19th March 2021 – Shabbat is almost here
And today we’ll remember the Moroccan diva Zohra El Fassia, through the eyes of an inquisitive collector and disseminator: Chris Silver.
Hello, how are you? Today is a public holiday in Madrid because it is the Day of the Father. That’s why I want to share one of the most recent photos I have with mine. About him I will only say that he has always given me the best of himself.
He is not the only one to thank today. My friend in the distance Peninah Zilberman (about who you can learn more in this previous edition) has sent me the latest edition of Jewish Telegraphic Agency Sunday Features, that includes an article about Chris Silver and his work collecting recordings of the North African Jewish musicians from the first half of the XX century, that will be the central theme of this edition of MBS.
– As usual, the music piece is at the bottom – ?
But before that, let me share a couple of thrilling news!
Peninah will talk about the Jewish heritage in Romania. You can watch it live in the Facebook page of the RCIL and later recorded in their Youtube channel.
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The work by Chris Silver
This is the portrait of Chris Silver’s Facebook profile. I have just asked him as a friend there and I hope we’ll be in touch after this and to have him again here in MBS.
The article about his work is called “This historian is preserving North African Jewish music from a bygone era“. Read it here. As a very brief summary, he is collecting records from around the world with music by North African Jewish musicians. He is creating this archive in his apartment in Montreal. He has 500 albums by Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian artists.
There is a playlist in SoundCloud curated by him. Click to listen: North African music from early 20th century Jewish musicians.
As you see, some of the artists in that playlist have already been protagonists in our Music Before Shabbat, click to check those editions:
I am sure Chris also loves Reinette l’Orainese, Cheikh Zouzou or David Bouzaglo.
I encourage you once more to read the complete article and I will close this part about him with this reflection from him:
““I never wanted to just collect or to possess,” Silver said. “I wanted to collect in order to bring the music back into conversation with people. Everything I’m endeavoring to do boils down to that. And I’ve had much success with it.””
I identify a lot with Chris because I have always had that impulse to disseminate the music I love, since I was very young. If you want to know more about what I do in this respect, take a look at the website of my radio show Mundofonías.
About our today’s artist: Zohra El Fassia
This portrait is from the website of Discog about this artist. It is also findable in this page of the 100 Years of Sephardic Los Angeles, credited as “Zohra El Fassia ca. 1950s. El Fassia Archives, courtesy of David Kornblum” .
Chris Silver’s website, in which he shares his works as a collector and dissemination, is Gharamophone.com. And here he has two entries of the blog about Zohra El Fassia. And her biography, written by Chris, and full of interesting reflections, is available in the aforementioned site of 100 Years.
I will make a very little summary. Zohra Hamou was born in Sefrou, Morocco (29 kms far to the South from Fez), in 1905. “El Fassia” means the woman from Fez and she adopted this name for the stage, as she had moved to Fez as a child. Her beginnings in music were very early. She recorded for Polyphon in the mid-to-late 1930s and she was already considered cheikha (master musician).
Nevertheless, she was supported by her Moroccan compatriots in Israel and she made some recordings with the label Zakiphon. She continued singing in Arabic and she would be admired and celebrated by a bunch of fans and many other artists. She died in 1994.
This is Sefrou nowadays. Unluckily there is no Street View yet but at least we can have an idea with this 360º picture:
