The modern history of the Maghreb region is often overshadowed by its political narrative, which is frequently recounted through the lens of colonialism or independence movements that later evolved into ruling regimes. However, the cultural and artistic history of the region has persistently been regarded as a mere appendage to this grand political history, despite the fact that culture and the arts have often served as significant driving forces behind political movements. Among the lesser-known histories that remain submerged is that of the music industry, which represents a rich archive of social and political interactions among the inhabitants of the region and between them and their French colonizers. The arrival of the music industry in the region coincided with the establishment of French imperial influence in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Consequently, the production and consumption of music were never neutral; instead, they intertwined with the "civilizing mission" of colonialism, accompanied by policies of assimilation, integration, and eradication. However, the acceptance of Western techniques by Moroccan artists and musicians was not merely a passive acceptance of Western domination. Instead, it represented an active assimilation that empowered the country's musicians to transcend the colonial classifications of 'high' and 'popular' art, while simultaneously shaping a Maghrebian identity that played a crucial role in forming national consciousness and supporting independence movements.
From the emergence and development of the music industry to the region's independence from colonial rule, the first half of the last century witnessed the establishment of foundational roots for this industry, characterized by its political and technical transformations. It served as a communication space or a social arena where cultures collided and interacted within fundamentally unequal power relations.
The Commodification of Heritage
Initially, there was heritage. The music industry in the Maghreb emerged from the fear that encroaching modernity would erase the Andalusian musical heritage in Algeria. Until the early 20th century, the classical Andalusian "nuba" was preserved through oral traditions and manuscripts held by families of Muslim and Jewish musicians. The Algerian Jew Edmond Nathan Yafil played a pivotal role during this period as one of the prominent Jewish cultural intermediaries who worked to document Andalusian heritage technically. In his book "Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music Across North Africa in the 20th Century" (2022), Christopher Silver, an associate professor at McGill University in Montreal, focuses on Yafil, who was born in 1874 in the lower Casbah of Algiers and raised in a popular environment where Andalusian music resonated in cafés.
Silver reveals that Yafil's ambition extended beyond merely playing the mandolin; he sought to rescue the heritage of Andalusia from oblivion. In 1904, he published his monumental work, "Collection of Songs and Melodies from Andalusia," which compiled song texts scattered in manuscripts and recounted by elder musicians. Notably, Yafil published this collection in two parallel versions, one in Arabic and the other in Hebrew, reflecting the reality that Jewish musicians at the time, despite obtaining French nationality under the Crémieux Decree, remained attached to their Arabic language and culture.
Silver connects Yafil's socio-economic background with his ability to bridge art and industry. Before major companies entered the Algerian market, Yafil had been recording music on wax cylinders since 1905. When the British Gramophone Company arrived in the region, its manager Alfred Clark recognized that success in North Africa required someone with a commercial sense who understood local culture, and that person was Yafil. He later became the artistic director for several companies such as Pathé and Odeon and held exclusive contracts with top artists, including women like the renowned Sheikha Yamina. Under his guidance, lengthy Andalusian pieces, which were traditionally played throughout the night, transformed into short recordings lasting just a few minutes to fit the format of the records.
Yafil's early recordings were not commercial products in the modern sense; rather, they served as an ethnographic rescue. He understood that the wax cylinder, and later the shellac disc, offered a means to preserve an oral and improvisational musical heritage. This process of 'fixing' music was inherently political; by recording the music of the Granada tradition in Tlemcen and the "Maalouf" in Tunisia, Yafil and his contemporaries engaged in what musicologist Virginia Danielson refers to as "textualization," converting performance into something that could be owned, sold, and studied.
The recording industry did not remain confined to Algeria; other Jewish families emerged in Tunisia and Morocco. In Tunisia, brothers Joseph and Aurelio Bembaron established a commercial enterprise for musical instruments and records, becoming exclusive distributors for the Gramophone Company. This network extended to Morocco through their brother-in-law Raoul Hazan, who, despite being deaf, succeeded in establishing branches of Bembaron and Hazan's company in Casablanca, Marrakech, and Fez, becoming the largest distributor of Arabic records in the Maghreb.
