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Across the Maghreb, Jewish musicians were not a marginal scene, they were the backbone of the urban musical class. In Algiers, Constantine, Oran, Tunis and Sfax, the cafés, salons, weddings and 78 rpm recording studios of the early 20th century ran on Jewish voices, Jewish ouds, Jewish pianos. They sang in Judeo-Arabic, in Arabic, sometimes in French, and they carried two parallel traditions: the high Andalusian art of Mâlûf (Tunisia) and Gharnata-Tlemcen (Algeria), and the popular street idiom of chaabi. The 1962 rupture scattered most of them to Paris, Marseille, then Israel. What survives, Reinette l\'Oranaise\'s voice, Lili Boniche\'s francarabe, Salim Halali\'s exile chants, Enrico Macias\'s mainstream French chanson, is the diaspora that this lesson traces in Hebrew.
Cultural note, When you arrive in Israel, the Tunisian-Algerian musical heritage is alive in three places. First: Ashdod and Sderot, where many North African families settled and where weddings still feature live Mâlûf orchestras. Second: the Andalusian Orchestra of Ashdod, a state-supported ensemble preserving the classical repertoire. Third: the radio. Reshet Gimel and Kan Mizrach play Reinette, Halali, Boniche regularly, especially on Mimouna eve and during summer Maghrebi festivals. Knowing the names lets you participate, these artists are common cultural ground for olim from France and for descendants of pre-1962 Israeli families alike.
Andalusian Classical (Mâlûf, Gharnata)
Chaabi Algerian-Jewish
Tunisian Jewish Stars
Reinette & Female Pioneers
Modern Diaspora (Enrico Macias)
A Wedding Conversation in Ashdod
A short exchange at a Tunisian-Israeli wedding where the orchestra is about to play Mâlûf. The kind of conversation an oleh from France can fall into within ten minutes of arriving.