Maurice El Medioni, an Algerian-born pianist who fused Jewish and Arabic musical traditions right into a singular type he known as “Pianoriental,” died March 25 in Israel. He was 95 years outdated.
His loss of life, in a nursing house in Herzliya, on Israel’s central coast, was confirmed by his supervisor, Yvonne Kahan.
Mr. Medioni was the final consultant of a once vibrant Judeo-Arabic musical culture that flourished in North Africa before and after World War II and proudly drew inspiration from each heritages.
In Oran, the Algerian port the place he was born, he was sought out by each Arabs and Jews to play at weddings and banquets within the years between the conflict and 1961, when the specter of violence and Algeria’s new independence from France led Mr. . Medioni and 1000’s of different Jews fled.
With its bouncing octaves, its nearly microtonal shifts within the type of conventional Arabic music, its sassy rumba rhythms realized from American troopers after the 1942 Allied invasion, and its roots within the Judeo-Arabic musical heritage known as Andalous, Mr. Piano Model distinguished in his 20s. The singers he accompanied usually alternated phrases in French and Arabic in a method generally known as “Françarabe”. His uncle Messaoud El Medioni was the well-known musician generally known as Saoud L’Oranaisa distinguished Andalous practitioner who was deported by the Germans to the Sobibor extermination camp in 1943.
The Medioni type remained buried and nearly forgotten for 4 many years whereas he plied his commerce as a males’s tailor. He saved it alive privately, acting at weddings and bar mitzvahs after being compelled to flee to France, till he launched a breakthrough album, “Cafe Oran,” in 1996, at age 68. This led to a belated second life as a star of so-called world music – live performance excursions in Europe, appearances in documentaries and an vital position as mentor to a brand new technology of Israeli musicians desperate to reclaim the musical heritage of their Sephardic heritage. In 2017, she printed an autobiography, “A book of memories: from Oran to Marseille (1938-1992),” which reproduces Mr. Medioni’s cursive scribbles, with translation from French.
Medioni “got here to represent one thing, the final of his technology,” mentioned Christopher Silver, an knowledgeable on the Jewish musical custom of North Africa who teaches at McGill College.
“Maurice is a compulsive and naturally fashionable musician, at all times searching for different music and musical kinds,” wrote British radio host Max Reinhardt within the memoir’s introduction, “a part of a bunch of Muslim and Jewish musicians who naturally within the decade Nineteen Forties and 50s created new music collectively in North Africa.”
Two occasions had been decisive within the formation of Pianoriental, and each occurred early within the lifetime of Medioni, who grew up poor – “a shared lavatory for our total flooring, the place there have been six residences”, wrote Médioni in his memoirs. – within the Jewish quarter of Oran, or “Derb”.
The primary was his encounter with American troopers within the occupied metropolis of Oran on November 8, 1942, when he was 14 years outdated. “From the second the Yankees arrived in Oran, our household’s lifestyle modified utterly,” Medioni wrote. The troopers launched him to a rollicking type of boogie-woogie that took a backseat to the French pop songs he was raised on.
The sensible younger teenager shortly turned indispensable to Individuals, taking them to bars and brothels. “I might cross the 9 piano bars,” mentioned Medioni. told an interviewer in 2015. “When one of many pianos was free, I performed all of the American hits I realized, and that attracted the troopers.” He remembers being impressed by the black American jazz musicians he noticed play: “I noticed them improvise. I used to be left open-mouthed,” he mentioned. “Once I got here house, I attempted to duplicate what they did.”
The second decisive occasion occurred in 1947, when three younger Arab musicians entered a bar the place he was ingesting and so they all started to sing and play collectively. “That is how the primary fashionable Arabic music group was born, a bunch that will make me the preferred Jew amongst all Muslims in your entire province of Orani,” he wrote in his memoirs. Mr. Medioni’s synthesis of jazz, boogie-woogie and andalous and Arabic rai and chaabi had been born, two types of standard Algerian road music, in some circumstances characterised by lengthy narrative songs.
“There are few figures who try and play this oriental piano,” mentioned Silver. “Medioni is doing it very nicely, together with his left and proper hand. He’s making an attempt to replace, modernize and nonetheless make it Jap or Arabic music.”
Maurice El Medioni was born on October 18, 1928, in Oran, in what was then French Algeria, the son of Jacob Medioni, who ran Café Saoud together with his brother Messaoud, and Fany Medioni. His father died when he was 7, leaving his mom in poverty to lift 4 kids – three boys and a lady.
His musical presents had been evident from an early age; Virtually completely self-taught, he honed his abilities on a piano his brother introduced from a flea market. The conflict intensified the household’s difficulties and all of the Jewish kids had been expelled from Oran’s colleges by the French authorities. “We had been lacking every part,” wrote Medioni.
The American invasion of 1942 was “a liberation for all of the Jews of North Africa,” he wrote. And by the mid-Fifties, he was not solely a profitable tailor among the many Muslims of Oran, but additionally a sought-after musician, like his brother Alex: “All of the Arab orchestras needed to work with me,” he wrote. “‘These are our boys,’ that’s what they used to say.”
However as Algeria’s conflict of independence intensified, one in every of his unique Arabic music companions was shot by Algerian revolutionaries and Medioni stopped enjoying at Arab celebrations.
Within the spring of 1961, he and his younger household boarded a ship for Israel and left six months later for France. Years of wrestle adopted, as he opened tailor outlets, first in Paris, then in Marseilles. However he continued to play at weddings and galas with stars of the North African Judeo-Arabic music scene that existed earlier than the conflict and has now been transplanted to France. They included Lili Boniche, Line Monty, Reinette l’Oranaise and Samy Elmaghribi.
Within the late Eighties, Medioni recorded himself on a cassette in his lounge in Marseille and despatched it to a producer at Buda Musique, a specialised document label in Paris. This was the start of his rebirth. After the album “Café Oran”, there was a live performance on the Barbican in London in 2000 with Mr. Boniche; a tour with well-known British Klezmer band, Oi Va Voi; and an album with New York-based Cuban percussionist Roberto Rodriguez. He performed a number one position in “El Gusto”, a 2012 documentary and album venture concerning the reunion of an orchestra of Algeria’s oldest Jewish and Arab musicians.
In 2011 he moved from Marseille to Israel together with his spouse, Juliette (Amsellem) Medioni, to be near his kids. He continued to document and carry out, notably with the Ashkelon Mediterranean-Andalusian Orchestra.
His spouse died in 2022. He’s survived by his kids, Yacov, Marilyne and Michael, and 5 grandchildren.
Mr. Medioni was totally conscious that he may nicely have been the final of his race. In a 2003 interview within the appendix of his memoirs, he informed British musician Jonathan Walton that he doubted Andalous would survive him.
“It received’t,” he remembers saying. “Maurice Medioni is telling you that it received’t occur. It would solely be heard on occasion by individuals who have some nostalgia and by younger individuals who love their dad and mom.”
