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Maurice el Médioni
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Click on the album cover to listen to all sample tracks
Descarga Oriental - The New York Sessions
You won’t find more sprightly grand-dad musicians than this Algerian Jew originally from the Mediterranean port of Oran. Born in 1928, Maurice El Médioni is a self-taught pianist. In his 69 years of playing he has gained an international stature he would never have dreamed of in his youth. During the War Médioni allied classic Algerian and French songs with Latino and boogie-woogie numbers he learnt from the visiting American soldiers. He introduced piano into raï music, before crossing the Mediterranean and settling down in Marseille. He has since brought out two albums and is considered the creator of a style he calls “pianOriental”.
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For decades Maurice El Médioni has been captivating audiences by using his right hand to play classic “Oriental” rhythms and the left hand to create eclectic rhythms from Cuba and America’s Deep South. In this, his first album in a decade, he teamed up with top Cuban drummer Roberto Rodriguez, another musical refugee who found solace in a port city (New York). Together, they interpret nine original songs that are produced and arranged by the latter. The joyous result makes one wonder why no one had thought of such permutations before. The dexterity of Médioni’s playing on “Ana Ouana” or “Malika” gives the impression that the pianist has been practising these uptempo scales all his life.
And yet it is only recently that Médioni returned to his first passion, music, and illuminated his retirement after his career as a tailor. He celebrated his return to the stage by releasing his first CD, “Café Oran”, in 1996. Since then, he has toured the world either playing solo or accompanying the grand figure of Judeo-Arabic music, Lili Boniche. “The basis of my music is Andalusian, but I mix in boogie-woogie, jazz and Latin sounds,” he said recently. “Despite this, my (playing) still has the resonance of the Maghreb.” A perfect example of this mixture, put into a retro style, is the dreamy “Tu n’aurais jamais dû”, backed by Oscar Oñoz and his muffled trumpet.
Médioni is unfortunately let down by his voice - full of nostalgia but as flat as his piano-playing is bouncy and rippling. Luckily, he confines it to a couple of tracks only, preferring to marry his instrument with the dextrous percussions of Rodriguez. The musician from the East Village in Manhattan accompanies Médioni’s keyboard riffs in variations that go from “son” to “guarache”, via old-time boogie-woogie. “I was asked to bridge two worlds,” Rodriguez says in the sleeve-notes, “As I listened, the Arabic and Sephardic connection became very clear, the strong presence of the African rhythms, as well as the beautiful and romantic melodies, just like in a Cuban song.” Journalist Philip Sweeney likens the result to a North African Eddie Palmieri, but the salsa virtuoso never added Médioni’s “Maghrebian” piquant, an Algerian sauce that peppers this CD and provides a welcome glow to some scintillating songs.
March 2006
Daniel Brown |
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