Saoud l'Oranais

Origins and early life

Saoud l'Oranais, born Messaoud Georges El Medioni in Oran in 1886, the son of Chemoul El Medioni, a cigar maker, belonged to the Sephardi Jewish community of western Algeria and remained a Jew all his life.

Work and career

He was a violinist, singer and composer in the Arab-Andalusian tradition brought to North Africa by refugees from Spain, and he became the leading master of the hawzi style of Oran, the lighter, more lyrical branch of that repertoire, singing in Judeo-Arabic and in Arabic. He performed in the cafés of the Derb, the Jewish quarter of Oran, and in Algiers, and he recorded for the labels that were then spreading Algerian music across the Maghreb.

In 1933 he founded his own school of traditional Algerian music, La Mouloudia, where he trained a generation of Muslim and Jewish musicians together; he discovered the singer Sultana Daoud and gave her the stage name Reinette l'Oranaise, and he taught the young Lili Boniche. He was the uncle of the pianist Maurice El Medioni, who carried the Oran style to a later century. He moved to Paris, and after the German occupation he was arrested as a Jew, interned at Drancy, deported and murdered at the Sobibor extermination camp in 1943 together with his son. His recordings survive, and the music he shaped is still played on both sides of the Mediterranean.