The Jewish Musicians Of The Maghreb
Historian Chris Silver talks about his efforts preserving the legacy of North Africa’s Jewish musicians and recordings
North Africa, from the late nineteenth century during the colonial period, through the middle of the twentieth century, was home to numerous musicians, recording artists, and a flourishing record industry. It was a diverse and eclectic scene, and was dominated—despite their small numbers relative to the general population—by Jews. Jews worked as instrumentalists, performers, composers, impresarios, and label heads. They had close working relationships with their Muslim contemporaries, and lived in urban centers and villages throughout Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, an area also known as the Maghreb.
“Many of the great Tunisian Jewish musicians in the early twentieth century trace their roots to Libya, and musicians from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia performed in Libya as well,” historian and Segal Family Assistant Professor in Jewish History and Culture at McGill University, Christopher Silver, says. “But that’s usually the end point, because of differences with the Maghreb, which is the western half of the Arab world, and the Mashriq, or eastern half of the Arab world. Many of these artists operated as far east as Libya, but no more east than that.”
Silver, based in Montreal, Canada, curates the online archive, Gharamophone, which is dedicated to preserving the legacy of North Africa’s Jewish musicians and recordings. His efforts including digitizing selections from his collection of vintage 78s, posting them online, and providing detailed information about the artists, labels, and composers, as well as the cultural impact of their work. Gharamophone tells the story of these artists—most of whom are not well-known in the west—and paints a very different picture of Jewish life in North Africa, which is somewhat distinct from the impersonal geopolitics in textbooks.
“The interesting thing about music is that the societal rupture—what we tend to think of when we think of history—is much more difficult,” Silver says in our interview below. “In independent Algeria, for example, where there were very few Jews remaining, there were plenty of Muslim musicians who were trained by their Jewish peers, their former collaborators. The knowledge both of what that Jewish-Muslim relationship once looked like, and the musical knowledge as well, that institutional knowledge remains with musicians.”
I spoke with Silver about the rich Jewish musical history of the Maghreb, the various personalities and stars of the day, the complicated legacy of European imperialism, the thriving master-apprentice relationship between Jewish and Muslim musicians, the renewed interest in this music in modern Israel, and his efforts hunting down obscure, long-out-of-print 78s. Following our Q&A is a roundup of eight essential tracks from Gharamophone, which serve as a gateway to this fascinating, and little-explored world.
How did you get started learning about North African Jewish musicians?
I am originally from the United States—born and raised in Los Angeles—and I am now in Montreal. I was fortunate to get a job at McGill, and I teach there in the Jewish Studies department. But I was always interested in music, and not just music as it comes out of the speakers, but the entire production around the music. My father was in the music business, but he wasn't a musician. He was on the other side of the equation [Editor: Silver’s father, Roy Silver, was Bob Dylan’s first manager, signed Deep Purple, distributed John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s controversial album, Two Virgins, and had a rich and colorful career in the music business]. I grew up with at least a passing knowledge that music is a business, and that it is a complicated business.
Cut to 2009. I am in Morocco—which is a separate interest of mine—and I entered a record store in Casablanca. I knew nothing about Moroccan music or Jewish predominance within Moroccan music, and I asked the proprietor to give me a sonic tour of what he had to offer. He played record after record for me, and after every other record, he said, “By the way, this person was Jewish.” I bought a bunch of records, and that was the beginning of my journey. The first instantiation of all of this, was that I started studying the actual labels on those records—the artist, the name of the label, the composer—and thought about who are these people, what are these labels, and what are their stories? I became very curious about what happened to some of these artists, their forward journey, and then eventually, I put that aside and said, “I want to know the beginning of this story as it pertains to recorded music. How does recording start to happen in North Africa? When does it happen? Who’s involved? What are they recording?” That’s how I get to this point now, where I am writing about the origins of the recording industry in North Africa, the outsized role played by Jews within the recording industry—both as music makers and music purveyors—and how that story of Jews and music helps us rethink North African and Middle Eastern history, Jewish history, and maybe how we approach history in general.
Why did Jews play such an outsized role in the North African music industry?
The answer, I think, can be found in the question of minority status. Minorities tend to gravitate toward—and it’s not just minorities, it’s often connected to issues of class. These are not necessarily elites who flock to the recording industry in North Africa at the end of the nineteenth, and beginning of the twentieth century. It’s really a working class population that takes this up. There’s an element to music, which is that it isn’t something elites do at the professional level or at the level of performing on stage in front of other people. That is something that is often relegated to a certain group of people of a certain class.
