On Bob Azzam's "Mustapha" (a.k.a. "Ya Mustapha")

From Michel Launay's great book, Paysans Algériens: La Terre, La Vigne et Les Homme (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1963). He is describing what he considers the negative effects of what he calls "double culture" (French, Algerian) on the small group of educated in the arrondissement of Aïn Témouchent, in the late fifties and early sixties. He writes, on p. 381:

J'ai écouté, pendant l'été 1962, de navrantes conversations, où des titulaires du B.E.P.C. [Brevet d'Études du Premier Cycle], instructeurs scolaires ou autres petits fonctionnaires des villages, trahissaient inconsciemment leur egoïsme et leur futilité. L'exemple de leurs dirigeants qui s'entre-déchiraient n'était qu'une excuse: s'ils critiquaient alors l'A.L.N. [Armée de Libération Nationale], c'était non pas parce qu'elle avait déçu le peuple, ce qui était le cas, mais parce qu'elle interdisait les surprise-parties et les boissons alcoolisées. Pour d'autres «intellectuels» du même type, mais amoureux du Caire, la culture arabe es symbolisée par les disques et les films de cet «Hollywood d'Orient». La chanson Mustapha en synthétise l'ineptie.

To summarize, these "intellectuals" were characterized by egoism and shallowness, they were critical of the Algerian liberation movement because it forbade "surprise parties" and alcohol, they were enamored of the music and cinema of Cairo, and, what summed up their absurd position was: "Mustapha."

Here is Bob Azzam's famous and much beloved song (also known as "Ya Mustapha"). Notice how it modulates between Western and Oriental modes (more than 30 years before Khaled's "Didi," which does the same thing).

And here's an article on the song, and Azzam, from Time magazine. Note all the punning. (Such punning was revived in media coverage of the world music phenomenon in the 1980s, and it continues til today.)

Most Happy Fellah
Time, Monday, May 30, 1960

"It has a wiggly-hipped, exotic beat that sounds part Latino, part Arab. When the song is played at Geneva's tonier-than-thou Chez Maxim's, aging bankers and their young girl friends go into curious convulsions on the dance floor; at least one U.N. functionary has been known to snatch up a tablecloth, wrap it around his waist and do a belly dance. In Paris the tune tumbles endlessly from Left Bank students' rooms; chefs abandon soufflés to hear it. From Stockholm to Sorrento, Bandleader Bob Azzam's Mustapha has spread like a rampaging fungus, is the biggest European juke and nightclub tune since Volare.

Tomato Sauce. Like 37-year-old Azzam himself—who was born in Cairo, lives in Geneva, drives a Chevrolet station wagon and speaks five languages—the song is a hybrid, Eurafrican polyglot. Written in French, Italian and Arabic, its lyrics may have been found in a Babel café:

Chérie, je t'aime, Chérie, je t'adore,
Como la salsa del pommodore.
Ya Mustapha, ya Mustapha
Ya baheback, ya Mustapha.
Sabaa senine fel Attarine,
Delwati guina Chez Maxim's . . .

All this is, more or less, the story of a fellah who once lived in the Cairo slum of Attarine [sic: Attarine is in Alexandria, not Cairo, and is more middle class than slum], is now at Chez Maxim's (where Bandleader Azzam himself hit the big time), and adores his girl "like tomato sauce" (salsa del pommodore in Azzam's pidgin Italian). But the words do not matter. They merely complement the international melody, which tinkles like goat bells near the White Nile and clicks like the heels of an Andalusian gypsy. Scored by Azzam for bongos, flute, tambourine, echo chamber and his own voice, Mustapha is adapted from an Egyptian student song, but owes much of its popularity to electricity. When he plays the song at nightclub engagements or recording sessions, onetime Electrician Azzam surrounds himself on the bandstand with an impressive bank of hi-fi equipment, places a microphone before each member of his five-man combo, whirls dials feverishly to doctor their output as it blends in the echo chamber, before a final electric impulse sends it shivering through the audience.

Fox-Oriental. Bob Azzam learned his electronics in the British Royal Navy, set up his own business after World War II, may have been discouraged by the outcome of his biggest contract, the complete wiring job for a pair of 200-room palaces belonging to Saudi Arabia's Premier Feisal. Azzam worked for a year, putting in everything from air conditioning to electric-eye doors, but had trouble collecting bills and ended up without a profit. Turning to music, he organized a combo and began picking up engagements around the Levant, hit it biggest in Lebanon with his "slow rocks," "fox rocks" and boleros.

The band caught the last ship when the Lebanese civil war broke in 1958. In less than two years, Azzam & Co. had driven the Continent wild on Mustapha's "fox-oriental" mixture. From then on, every thing was pure tomato sauce."

Bob Azzam was a Christian, born in Egypt to Lebanese parents in 1925, died in Monaco in 2004. He enjoyed a long career in Europe and the Mediterranean more broadly. He's a kind of Egyptian version of Charles Aznavour or Tino Rossi, or maybe the best analogy is Dalida. Here's an account of the song, which seems not to have originated with Azzam, although he did copyright it and make it huge. And the wikipedia take. Here is a post on Azzam by a Swede, Matts Werner, who was friends with Azzam. (Use google translate, if you don't know Swedish. Azzam was a hit in Sweden too.)

