Hawzi

Readers of Gharamophone first encountered the powerful voice of the Constantinois Jewish artist Aroun Haouzi El Baidi in a January 2021 post. In that entry, I attempted to sketch out his biography, albeit in broad and sometimes tentative strokes. Since then––and thanks to the intervention of his descendants, a number of other details have surfaced. We now know, for example, that Haouzi was born in Aïn Beïda in 1889 but lived most of his life in Constantine. In addition to his recording activities for Polyphon and Pathé, he owned a record store on rue Caraman (today: Didouche Mourad), the principle street of Constantine’s city center. That the Haouzi home was a musical one is borne out not just be the activities of Aroun but by the fact that he taught the Andalusian and hawzi repertoires to his daughter Edith Khalifa (née Haouzi), of which she was known to sing late into her life. Aroun Haouzi “El Baidi” and his family departed Algeria in March 1962. He died in Paris four years later.

This recording of “Ya Moulat El Khana” comes from a rather prodigious 1932 Polyphon session. Part of the hawzi repertoire, it is a powerful lament, especially when performed by a powerful vocalist. “Today, my dearest ones left,” Haouzi intones at the 2:04 mark, “Only I remained.”

Gharamophone · Aroun Haouzi El Baidi – Ya Moulat El Khana [Sides 1-2] (Polyphon, 1932)

Notes
Label: Polyphon
Title: Ya Moulat El Khana (يا مولاة الخانة) [Sides 1-2]
Artist: Aroun Haouzi el Baidi
Issue Number: V 45.570 A; V 45.570 B
Matrix Number: 5249 BK; 5250 BK
Date of Pressing: 1932

Alice Fitoussi (1916-1978?) was one of a handful of Algerian Jewish musicians to remain in Algeria after independence in 1962. In many ways, the continued presence of a highly visible and audible Algerian Jew in independent Algeria reminds that music can complicate periodization schemes. At the same time, Fitoussi serves as yet another potent symbol of the ways in which Algerian Jews remained deeply attached to their Arabic-language musical heritage––one shared with their Muslim compatriots––after more than a century of French colonization.

Of course, Fitoussi was much more than an emblem. She was a gifted vocalist and masterful ʿud player. She served as a prominent member of the Radio Alger orchestra and was among the first musicians to appear on Algerian television. And like her father Maʿallim Rahmim Fitoussi, she was also a respected recording artist.

Alice Fitoussi first started recording as a teenager: initially for Gramophone and then for Polyphon. Even at that early juncture, she was already crowned a maʿallima (master musician) by her peers. She earned that honorific, in part, thanks to her skillful interpretation of the hawzi repertoire. On this Polyphon recording from 1933, for example, a 17-year-old Fitoussi deftly performs “Ya msalmin qalbi,” an eighteenth-century poem written by the famed Tlemcani shaykh Bensahla.

Notes
Label: Polyphon
Title: Ya msalmin kalbi[1]
Artist: El Malma Alice Fitouci [Alice Fitoussi]
Issue Number: B 45.972 V
Matrix Number: 281 WPA
Date of Pressing: 1933

[1] Correct transliteration into English should render “kalbi” as “qalbi” (of my heart) but I am following the French orthography printed on the label here. In future posts, I will add titles in Arabic to avoid confusion.