Here's a killer tape that comes to us from Friend-of-the-Stash Polina. It's a vintage 1990s cassette from the Zayane region - Tamazight speakers from the area of Beni Mellal/Zaouiat Cheikh/Khenifra - before the era of auto-tune and drum programming. Scratchy viola, buzzy bendirs, and powerful vocals from the singer Aicha. The cassette j-card refers to her as Najmat Zayane (The Zayane Star) and Alfannana Aicha (The Artist Aicha). The Aicha pictured on the j-card resembles the singer in this GREAT clip - Aicha el Hajeb عائشة الحاجب, also known as Aicha Oulbomzough:
It looks like the same Aicha to me, but all the music I can find online by Aicha el Hajeb is very traditional, slow-tempo music. What's on this cassette is of a much more uptempo variety, and I'm not sure whether the voice is the same:
If this is indeed Aicha el Hajeb, then this tape is something of a rarity - I've seen no other listing of recordings by her, but many YouTube commenters have praised her artistry and lamented her retirement from performing.
To complicate matters, the artwork from the j-card indicates that it was published by Nachat Ezzaouia (perhaps it is a company from the city of Zaouiat Cheikh), whereas the cassette shell reads "Ain Asserdoun Disque عين إسردون ديسك", a company from Beni Mellal. So it's possible that the music on the cassette does not match the artist in the photograph.
Whatever the case may be, the music is some down-home Zayane goodness. Thanks Polina for the share, and Happy Thanksgiving to our US American friends.
Alfannana Aicha الفنانة عائشة Najmat Zayane نجمة زيان Nachat Ezzaouia cassette 123 نشاط الزاوية
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
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!
