In a television interview last year, signs of the Parkinson's disease from which Jo Amar was suffering were already evident. Asked by the interviewer what his proudest achievement was, Amar replied, "Making miserable people happy - that has been my greatest contribution."
It is possible that his illness prompted the singer/songwriter to emphasize in his later years the link between his music and the distress of his audience, but perhaps even back in the 1950s and 1960s, Amar, who died last Friday in New York, at the age of 79, was aware of listeners' desire to find solace in his music. In any event, his songs still gladden the heart and bring excitement into the lives of many, just as they did decades ago, and they have been an important factor in the acceptance in Israel of Mizrahi music (that is, originating in Middle Eastern or North African countries).
"Jo Amar is no longer with us, but he has left behind him an immense legacy," eulogizes Rami Danoch, soloist of the Sounds of the Oud band, which, in the 1970s, was one of the pioneers of Mizrahi music here.
"What a powerful voice he had and what stage presence," continues Danoch. "I remember how, as a child in the early 1960s, I would go to see him perform at [Jerusalem's] Binyanei Ha'uma, accompanied by the Israel Broadcasting Authority Orchestra. It was an unforgettable experience. Nobody sat in their seats - everyone was on their feet."
Amar was born in Morocco and began his singing career in the late 1940s.
"It is widely claimed that he was a great paytan [religious poet, from the word piyyut, liturgical poem], but that is simply untrue," notes musicology professor Edwin Seroussi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is also director of its Jewish Music Research Center (JMRC). "I interviewed him about a year ago and he explicitly told me that he did not see himself that way. He even said: 'I know piyyutim, but I am no paytan.'"
Seroussi elaborates: "Like all Jewish boys in Morocco, he studied at a yeshiva. However, the music that really interested him was popular music and he did not invest his creative energy in religious poetry. Later in his career, he blended the melodies of popular Moroccan songs with the religious songs he performed. He told me that he took the melody of his famous 'Shalom Leven Dodi' from a Moroccan hit.
"Amar was a product of the colonial period in Morocco. The style of his songs was an amalgam of Moroccan and French music - or, in more widely used terminology, French-Arabic chansons. Amar was also strongly influenced by Spanish music. In the mid-1950s, he brought this combination of worlds with Moroccan music to Israel."
"Two weeks after I recorded my first song in Israel," recalled Amar in that interview last year, "it reached even the most impenetrable Ashkenazi ears."
Strong, but delicate
Songs like "Barcelona" and "The Drunkard's Song," which Amar performed in a strong, but delicate voice, became major hits. They also reflected a certain innovativeness: Up until then, Mizrahi songs were simply not aired on Israeli radio stations. But they fit in wonderfully with the aesthetics of modern Hebrew songs, which, like Amar himself, were powerfully influenced by French music.
"In recent years, a myth developed," comments Seroussi, "that Jo Amar was the great pioneer - the founder, if you will - of Mizrahi music. Sorry, I don't buy it. He was a wonderful singer and he played a significant role in opening Israeli ears to Mizrahi songs. However, he was by no means the only pioneer in that field. Well before Amar came on the scene, Bracha Tzfira included a guttural het and a guttural ayin in all her songs. And the style of the songs performed by Albert Chetrit - or, as he is better known, Filfel El Masri - is much more 'Arabic' than that of Amar. Moreover, there was no clash between Amar's music and the Hebrew songs of that era. He would perform songs by Naomi Shemer and familiar old Eretz Israel tunes, the classical Hebrew songs of the pre-state and early statehood years, as well as Hasidic melodies, cantorial music and chansons. He was a multifaceted singer."
In contrast, Danoch remembers Amar as very much a solitary pioneer, involved in a struggle to make Mizrahi songs an integral part of modern Hebrew music. He recalls how, in Tel Aviv's Hatikva quarter where he himself grew up, as in many other communities throughout Israel, "people adored every song that Amar performed - first, because we really loved him and, second, because there was no one else out there waging that battle. He was the only singer who performed Mediterranean songs. No one else did so back then. Alongside singers like Aris San and Aharon Amram, who was the pioneer of Yemenite music in Israel, Amar was a major influence."
In the mid-1960s, Amar left Israel for the United States. Seroussi, who rejects the narrative of the discriminated-against Mizrahi singer, explains that decision as a career move: "Amar did not leave because the establishment had shut him out. Like any artist, he was simply looking for the best possible market, and the market in America was superb. Much better than what the Israeli one was at the time.
"People might not be aware of the fact that many Israeli singers recorded in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s," continues Seroussi. "For a multifaceted singer like Amar, who also performed cantorial and popular music, it was the ideal place."
After several decades in the U.S., Amar returned to Israel. "But he came back to a country that was very different from the one he had left years before," observes Seroussi. "Israel now had the [Ashdod-based Israel] Andalusian Orchestra and Mizrahi music no longer had to fight for its place in the Israeli sun. When he returned to this country, he was given a hero's welcome and was touted as a prophet. There were all sorts of celebrations and evenings dedicated to his musical achievements, where it was claimed by all and sundry that he was responsible for Mizrahi music's new and respectable position on the Israeli musical landscape.
"In my opinion, people simply went overboard in their praise. Certainly, he was a pioneer of Mizrahi music here, but not the only one. Nevertheless, it cannot, of course, be denied that he made a major contribution to Israeli music."
