The musician Maurice el Médioni, who has died aged 95, provided a reminder that there was a time – in the period between the second world war and Algerian independence in 1962 – when Muslim and Jewish musicians worked together in Algeria to transform the country’s popular music.
He was a pianist who could play, and blend together, almost any musical style. His left hand might pump out stomping boogie rhythms while his right hand played Arabic or Andalusian styles. He could switch from French chanson and cabaret to Latin themes, and he played a key role in the development of the Algerian styles chaabi and raï.
When I met him in 2007, El Médioni described his early life in the Algerian port city of Oran as “playing in bars and at Arabic marriages or Jewish weddings or playing in a big chaabi orchestra for the Algiers radio station. I started out playing boogie-woogie that I learned from the Americans, then Latin music, flamenco and Andalusian music. I was one of the first to do that and brought it into Arabic music, and now they love it.”
He was a star in Algeria in the 1950s, but then came the Algerian war, independence and the large-scale exodus of the Jewish population. El Médioni left for Israel in 1961, but when he realised that many of his exiled musician friends had moved to Paris he decided to join them. There he worked as a tailor by day and a musician by night – a lifestyle he continued when he moved to Marseille in 1967.
After decades in the musical wilderness, El Médioni eventually built an international reputation when in his 60s. The French producer Francis Falceto (creator of the Éthiopiques series) heard a cassette of El Médioni’s music and played it to the British musician and producer Ben Mandelson. Mandelson produced a recording session in Berlin, with El Médioni playing alongside some of his own musician friends and some British musicians, and the resulting album, Café Oran (1996), introduced his unique piano style to a new audience.
He followed with the album PianOriental (2000) and in the same year played at the Soul of Algeria concert at the Barbican in London, accompanying his old friend the Jewish Algerian singer Lili Boniche, in a line-up that included the Algerian “grandmother of raï”, Cheikha Rimitti.
In 2003 he opened for the British band Oi Va Voi and then joined them for the encores at shows at the ICA in London, and in Moscow and Los Angeles, and in 2006 released Descarga Oriental with the Cuban percussionist Roberto Rodriguez. Recorded in New York, the album was a reminder that Latin styles were among those he had loved and learned back in Oran. The album won a BBC Radio 3 World Music award.
The following year El Médioni played a major role in the El Gusto project, which involved an album, a film and a series of concerts that reunited Muslim and Jewish musicians from Algeria. He had declined to appear at a concert in Algeria, saying it was “not the right time” to return, but starred in an emotional show in Marseille that ended with a rousing version of the Algerian favourite Ya Rayah. In 2008 there was a further reunion with Algerian musicians as he opened for Khaled, raï’s biggest international star, at the Barbican; he had earlier played on Khaled’s 2004 album Ya-Rayi.
In 2011, and by now in his 80s, El Médioni and his wife, Juliette (nee Amsallem), whom he married in 1953, moved to Israel to live close to their children. He continued to record and perform, working with the Orchestra Ashkelon and the singer Neta Elkayam, and was a major influence on young Israeli pianists. He returned to London in 2012 to play with the Iraqi oud player Khyam Allami.
Born in Oran, in French Algeria, Maurice was one of four siblings brought up by their mother, Fany, following the death of their father, Jacob. Jacob had run the Café Saoud in the city’s Jewish quarter along with his brother, Messaoud El Médioni, the renowned musician better known as Saoud l’Oranais. Maurice attended the Ecole St André, and started to learn the piano when he was nine, playing by ear and listening to the musicians who gathered at the cafe.
He incorporated anything that he heard into his playing, learning Latin, jazz and boogie-woogie from the black American GIs who arrived in the city after the liberation of Oran in 1942. He played in clubs popular with the soldiers, and made sure his audience heard the music they wanted. He also composed and played for the big names of the Jewish Algerian cabaret scene, including Boniche and Line Monty. He had been persuaded by his mother to follow a career as a tailor, but music was his passion.
In 2017 he published his memoir From Oran to Marseilles (1936-1990) with help from his British followers. The preface was by Mandelson, the foreword, translation and interviews were by Jonathan Walton (a former member of Oi Va Voi, who uses the name Lemez Lovas as a musician), and the editor was the broadcaster and musician Max Reinhardt, who described him as “charming, open-hearted, wise and witty … a compulsive musician who couldn’t wait to get near a keyboard”.
Juliette died in 2022. El Médioni is survived by his children, Yacov, Marilyne and Michael, and five grandchildren, Jeremie, Barbara, Benjamin, Nourit and Emmanuel.
• Maurice el Médioni, musician and songwriter, born 18 October 1928; died 25 March 2024
