Forget Your Worries: A 1930 Recording of El Moutribia, Algeria's premier Andalusian orchestra

(R) Kespi in Berlin. 1929.

Ok, friends. For the last night of Hanukkah, we’re going to listen to something truly special. This record, in fact, comes from the same catalogue as the Tunisian Hatikvah recording which kicked off this whole "eight North African Youtube rarities in eight nights" adventure.

Until 1930 or so, Algeria’s Andalusian orchestras were overwhelmingly Jewish and its most popular was El Moutribia. El Moutribia was founded by Algerian musical impresario Edmond Nathan Yafil in 1911, later conducted under the direction of Joseph Kespi, and presided over by the one and only Mahieddine Bachtarzi through the interwar period. El Moutribia set the bar for Algerian music for much of the first half of the twentieth century and brought those sounds to neighboring Morocco and Tunisia and to France and Italy via life performances which included dozens of vocalists and instrumentalists - and then to the entire world via disc. These recordings, until recently, have been all but impossible to find.

 

What better way to end this series, then, with El Moutribia’s performance of "Selli Houmoumek" (Forget your worries) recorded under the direction of "cheb" Joseph Kespi for the Gramophone label on December 19, 1930? As the chorus starts up, try imagining yourself in Algiers' famed National Theater. I think you'll be happy.

One final thought as we round out this series. Perhaps we can find small solace in the fact that this record and the others I’ve been posting have somehow survived for nearly a century despite the odds (time + war + dislocation + transport across continents…and the list goes on). These discs serve as reminders of what once was and what was once possible. If we can “forget our worries” or our fears for just a moment, maybe we can start making music again together.

The Algerian Jewish Soundscape

Bootleg Salim Halali LP found in Algiers.

Algeria’s Jewish past is often framed as one of contemporary invisibility. Jews are gone, synagogues have been converted into mosques, and still other visual markers of Jewish life all but effaced. Indeed, all of this is true. But since arriving in Algeria two weeks ago to do research on the North African music industry of the first half of the twentieth century I have wondered the following: What happens when we shift our focus to that of the aural? In other words, are Algerian Jews more present in the present if we replace vision for sound and the landscape for the soundscape? The answer, in short, is a resounding, “yes.”

Discussing the Algerian 78 era over coffee.

If one listens close enough, Jewish voices are everywhere in Algeria. One must only enter one of the myriad CD shops to catch the sounds of popular Jewish recording artists from more than half a century ago like Lili Boniche. Peek your head into a bric-a-brac shop in Oued Kniss and you will find a dust covered pile of records including the likes of Salim Halali and Lili Labassi. Catch an Andalusian performance at the National Theater (named for Mahieddine Bachetarzi, himself closely identified with Algerian Jewish musical impresarios of the past like Edmond Nathan Yafil) and you will hear a piece of the classical suite - and now an inextricable part of Algerian patrimony - once closely associated with Jewish legends like Mouzino and Sassi. Meet with an octogenarian musician and wait just seconds before he regales you with tales of Alice Fitoussi and la belle époque of Algerian music. Tell just about any Algerian, young or old, about your research subject in the broadest of terms and wait for them to interject with, “Ah! Then you must study the Jews.”

There is much more to say but I am still very much processing it all. My daily strolls through the casbah, that shockingly compact musical incubator which once nurtured the high point of Jewish-Muslim music making, helps tremendously. So too does listening to the music again and again. Shortly before leaving for Algeria, I put together an all-45 rpm mix for Afropop Worldwide which serves as both a primer and a testament to the outsized role played by the country’s Jewish musicians in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century.

Disco Maghreb. What else?

Here is what I wrote for their website: “In an era immediately before chaabi and preceding raï by some decades, multi-talented artists like Lili Labassi pushed the boundaries of Algerian Arabic music in new, exciting directions while laying down 78 rpm record after 78 rpm record for Columbia, Polydor, and even RCA. Later, Lili Boniche and Luc Cherki, the so-called “crooners of the casbah,” blended Western and North African rhythms to produce hits like the former’s “Ya Samira,” included here. Over the next hour you will hear a sampling of all of this and more. We start with Salim Halali and his iconic cover of the Moroccan Sidi Hbibi before moving on to a Luc Cherki istikhbar and disco number and eventually to a trio of pieces performed by Blond Blond, Lili Labassi, and the Algéroise diva Line Monty dedicated to a love of city (Oran and Algiers) and nation (Djazaïr). René Perez and Lili Boniche round out this mix before we arrive at the rarest piece in this collection: the Andalusian piano stylings of the one and only Sariza Cohen.”

