Jewish Maghrib Jukebox

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Jewish Cemetery in Tangier


Excellent new resource on Jewish cemetery in Tangier. The cemetery is being mapped and a fund has been set up to help with restoration. Here's the English translation to the French site. I will post more on the Jewish community of Tangier shortly and how best to access cemetery.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

My Search for Haim Botbol

Before I last left Morocco in Aprl, I happened on a fantastic Abitbol cassette. I have been working on verifying the identify of this Moroccan Jewish singer since then. It should have been obvious to me who he was but my searches yielded far too many unrelated results. It's amazing how a few changes to a Google search (think: Botbol instead of Abitbol and Chaabi instead of Musique) can make all the difference.

So it appears that since leaving Morocco, I have been listening to the chaabi stylings of Haim Botbol whose photo is above. Botbol was born in Fes and has been performing for decades, you can find his translated bio here.

Click here for a link to some of his videos. Here he is performing with Vanessa Paloma at the Laredo Old Age Home in Tangier. I will work on scanning and then posting the cover of the cassette I purchased.