Some claim that this guy, the Turkish-Jewish singer Dario Moreno, did the original, but who knows. In any case, this version is a great deal of fun. I love it when it shifts into big-band gear.

Azzam did two other well-known songs with a strong Middle East flavor, "Ali Baba Twist," and "Fais Moi Le Couscous." ("Habibi Rock" and "Shish Kebab" are great fun too.)

At the time of nationalist struggles, the kind of cosmopolitan culture that "Mustapha" represented was very much frowned upon by nationalist militants, with whom Launay is in sympathy. Now we tend to look upon it with more favor, and sympathy.

Alexandrians: Eric Hobsbawm (Egyptian Jew by birth)

The Guardian published a great obituary on Hobsbawm, who died on October 1. He was born in Alexandria in 1917, and moved to Vienna with his family in 1919. His father Leopold worked in a shipping office in Alexandria. A fitting birthplace for this noted cosmopolitan leftist.

Famous Alexandrians: Cavafy (and the Denshawai Affair)

It is often, in fact one should say, nearly always, claimed that the celebrated Greek Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933), lived his life in almost complete isolation from Egyptian Arabs. Hala Halim, in her unpublished dissertation, The Alexandria Archive: An Archaeology of Alexandrian Cosmopolitanism (UCLA, 2004), suggests that the reality is somewhat more complicated. She suggests that his work is in some ways Orientalist, but that his Orientalism "both could be qualified and undercut by a disaporic affiliation that goes beyond binaries and makes for a more cosmoplitan attunement to otherness and other textualities" (107-108).

One of the pieces of writing that she cites in evidence is this poem, written in response to the notorious Denshawai affair.

27 June 1906, 2 P.M.

When the Christians brought him to be hanged,
the innocent boy of seventeen,
his mother, who there beside the scaffold
had dragged herself and lay beaten on the ground
beneath the midday sun, the savage sun,
now would moan, and howl like a wolf, a beast,
and then the martyr, overcome, would keen
“Seventeen years only you lived with me, my child.”
And when they took him up the scaffold’s steps
and passed the rope around him and strangled him,
the innocent boy, seventeen years old,
and piteously it hung inside the void,
with the spasms of black agony–
The youthful body, beautifully wrought–
His mother, martyr, wallowed on the ground
and now she keened no more about his years:
“Seventeen days only,” she keened,
“seventeen days only I had joy of you, my child.”

You can read the full story of Denshawai here, which involved a dispute that broke out when British soldiers shot some pigeons owned by Denshawai villagers. Villagers were angered, attacked the soldiers, the British opened fire on villagers, wounding five, one of the villagers hit an officer with the stick. An officer who escaped died of heatstroke.

The British responded by rounding up 52 villagers, conducted a summary trial, and sentenced five to hanging and 27 others to various terms of hard labor and flogging. The hangings were carried out quickly, only two weeks after the "incident." The effect was to inflame nationalist sentiment in Egypt.

My source for the poem is here.

A couple other remarks:

The family name of Cavafy is of Turkish origin; it comes from the word ayakkabici or "shoe seller."

Philip Mansel, the source for the above (Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean, Yale UP, 2010), also notes that it is highly unlikely that Cavafy's poems could have been published in any city other than Alexandria (with the exception of Paris). His erotic poems, Mansel observes, would have doubtless raised moral hackles and caused the author and publisher to be sentenced to jail. Cavafy's poems were published in Alexandrian literary magazines after 1919, and a book of a complete edition of his poems was published in Alexandrian two years after his death, in 1935 (144). Published in Greek, of course.

More evidence of the tolerant character of Alexandrian cosmopolitanism.

Famous Alexandrians: Anne De Zogheb

Anne de Zogheb in ensemble by Pierre Balmain, Marie Claire, March 1963

Anne de Zogheb was a top international fashion model in the late 50's and early 60's, gracing covers of fashion mags in the US and France. She married pop singer and teen idol Paul Anka -- who is of Lebanese descent -- in 1963, and stopped modeling after her second child was born. Part of her upbringing took place in Alexandria. Her father, Count Charles de Zogheb (d. 2006), who became a Lebanese diplomat, was a member of Alexandria's illustrious Levantine de Zogheb clan. The de Zoghebs were Christian Syrian-Lebanese, who migrated to Alexandria during the era of French occupation (1798-1801), served consuls for various European powers (I believe that they were entered into the rank of the nobility by Austria-Hungary), and became fabulously wealthy (for a time) from the cotton trade. They were major figures in the social life of colonial-cosmopolitan Alexandria.

Hala Halim has written some very important work about the remarkable Bernard de Zogheb, the last of the family in Alexandria (the rest of them left in the 50s and 60s) and in particular, his fascinating operettas. I highly recommend a read. Perhaps I will post something on them in future.

I've not been able to determine the exact kinship relationship of Charles and Bernard, nor do I know how long Paul's now ex-wife Anne lived in Alexandria.

I hope in future to post something about other famous Alexandrians, like Eric Hobsbawm, Ungaretti, Marinetti and others.