Samy Elmaghribi

Samy Elmaghribi (born April 19, 1922 as Salomon Amzallag,^[1] died on March 9, 2008) was a Jewish-Moroccan musician. Born in Safi, he lived in Rabat, Salé, Paris, Montreal, and Ashdod.^[1] The Institut européen des musiques juives describes his work as combining "popular Moroccan songs, ancient and modern, classical Andalusian singing, and liturgical chanting, to which he integrated melodies from Turkey and Central Europe."^[1]

He was the youngest of three sons of Farha and Amram Amzallag.^[1] His family moved from Safi to Rabat in 1926; when he was 14 years old (around 1936), shortly after his mother's death they moved again, to Salé.^[1] In Rabat, he started to familiarize himself with Arab-Andalusian music and taught himself to play the oud; he also sang in the synagogue.^[1] He later perfected his technique by attending the "Conservatoire de Musique" in Casablanca and by following some of the most revered Algerian masters of Andalusian music.

Elmaghribi was 20 years old when he decided to quit his position as a sales manager to devote himself entirely to music. Having access to the Moroccan palace, he was one of the most preferred singers of Mohammed V.

In 1955 in Casablanca, Elmaghribi established his own record label, Samyphone.^[2] The discs were originally pressed in France.^[2][3] In the beginning of the 1960s, the Israeli record label Zakiphon,^[4] which specialized in the music of Maghrebi Jews, pressed and distributed Samyphone albums in Israel.^[2] In the late 1960s, Pathé reissued several Samyphone albums from the 1950s for the French market.^[2][3]

Elmaghribi left Morocco for Montreal in 1960. In 1967, he became the first cantor of Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal.^[1] He officiated there for 16 years.^[1] In 1984 he moved again, to Ashdod in Israel,^[1] where he established a Sephardic music center Merkaz Piyyout Veshira. From 1988 to 1994, Elmaghribi served there as music director and led a student choir that developed into the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra.^[1]

Elmaghribi returned to Montreal in 1996, though he continued to travel and perform internationally.^[1] At some point in the last decade of his life he served as cantor at Beit Yosef Sephardi synagogue of New Jersey, and taught Sephardi liturgy at Yeshiva University in New York.^[1] He died on March 9, 2008, in Montreal.^[1]

Chaimae Bouazzaoui, the first Moroccan woman diplomat in Israel, interviewed Samy Elmaghribi's daughter, in 2015, on the occasion of the launch of the Samy Elmaghribi Foundation^[5] in Canada, describing her father as "the Moroccan Aznavour".

Contributing artist

• The Rough Guide to the Music of Morocco (2012, World Music Network)

• Silver, Christopher. (2022). "I Sing and I Pray: Samy Elmaghribi’s Sonic Reflection on Music and Religion." Canadian Jewish Studies / Études Juives Canadiennes, 33, 178–190.