26th June 2020 – Shabbat is almost here
And on this occasion we will enjoy the outstanding singer, composer and oudist Reinette l’Oranaise, born in 1918 in Tiaret, Algeria.
I discovered this artist while learning more about my much appreciated singer and pianist Maurice El Medioni. He has collaborated with Reinette on many occasions. About Maurice, and also about his uncle, Saoud l’Oranaise, I will come back in future editions of MBS, as they are also benchmarks of the Jewish music from the North of Africa. In this meantime, it is the turn for this superb artist that I think deserves a prominent position in the Olympus of music.
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The brave blind girl who turned into more than a little queen
Reinette’s life could have had the same destination as Saoud’s: she could have ended her days in Sobibor. But no. Her fate was another. Her life continued until she died in Paris in 1998. In this picture, from the blog Ben Zaken Descendance, Maurice El Medioni is with her. He is alive and 91 years old.
· At the bottom you’ll find the video with her voice ·
Reinette, whose real name was Sultana Daoud, was born in 1918 in Tiaret, 220 kms to the East from Oran, in Algeria. She was the daughter of a Morrocan rabbi.
The infection of smallpox made her blind from 3 years old. But it did not prevent her study music with the mentioned Saoud El Medioni. According to Gharamophone, Maurice sais the little Sultana was Saoud’s first pupil.
The young Sultana learnt to play darbouka as well as oud that, at that time, was an instrument exclusive for male performers. She also learnt also many pieces from the Arab Andalousi legacy, of which she is considered one of the referential keepers, without whom many pieces would just have got lost. This is especially thrilling for me, as the land where I am settled and from where I am writing to you now was that Al Andalus, that land where that music took its first shape, the music she would play and sing five centuries after the Moorish and the Sephardic Jews were expelled from.
This picture is from the same blog as the one above –>
Reinette and Saoud were inseparable. She was his taliba, his pupil, and she used to sing in his cafe in the Derb, Oran’s jewish quarter. In 1938, with the shaykh, the master, she moved to Paris, where he was going to set up a cafe in Montmartre. But he would send her back to Algeria very soon, encouraging her to make her name in her country. He did well. In January 1943 the German army, after the Operation Torch, made a roundup of Jewish in Marseille’s port and deported Saoud and his 13 years old son Joseph to Drancy camp and later to Sobibor, where they would be murdered.
If you want to know more about the Jewish musicians from the North of Africa, check the work Jews, Music-Making, and the Twentieth Century Maghrib, by Christopher Benno Silver.
What happened with Reinette back in Algeria?
Back in Algeria, her popularity started to rise. She would perform regularly in Radio Alger, she joined the female orchestra of Meriem Fekkai and she would collaborate with the most relevant musicians at that time. But in 1962, after the independence of Algeria, as well as more than one hundred thousand Jews, she had to leave the country and moved to France. There, she performed for the Jewish community from the North of Africa.
Only 23 years after her exile in France, she would get some attention from the media. According to the beautiful obituary by Philip Sweeney, some journalist from the newspaper Liberation realized about her. This would rekindle her sweetest moments. She would perform again in great theatres, she would be admired and she would end her days recognized as a cultural ambassador of her country, Algeria.
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Click the picture to listen to Reinette l’Oranaise:
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Shabbat Shalom.
Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música