recently posted. (Unfortunately, the track is not identified, presumably because the title is written in Arabic on the album label. I urge you to post a comment, asking that R. Crumb post photos of the labels of the songs in question, so that those of us who read Arabic can identify the songs.)

There is the great Morrocan singer Hocine Slaoui, who recorded the famous song “Dakhlau Al-Merikani” (The Coming of the Americans), a comment on the arrival of Allied Troops in North Africa in 1942. It includes the recurring refrain in English, “All I hear is ‘Ok, Ok. C’mon. Bye-bye.’” (It's also known as "El Marikan Ain Zerka" (The American with the blue eye)). Check it out here.

And there is the celebrated violinist Sami Shawa, who was born in Syria but whose career was in Cairo, who was known both for his solo recordings (here is his "Taqsim Hijaz") and also for his work with great singers like Umm Kalthoum.

And according to JewishMorocco, there are two other Tunisian Jewish singers on the set, besides Habiba Msika: Fritna Darmon (here's another track from her) and Asher Mizrahi.

The rest of the artists, I've been unable to track down any information about.

R. Crumb put out a collection in 2003 called Hot Women: Women Singers from the Torrid Regions of the World, with tracks culled from his 78s collection. (He airs his rather antediluvian geographical theories about what produces "hot" music on the radio show as well.)

It contains three tracks from North Africa: (1) "Guenene Tini" by Cheikha Tetma (1930). Cheikha Tetma was a singer and 'ud player from Tlemcen, Algeria, who performed in the hawzi genre, the brand of Andalusian music specific to Tlemcen. Listen here. (2) "Khraïfi" by Aïcha Relizania (1938): listen here). I know nothing about her, but the name indicates that she was from Rélizane (Arabic, Ghalīzān), a village of European colonizers in the Oran region of Algeria. It's the same town that rai star Cheikha Rimitti (who originally recorded as Cheikha Remitti Relizania) grew up in. (3) "Yama N'Chauf Haja Tegennen" by Julie Marsellaise (1929). Again, I have no information about her, other than that she is from Tunisia, and I've not yet heard the song in question, but here's another recording by her, "Ya Helaouet el-Clap." (The video for that song shows the record in question, and it appears that her full name might be Julie Marsellaise Mahieddine.)

[Correction added December 9, 2013, thanks to Chris Silver (see comments below). Julie Marsellaise should be spelled Marseillaise -- the misspelling is from the Crumb collection, and is no doubt what is written on the record label. She got her name (and is also known as Julie La Marseillaise) from a stint she did at the Alcazar Theater in Marseille. No surprise, there was lots of cultural traffic, then and now, between North Africa and France. Julie's family name was Abitbol, and her daughter Ninette Abitbol was married in 1941 to the great Tunisian singer, oudist, and composer, Hédi Jouini. Ninette was a singer and dancer in her own right, who took the stage name of Widad. (Jouini, born Hédi Belhassine, has been called the "Frank Sinatra" of the Arab World, and his granddaughter Claire Belhassine has recently made a film about him called "Papa Hedi.") 

The "Mahieddine" that I saw on the Julie Marseillaise record label refers to the great Algerian singer and actor Mahieddine Bachetarzi, who also managed many acts.]

Let's pray that another collection, devoted to music of North Africa, is forthcoming. It would be great if an expert on North African music could be hired to work on the notes!

10 taboo Arabic songs: Habiba Msika

The very fine on-line publication Ma'azef (in Arabic, and because I read Arabic very very slowly I haven't explored nearly enough) recently published a piece called 10 taboo songs: ١٠ أغاني محرّمة.

I was most interested in item 4, a song by the Tunisian Jewish singer Habiba Msika called "'Ala Sarir al-nawm dala'ni."

Habiba Msika (1903-1930) was quite the sensation in Tunis in the twenties, wearing Paris fashion when the norm was for respectable women to be covered up, taking up with lovers in a fairly public fashion. In 1925 she appeared onstage in a production of Romeo and Juliet, playing Romeo opposite the Libyan Jewish actress Rachida Lotfi's Juliet. Their onstage kiss caused an uproar, and her côterie of fans, known as the "soldats de la nuit," who included many young Tunisian dandies, had to rescue her from outraged members of the audience.

In 1930 a jealous ex-lover entered her flat, poured gasoline on her, and set her on fire. She died the next day. (And you can read more about her fascinating career here.) Tunisian director Salma Baccar made a film about her, La Danse du feu (1995), which I would love to see. (This might be a clip from the film.) And the blog Jewish Morocco reflects on how Habiba Msika is "remembered" in Tunisia today, here.

(And someone please help me with a vernacular translation of that song!)

Added, a few hours later. See the comments from Hammer. The song could be translated as "On My Bed He Spoiled Me." I.e., he shtupped me. Hence the "taboo" nature of the song.