Zitouni Bourgogne - Chaâbi Star

This album was shared a few years by Gary ago over at Bodega Pop. (Thanks Gary!!) I finally spent some time with it and did some digging trying to identify the artist. It's a chaâbi album by the singer Zitouni and his group. Zitouni was a member of the legendary group Noujoum Bourgogne (The Bourgogne Stars, named for the Bourgogne neighborhood of Casablanca where they originated). That group went against then-current chaâbi trend of using keyboards, drum sets and guitars, opting instead to use only acoustic folk instruments: taarija, bendir, and kamanja (violin) [1]. Here is a clip from a performance of the group, featuring Zitouni on lead vocals:

The group split in the early 1990s. Of the group members, violinist/singer Mustapha Samamrkandi (known as Mustapha Bourgogne) achieved the greatest success as a solo artist. Zitiouni also continued as a solo artist, but without as much success. Many YouTube commenters lament the fact that Zitiouni's artistry is underappreciated. 

A few of Zitiouni's solo albums are available on streaming platforms - these platforms however are not able to distinguish between multiple artists that have the same name. So if you look for Zitouni on YouTube Music or Spotify, you'll find a couple of albums by our Zitouni (Gali Ndik and Sidi Abdejlil) alongside an album by an Algerian raï singer named Zitouni and some tracks by an âita group billed as Cheikh Moslih & Zitouni. Other recordings of our Zitouni can be found under the artist name Zitouni Bourgogne. That's the name that Zitouni uses on his own YouTube channel, launched in 2021 and currently active.

At least one song of Zitouni's is a well-known classic: Daouli Ghzali. This song was burning up the wedding/party dance floors when I was in Morocco in Summer 1995, but I never knew who originally sang it. You can find an edited version of it on numerous compilations, but here's the full version from the original cassette:
 

Zitouni's solo work, like that of Mustapha Bourgogne, foregoes the acoustic-folk-instruments-only format of the Noujoum Bourgogne group. The album shared by Bodega Pop appears to be an early solo work of Zitouni's. In addition to kamanja and bendir, it features some light keyboard accompaniment (pads and bass), what sounds to me like a drum set, and a prominent darbuka. I've uploaded a few of the album's tracks to YouTube:



There are no track titles listed on the cassette or j-card. I added track titles below from listening to the lyrics and music. There are a few short instrumental pieces on the album that feature rhythmic accents reminiscent of people dancing and stepping on a qaada oil barrel, so I am calling those pieces 'qaada music'. You can grab the tracks from Bodega Pop (link below) and retag them if you like.

Orchestre Zitouni اوركسترا الزيتوني
Al-Mounafiq المنافق
Sadara Production cassette 016 إنتاج الصدارة
A1 Al Mounafiq
A2 Rani ya Sidi Ghrib
A3 Al Bahraoui
A4 qaada music
B1 Khssara Fik
B2 Lwali Bourchiche
B3 electro qaada
B4 Wa Ouladek
B5 qaada music

FLAC at Bodega Pop

Sources:
[1] Nora Dialna. "Noujoum Bourgogne, histoire d’un groupe 100% marocain". Dialna, April 19, 2021. 
https://dialna.fr/musique-noujoum-bourgogne-histoire-dun-groupe-100-marocain/

Mustapha Baqbou - Moroccan Tape Stash Remix

Still hard to believe that Mustapha Baqbou is gone. The great guinbri player from Marrakech passed away in September, as we commemorated in a previous post. I checked the stash to see if I any additional recordings of his that I could share. I found a copy of a cassette of his that has appeared online before: many years ago at the defunct Murky Recesses blog, and recently in a YouTube complete album upload: 

The album is very good and well recorded, but there is a lot of tape hiss on the recording, especially on side B (at least this edition of it - my copy is the same edition as the embedded YouTube video above). I was able to roll back a fair amount of the hiss using Audacity. My audio software (Logic) recently rolled out a new stem splitter feature that can identify voices and some instruments in a recording and separate them into tracks. So I thought I'd try my hand at a remix - eq'ed the vocal and the guinbri, added a tiny bit more stereo separation between them and a little reverb (between the noise reduction and the stem separation, the sound had become very dry). Finally, I used the mastering tool to algorithmically improve the overall sound, and I'm pretty happy with the results! Hope you enjoy it too!

Mustapha Baqbou مصطفى باقبو
EH1271 (2025 Moroccan Tape Stash Remix)
A1 Baniya - Sidi Hammou
A2 Chalaba Titara - Mimouna
B1 Berrma Nana Soutanbi - Aicha Lagnawiya
B2 Hamdouchia
B3 Jilali Boualam (fadeout)

FLAC | 320

Around The Interwebs: Aïssaoua (Brian Jones-ey Remix) and Music of Northern Morocco

 

Sharing links to a couple of Moroccan recordings that recently surfaced on the interwebs.

Friend of the Stash Mr. Tear dropped a compilation of Aïssaoua tracks over at Hive Mind Records. Sourced from cassettes, he

fed the tape rips into vocal removal software to produce some rudimentary stems and then... processed these in Audacity adding some selective reverb, delay, distortion with the intention of accentuating the overwhelming, heady aspects of this music.

The result is a set of tracks that gives a mildly psychedelic aura to this already powerful music, while preserving its structure and flow. That is, it brings the vibe of "Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka" without completely uprooting and overwhelming the source material. Nice job, Marc!

Available only until the end of November 2025, the album is available as "Pay What You Like", and all proceeds collected will go to the UK advocacy group Hope not Hate. Follow links in the embedded Bandcamp player below to pick up your copy.

Meanwhile over at Fuji Puzzle Box, blog curator (and Firesign Theatre archivist) Taylor Jessen has shared an obscure 1965 LP Music of Northern Morocco, Vol. 1. Recorded in cafes in Chefchaouen and Tetouan during Ramadan 1963 by one Binx Shelby of Arizona, the album is the sole record released on the "Band Box Ethnological Series" label. 

While the recordings were certainly made in northern Morocco, they are not particularly representative of the regional traditions of that area. They consist mainly of songs that were popular at the time, including both Middle Eastern and North African pieces - whatever these musicians in cafes felt like playing. It's a bit like someone recording an open mic at a neighborhood bar in Oakland where people are singing Eagles covers and releasing it as "Music of Northern California". Still, it's cool to hear what types of songs were played by guys in cafes in the mid-60s in Chefchaouen and Tetouan. And the graphic design is quite lovely! 

The liner notes state that side 2 consists of ancient religious songs, but it's actually just more popular songs of the day. The first song on side 2 is a questionably executed version of Ismail Ahmed's smash hit 'Khiffat Rajl' (better known by its refrain lyric 'Ash Dani') 

Visit Fuji Puzzle Box to check out the album and to read Tyler's EXTENSIVE research on Binx Shelby!

And congratulations to Morocco's U20 team for winning the FIFA U-20 World Cup today in Chile!!