There is also the question of colonial modernity that fits in here. For example, in the case of Algeria, Jews are made citizens of France at the end of the nineteenth century. One of the things that colonial powers do is divide and conquer, and segregate and invent categories at every level. One of the moves of segregation that they make is to divide Jews from Muslims. That is especially potent in Algeria, where both groups are subjects of the French empire through the 1860s, and then in 1870, Algerian Jews, with the stroke of a pen, are made citizens of France.
But not Muslims?
No. The historian Benjamin Stora refers to this as the first of three exiles of Algerian Jews. The first exile is that legal separation from Muslims, the second exile is the abdication of that writ of citizenship in 1940 under Vichy—in the context of World War II, the Holocaust, and Fascist/Vichy France—although that citizenship is reinstated in 1943, and the final exile is their actual exile from Algeria in 1962 with Algerian independence.
Did they flee to Israel?
No, about 90 percent went to France. Most do not go to Israel. They are “repatriated” to France, because they are citizens of France. This is a long answer, but when it comes to the question of how Jews occupy their position in the recording industry in North Africa, in some ways it is connected to this question of colonialism. Jews are given a certain privilege, citizenship, by the French, which gives them access that their Algerian Muslim compatriots don’t have. So it’s all these factors: minority status, class, this question of colonial modernity, and there is also something to say about the musicality of Jewish life as well.
As it relates to synagogue and prayer?
Exactly. There are many stories in North Africa, about Muslim musicians who would stand outside synagogues on Saturday mornings to learn melodies. There are Andalusian melodies being employed in the synagogue, and Muslim musicians would listen outside to learn them. That might be a factor as well.
Did playing music give Jews more access to the elite community? Were they performing for dignitaries?
There is that as well. In the early twentieth century, you have North African Jewish musicians who are performing not just in the biggest theaters and halls in North Africa, but in other places as well, like Spain, France, and elsewhere. They are doing that, but that doesn’t mean that the vocation or profession of ‘musician’ is necessarily heralded. It is still regarded as low status, or working class status. In fact, many of these musicians, at the same time that they’re recording for the major labels of the twentieth century—Gramophone, Pathé, Odeon—are also cobblers, or selling fabric, or operating restaurants. They’re not necessarily professional musicians, though they are consummate professionals at the same time
They couldn't quit their day gigs
Many of them could not, especially as this industry is taking shape.
Are the bands generally mixed groups, with both Jewish and Muslim musicians?
The entire operation is Jewish/Muslim. To go back to this question of class, we see the overrepresentation of a certain class of Jews in the music industry in the earliest years of the twentieth century, but we also see a similar class of Muslims enter the music industry as well, just in smaller numbers. There are also master-disciple relationships, or master-apprentice relationships, that go in every direction. You have Jewish musical masters with Muslim disciples, and of course the opposite as well. An interesting case is Algeria, where you have this unique situation where Algerian Jews have obtained French citizenship en masse in the nineteenth century, whereas you don’t find that in Morocco and Tunisia. Algerian Jews are French citizens, but they continue to inhabit this world of Arabo and Andalusian music in large numbers up until their departure, for the most part, in 1962. The first modern Andalusian orchestra—not just Algerian but in North Africa—is majority Jewish, and that’s despite their French citizenship. It’s called Al-Moutribia, and it was formally established in 1912, with a majority of Jewish instrumentalists who also double as vocalists. It remains in operation until 1940, and throughout that period the overwhelming majority of its integral members are Algerian Jews. A prominent Muslim tenor will brought into the fold at the end of World War I, and he will take the orchestra in new, different, and exciting directions. He will eventually rise to its presidency, but until it’s disbanded in the course of World War II, it will remain a predominantly Jewish orchestra of Arabo and Andalusian music.
Is the music secular music, or is it religious music as well?
In terms of recordings, they recorded everything, and even during the same session. Of the Andalusian music, there are plenty of piyutim that are being recorded [a piyut, plural: piyutim (פיוט, פיוטים), is a Jewish liturgical poem]. In fact, some of the first recordings of North African music of the twentieth century are recordings of piyutim. But they are also recording everything in between, including popular music, music in other languages like the Berber languages, or songs mixed of French and Arabic. At the beginning they are performing Andalusian music, what is considered the high art classical music of North Africa, which understands itself to originate in medieval Islamic Spain. Soon that orchestra will incorporate other types of music into the mix as well. Things that are associated with the Andalusian repertoire, but not technically Andalusian. It might mean questions of linguistic register, formal versus colloquial language, and things like that, but increasingly this first Andalusian orchestra will perform everything from the height of the Andalusian repertoire to Tin Pan Alley songs translated into Arabic, and everything in between.
Were the lyrics political as well?