Playlist

Salim Halali - Layali Maghrib / Salim Halali - Sidi H’bibi / Luc Cherki - Stekhbar Sahli / Luc Cherki - Oumparéré / Blond Blond - El Porompompero / Blond Blond - Wahran El Behya / Lili Labassi - Ouaharan El Bhya / Lili Labassi - Edzayer Zint Elbouldan / Leïla Fateh (Line Monty) - Alger Alger / René Perez - Elli Mektoub Mektoub / Lili Boniche - Elli Mektoub Mektoub / Lili Boniche - Ya Samira / Sariza Cohen - Variations sur Touchia Dhil

More to come when I return but in the meantime pour yourself a Phénix or an Orangina (both of Algerian origin) and enjoy the music. Saha!

Songs in the Key of Chakchouka: the North African Light and Comic Chanson

An early Edmond Nathan Yafil comic monologue at 90 rpm.

Before David Guetta, there was his great grandfather Kiki Guetta. Born in Tunis at the end of the nineteenth century, Jacob “Kiki” Guetta championed neither popular nor Andalusian music but rather the North African comic song. Taking a cue from the light hearted repertoire then being refined on vaudevillian stages as far afield as Paris and New York, Guetta adapted the genre to Arabic, established his own troupe, and entertained mixed Muslim and Jewish cabaret audiences beginning in the earliest years of the twentieth century. When Gramophone released its first catalogue in Tunisia in 1910, Guetta’s discs were featured prominently.

Guetta, like his Moroccan and Algerian Jewish contemporaries who embraced the style, pushed the boundaries of the acceptable in public. On many of his records, he ridiculed those in power, poked fun at his compatriots, and drew attention to emerging social problems. But, as his successors would soon do, he sang about the more banal.

In some cases, the banal, or the light song, took the form of translated ditties, like Guetta’s Arabic version of La Petite Tonkinoise, while in other instances it meant connecting the latest international music trend - often Latin - to the local palate. Perhaps nothing exemplifies this better than the array of songs released toward the middle of the century on the subject of chakchouka, the North African tomato and egg delicacy that many of us have come to know and love. Imar Maghy, for instance, a Tunisian Jewish comic of the 1950s and 1960s, would set “chakchouka” to cha cha cha, pepper it with Arabic, and serve up wildly popular results. Even if the tune has little to do with cuisine itself, one can surely appreciate the identitarian aspect of it. You will find a taste below.

Not to be outdone was the Algerian Blond Blond, who sang about both the merguez sausage and chakchouka, and his Sétif-born colleague Alberto Darmon aka Staïffi (and his group: ses Mustaphas), who made his version of “chakchouka” into a dance number while also putting the culinary delights of the Belkacem restaurant - rhyming the Arabic word for “beans” with the French for “unforgettable” - to a foot-tapping harmony.

Blond-Blond...Les merguez , version swing by marco68700

Of course, there is much more to be said on the subject of Jews and comedy in North Africa in the first half of the twentieth century but an outline will have to suffice for now. Comic monologues and songs can be counted as among the earliest pieces to be recorded on wax cylinder across the Maghreb. In Algeria, the impresario Edmond Nathan Yafil would bring the scène comique to large audiences, impressing none other than Mahieddine Bachetarzi, who himself would take Algerian comedy and theater to the next level.

I would also be remiss in not mentioning that a number of these pioneers of comic song, along with their stand-up counterparts, made their way to France and Israel around mid-century, including the Moroccan Maurice Lusky, who can be heard below doing his classic “drunkard” sketch with Raymonde El Bidaouia.

I will have to leave it here but welcome further thoughts and comments. In the meantime, good listening, bon appétit, and b’saha!

