Maurice el Medioni

Maurice El Médioni meets Roberto Rodriguez - Descarga Oriental: The New York Sessions (2006) {Piranha CD-PIR2003}
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© 2006 Piranha Musik | CD-PIR2003
Jazz / Latin / Jewish / International / Piano / Percussion

On first thought, one might be hard-pressed to find a common ground between Algerian raï music and Latin jazz. But for the pianist Maurice el Medioni, an Algerian-born Jew who left his home for France decades ago as an exile, and the Cuban-born, New York-based percussionist Roberto Rodriguez, the link connecting North Africa and Cuba is a direct one – by way of Spanish Andalusia. World music fusion exercises are more common all the time, and cultural distinctions often become so blurred that the sources are obscured rather than accented.

Once upon a time in Algeria… a streetwise teenage boy started playing piano in the bars of Oran’s Jewish Quarter. It was 1942 and American GIs were in town bringing with them the sounds of Boogie-Woogie, Jazz and Cuban rhythms. Maurice El Médioni was that boy, soaking up those musical influences and, adding French chanson, Andalusian and Arabic styles to the mix, growing to become one of the pioneers of Algerian Raï music, playing for some of the biggest names of the golden era and his influence acknowledged by the stars of today such as Khaled and Rachid Taha. Now, with a band featuring Salamat’s Mahmoud Fadl and the Klezmatics’ David Krakauer and Frank London, the man is back in the spotlight at the Café Oran.