In country, many of these musicians are political, but not necessarily active members of political parties. In Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, one finds that some of the anti-colonial nationalist music of the period is indeed written and performed by Jews. Morocco is a good case in point. There is a lot of music that emerges, especially in the 1950s, that venerates, and elevates, the figure of the Sultan—who will eventually become the King of Morocco—who becomes the figurehead of the drive to independence. That nationalist soundtrack, the music that goes along with that movement for political independence, many of those who were most involved are very prominent Jewish musicians. They are penning this music, and performing it out of conviction. They feel that political moment at the time, believe in the cause, and support the cause in their own way. You can even point to some of this in Algeria as well, where it’s a different situation in a number of ways. Music is politics. It’s not the politics of the elite, but it is the politics of the people. It is a nice way to rethink the politics in the region, moving away from a small group of elite men, to men and women of various levels of social standing, and not just Muslims, but Jews and Muslims. For example, the singer, Zohra El Fassia, was a regular at the Moroccan palace in the 1950s. That’s the most contentious moment, when it seems like independence is imminent but it is not clear. There’s a moment when France exiles the very Sultan that Zohra El Fassia, Samy Elmaghribi, Albert Suissa, and others are singing about. They exiled him to Madagascar. We sometimes forget that you cannot see into the future when you’re living in the political moment, and none of these people knew in 1953 how it was going to turn out, or that independence would indeed come in 1956. They are putting themselves on the line, and they are singing about their sovereign, and about their people in global ways.
But with the coming of independence, many Jews left. What were the factors that caused them to leave?
These are the big questions, and it’s different in every case. Morocco is an interesting case. Morocco and Tunisia both become independent in 1956. Prior to independence, around 1948, at the time of Israel’s establishment, you have about 250,000 Jews in Morocco out of a population of eight million. But those numbers don't tell us everything, because while you find Jews throughout Morocco, it is also a highly urban population. Some cities are very Jewish cities, and large numbers of Jews are very visible in these cities.
Similar to New York City today.
Something like that. You will have Jews leaving Morocco on the approach to Moroccan independence—post-1948 and pre-1956—but still, in 1956, at the moment of Moroccan independence, two-thirds of the Jewish community still remains in place. There are still 160,000 Jews in Morocco when it becomes independent. In Tunisia as well, a large number of Jews remain. The musical class, if we can call it that, will stay in the country at that point, too. Zohra El Fassia stayed in Morocco in 1956. Samy Elmaghribi stayed in 1956. Algeria, because of the amplified imperial and colonial setting there—where Morocco and Tunisia were colonies of France, or protectorates—but Algeria was France. Algeria was French territory. It did not have the same colonial status that Morocco and Tunisia had, so that war of independence, or liberation, was much different, and most Algerian Jews will depart in 1962, the year that Algeria becomes independent. They will, “repatriate," to France, a place that most had never been to before, but that’s a whole other conversation.
What happens to these orchestras as the Jews leave, do the Muslims continue with them or does that scene die at that point?
No, the interesting thing about music is that the [societal] rupture—what we tend to think of when we think of history—is much more difficult. Earlier, we were talking about the master-disciple relationship. In independent Algeria, for example, where there were very few Jews remaining, there were plenty of Muslim musicians who were trained by their Jewish peers, their former collaborators. The knowledge both of what that Jewish-Muslim relationship once looked like, and the musical knowledge as well, that institutional knowledge remains with musicians. They carry that forward and pass it along. You have these continuities that balk at this notion of rupture. In the Algerian case, there is correspondence that continues—I’ve seen it in my own archival work—where Algerian Muslim musicians are writing to their former compatriots, who are now living in France. Radio is important in this equation, too, one can still pick up Algerian radio in a place like France, or Moroccans can still pick up Algerian radio. Another thing is that the flow of records doesn’t stop. There are these continuities. In Algeria, there are very few Jews to speak of after 1962, but in a way, everywhere music is being played, you can hear Jewish voices. That’s something I reflect on quite a bit. We tend to think of it as a disappearance, and yet you can still hear these voices from the not too distant past wherever music was being played.
Did these Jewish artists continue after they left? The story of Zohra El Fassia is very famous, but was that typical of other artists’ experiences?
The music business is tough. Even when you’re doing it well, you see that it is very tough. If you have a family, multiple children, and you have to tour, and record, and come up with new material, you can see that the musicians work very hard to make it happen, and that’s when it’s working. What happens as they leave is they have to learn new markets and new audiences—whether that’s in France or Israel or elsewhere—in some cases they make it. Jo Amar is a very famous example. Jo Amar is originally Joamar Elmaghribi—Jo Amar the Moroccan—he records in Morocco in Arabic, moves to Israel in 1956, and starts recording with a local label in Jaffa called Zakiphon, run by the Azoulay Brothers. Zakiphon is an outfit that records the music that the mainstream Ashkenazi-run labels won’t touch. The Arabic music. Jo Amar starts recording in Arabic for Zakiphon—both Andalusian music, piyutim, and popular music as well—and then he breaks through to a mainstream audience by starting to incorporate Hebrew into his lyrics. Eventually, he goes mostly in the direction of Hebrew, and becomes the first Moroccan ever to perform at Carnegie Hall. His trajectory is one.