When La Mamma Became Ya Yemma: Lili Boniche, Charles Aznavour, and Algerian Cover Songs

A young Mahieddine Bachetarzi. 1920s?

Somewhere in an attic or an archive exists a recording of Mahieddine Bachetarzi singing Josephine Baker’s iconic J’ai deux amours. Why he chose to cover this particular song and what meaning one can discern from a national figure like Bachetarzi singing about his love for two nations during the turbulent 1930s will have to remain but speculation for now. What this does suggest, however, is the existence of “the cover” as a genre during the middle third of the twentieth century in Algeria. In fact, if it was one thing that Algerian Muslim and Jewish musicians shared, it was a passion for covering the hits. Covers took a variety of forms during this period but the most intriguing, as already eluded to, was the phenomenon of translating mostly French language chansons into Arabic and in that process, giving them entirely new meanings.

Perhaps the best known of these cover artists was one Mahieddine Bentir, of whom Ted Swedenburg has written about recently. Bentir, born in 1934 in Algiers, hit on something big in the 1950s when he began transforming American rock ‘n’ roll into “rock oriental” and set French genres to Algerian rhythms. He brought tremendous energy to his position at the RTF (Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française) in Algeria and as an independent artist, one who was fond of doing summersaults on stage at a particularly rockin’ moment. He has cited Robert Castel, Lili Labassi’s son, as one of his inspirations. Bentir’s Ana Bouhali, his appropriation of the classic Je Suis Le Vagabond, captures a certain slice of music hall Algeria in the 1950s perfectly. Here’s a short version of the French and then Bentir’s exhilarating Arabic rendition:

Lili Boniche performs at the Salle Pierre Bordes - Algiers, 1959

Lili Boniche, also known as “the Crooner of the Casbah,” was another cover cheikh. Born in 1921 to a Jewish Algerois family, le jeune Boniche was already making a splash in the Algerian papers by the mid-1930s, an especially impressive feat given his age at the time. Boniche became a staple of Algerian radio during the period and then began recording 78 rpm records for the Pacific label in the 1940s. He is most famous for his hit songs (all of which were later covered by others) Elle Est Partie (Mchate aliya), Eili Mektoub, Carmelita, and Bambino, the last an Arabic cover of the Neapolitan song, Guaglione, which was then all the rage in Europe and soon North Africa. Throughout his Algerian career, Boniche attracted tremendously large, mixed audiences.

Luc Cherki in all his disco glory. 1979.

Many have argued, in what appears to be a historiographic misstep, that Boniche, for a number of personal reasons, all but stopped performing in France upon his arrival there. This position helps to bolster the claim that he was “rediscovered” in the early 1990s by Bill Laswell, among others. In fact, a review of his releases reveals the opposite - Boniche recorded constantly and consistently through the 1960s and 1970s, both for his own LB label and for El Kahlaoui Tounsi’s Dounia. Shockingly, he even cut a disco EP, much like Luc Cherki, in the late 1970s.

Lili Boniche. Ya Yemma (La Mamma). LB Disques. 1963.

If Boniche took a break from music, it was possibly during that traumatic and confusing year of Algerian independence, although there is only scant evidence to support this. Whatever the case, he was certainly “back” on the scene as of 1963. It was that year that Charles Aznavour’s La Mamma had reached the number one spot on charts across the continent and unsurprisingly, Boniche chose to cover it for the A side of his first release on his new label. In my opinion, Boniche’s Arabic version – Ya Yemma – is even more powerful than the original. Clearly not just a lament for a mother, Ya Yemma can easily be “read” or heard as a longing for Algeria itself. Below you will find both the Aznavour original and the Boniche cover with the Lucien Attard Orchestre playing back up. Take a listen:

Finally, I would be remiss in not mentioning Salim Halali, the subject of my last post, and his Arabic take on another song about mothers, the Yiddish classic My Yiddishe Mama. Below is a classic Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt version and the later Halali adaptation. I dare say this is the only Yiddish song ever translated into Arabic but I would be happy to be proven wrong.



 

Until next time…Happy New Year to all.