As noted by Emily Benichou Gottreich in her study of Jewish communities in Morocco, Jews in North Africa historically occupied a "marginal" position regarding language and culture. However, due to their proficiency in colloquial Arabic and their education often obtained in French schools, they found themselves in a unique position to act as cultural intermediaries, translating local culture for European audiences. During this phase, the entry of major European production companies led to the monopolization of these intermediaries in representing Arabic music. As noted by Algerian music historian Hajj Meliani in his studies on Algerian culture, this meant that the earliest Maghrebian audio recordings were influenced by the sensitivities of the intermediaries. The recordings produced before 1925 were technically limited, requiring singers to shout into a large horn, often losing the nuances of the oud or violin. Nevertheless, these recordings established the commercial viability of this musical genre; they were marketed in Europe under the label "Arab music," which added an exotic flair, catering to a fascination with the East while locally representing a vital connection for diaspora communities and a means of preserving an increasingly fading elite heritage.
Following World War I, the Maghreb experienced intensified economic penetration of colonialism, including in the music recording sector. This period solidified the structure of the Jewish intermediary, and recording shops and distribution networks owned by Jews became the backbone of this industry in cities like Casablanca, Algiers, and Tunis. This occurred across all French colonies, where the expansion of the music industry elevated the social status of musicians to a more independent level; previously, musicians and performers relied heavily on patronage from the court or private gatherings of the aristocracy for their livelihood. However, the proliferation of the industry and phonograph devices made them more dependent on record companies, allowing for capital accumulation through record sales.
In the Maghreb, Jewish musicians benefited from this economic shift; while Muslim musicians often had religious reservations about the 'fixity' of recorded music—a debate that resonated in Islamic jurisprudence at the time regarding the legitimacy of recorded sound, particularly the controversy surrounding radio—they faced fewer such religious obstacles and were more integrated into the colonial economy. However, this phase was also marked by a hardening of musical classifications; as noted by Philip Schuyler in his study of Moroccan music, the recording process necessitated shortening performances to fit the duration of discs, which typically ranged from three to four minutes at a speed of 78 RPM.
This technical limitation forced musicians to abbreviate the complex "nuba," potentially altering its fundamental structure. Moreover, to maximize sales, production companies encouraged artists to record lighter songs that blended traditional melodies with popular European rhythms.
A Revolution Between Two Wars
The technological developments of the mid-1920s and the introduction of electrical recording through microphones expanded the music market in the Maghreb, as microphones allowed for capturing the subtlest nuances of sound and lighter musical instruments, paving the way for female singers who could not compete with the volume of brass instruments. This period marked the golden age for Jewish female artists, the most famous of whom was Tunisian [Habiba Msika](https://ma3azef.com/%D9%81%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%88%D9%86/%D8%AB%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%AD%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%A8%D8%A9-%D9%85%D8%B3%D9%8A%D9%83%D8%A9), who first gained fame in theaters and nightclubs, with their images on record covers often inciting moral panic among both the conservative Muslim elite and the French colonial administration, who viewed mixed-gender gatherings in public spaces as a threat to social order.
This era also witnessed a flourishing of hybrid music. Musicians like Leila Abassi blended jazz, tango, and French song into their works. This unusual musical fusion created a magical feeling that transcended language barriers, and their recordings sold by the thousands, creating a distinct soundscape across Morocco, differentiating it from the colonial French elite culture and the conservative textual traditions of heritage. Despite these developments, the dominance of Jews in the industry became a source of local tension during this period to the extent that the press, as Christopher Silver points out in his book, criticized the notion that "most of the local professionals in Algeria are Jews"; this dominance sowed the seeds for future conflicts.
As the momentum of nationalist movements grew in the 1930s, tensions surrounding the Jewish presence in the music industry and its implications for the broader socio-political landscape of the Maghreb became increasingly pronounced.
As reported by ma3azef.com.