Zohra El Fassia, is another trajectory, where it’s a reluctant departure from Morocco. Its expediency, her family is gone, some of the infrastructure she’s used to is disappearing, and in Israel her audience is necessarily smaller than what it would have been in Morocco. She doesn’t have the patronage of a sultan or king, and she struggles. Also, she’s of a certain age. She’s much older than Jo Amar for example. She’s already in her 50s by the time she lands in Israel. This is not be ageist, but it is to say that a young generation wants something different.
You can argue that that would have happened anyway, just because of the nature of the music business.
It could have happened anyway, but it can’t be divorced from the impulse in Israel that if you’re going to do music, it’s going to be in Hebrew. Nowadays, so many years later, some of the acts that you’ve interviewed are coming to terms with that history, which was in some ways suppressed, and in some ways repressed. It was certainly pushed to the side, and didn’t get mainstream attention.
There is a revival in Israel now, especially within the Sephardic community, where they’re embracing their “lost” heritage, after so many years of assimilation.
You find it in France and North Africa, too. There’s a subversive quality to music—even if it’s not intending to be subversive—it points to something else, to a history that’s somehow been quieted. You find that in the very specific Israel context, but you also find that in the North African context. Whether it’s a question of the nature of the Jewish-Muslim relationship, or why does it sound different from what we thought it was, or have learned it in history. Instead of discord, we get harmony. There is something about that, and even the nature of the songs and lyrics. Some of the things that these musicians were singing about in the interwar period—sex, drugs, money, etcetera—it’d still be controversial today. There is something very bold about that music, which in some cases is from a century ago. If we just think about Jewish religiosity, one of the most popular composers in Tunisia in the 1920s and 1930s was an Ottoman Jerusalem-born piytan [composer of piyutim] named Asher Mizrahi. Today, he is understood mostly in a religious context, but Asher Mizrahi was also a stage performer in Tunisia. He was not just comfortable performing on stage with women—Jewish or otherwise—but he was also a Hazan [a trained cantor, or vocalist] as well. He was one of the most prominent Hazanim, not just in Tunisia, but really of the whole region during the interwar period, and he composed specifically for some of these women as well, as well as some other scandalous material. If we sat in an audience in Tunis in the 1930s, it looks a lot different. What was possible, what was acceptable, these are avenues that are opened up by music, perhaps in a place where we don’t always tend to think of those things happening. But it happened nonetheless.
Was he accepted? Were those two worlds—the sacred and profane—considered compatible?
Not entirely, but much of his popular impulses are missing from his biography. Some of it is there, but how did certain religious figures understand him at the time, that I am not exactly sure about. But his reputation certainly did not suffer. The opposite happened, he’s an incredibly important figure from this period—hazan, piytan, and popular recording artist as well.
Where do you get your records? Do you do crate digging in Africa?
I find them everywhere. I’ve found recordings in ‘obvious’ places—North African, France, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem—but in some cases, some of these records pop up in Turkey, Iran, Argentina, Detroit, Michigan. They’ve really traveled. It was part of this global flow of people and goods. The incredible thing is these people, in a much earlier moment, were traveling with these steamer trunks, with their most important possessions, and in those trunks they not only managed to stuff a stack of 78 RPM records, but managed to protect them, and knew how to pack them so they might last. And they ended up everywhere.
Photo courtesy Chris Silver
Selected Roundup Of Important Mid-Twentieth Century North African Jewish Recordings
Below is a roundup of selected recordings featured on Chris Silver’s Gharamophone archive. The titles link to the archive, and there’s a direct link to the Soundcloud file as well.
Salim Halali – Je t’appartiens (tango)
Habiba Messika – Anti Souria Biladi & Ya man yahounnou
“This is not an original song,” Silver says. “But Habiba Messika singing a song about anti-colonial nationalism. She’s singing about Syria in the 1920s, which revolted against the French.”
“Sassi is great instrumentalist who is part of that universe of Andalusian music,” Silver says.
Joamar Elmaghribi – Istikhbar Sahli & Rani Nestana Fik
“Line Monty gives a good sense of a mid-twentieth century sound,” Silver says. “She’s known as the Algerian Edith Piaf.”
Zohra El Fassia – Ayli Ayli Hbibi Diali
Khailou Esseghir et Sion – Gheita
“This recording, which is on Columbia Records, is outside of the Andalusian tradition,” Silver says. “It sounds much different, and is mimicking one of these droning trance-like musical styles.”
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