Lili Boniche

• Name — Lili Boniche • Native Name — ليلي بونيش • Birth Name — Eliaou Élie Boniche • Born — 29 April 1922 • Birthplace — Casbah of Algiers, French Algeria • Died — 6 March 2008 • Place of death — Paris, France • Genre — Chaabi, Franco-Arab chanson • Occupation — Singer, musician, composer • Instrument — Mandola, Guitar • Years Active — 1930s–1950s, 1998–1999 • Label — Pacific Records, APC, East West, Créon Mélodie

Born as the first of four children into a modest Algerian Jewish family in the Casbah of Algiers, Boniche taught himself to play his father's mandola at a young age. After his initiation to classical Arab-Andalusian music and the popular Algerian hawzi style by the renowned musician Saoud L'Oranais for three years, he was accepted at El Moutribia, the society for Arab-Andalusian music in Algiers, at the end of the 1930s. During the 1930s, Boniche became a popular singer-songwriter of Algerian chaabi. He went on concert tours including to neighbouring Morocco and at age 15 had his own show every Monday at the Algiers Opera House. Until shortly before World War II, he appeared along with Muslim musicians such as Mustapha Skandrani on the Arabic programmes of Radio Algers. When the regime of Vichy France introduced anti-Jewish laws at the end of 1940, he could no longer be heard on the radio, and his French citizenship, that he held as all other Algerian Jews since the Crémieux Decree of 1870, was revoked. After the Allied landings in North Africa at the end of 1942, Boniche was able to publicly perform again. He recorded his 6-minute song “Marché Noir” (Black Market) on both sides of a 78 rpm record, whose lyrics expressed the dire situation of Jews and Muslims in wartime North Africa. The words speak of the "deprivations of the Vichy years, of survival despite all odds, of food rations, and of the emergence of a notorious and devastating black market." In 1946, he performed at the Soleil d'Algérie, a music hall near Place Pigalle in Paris, where later French president François Mitterand used to listen to his songs.

Boniche popularized the hybrid subgenre of Franco-Arab chansons, sometimes incorporating Latin American rhythms such as tango, pasodoble and mambo into his repertoire. His composition “علاش ما تحبنيش/Pourquoi tu ne m’aimes pas” (Why don’t you love me), a tango which both French and Algerian Arabic lyrics, is an example of this popular style. Another song from 1950 was “Carmelita,” named after a Spanish woman, with "Bambino", "l’Oriental" and "Alger, Alger" among his well-known songs.

Boniche retired from performing in the 1950s after marrying a French countess, and only played in private celebrations. He went back to Algiers, where he became a businessman, owning four cinemas. In 1962, he left Algeria again following the end of the war for the country's independence from France. In 1997, Labassi performed for the French movie Would I Lie to You?, with the original soundtrack published by Sony music France. In the 1982 drama movie The Big Pardon by Alexandre Arcady, Boniche played himself as an Algerian Jewish musician. In 1998, he returned to the recording studio, when he played guitar alongside the Algerian-born pianist Maurice El Mediouni and others for the album Boniche Dub. This album, produced by Bill Laswell and Jean Touitou, with Laswell also performing on bass, synthesizer, and drum programming, earned Boniche new fans as the "crooner of the Casbah." This was followed by other albums using the master tapes owned by his daughter for remastered versions, paying tribute to Boniche, who was called "an equivalent figure to Ibrahim Ferrer of the Buena Vistas, [...] bringing back to life a bygone era". In November 1999, Boniche gave a sold-out concert at the Olympia in Paris, playing Algerian chaabi and his Franco-Arab chansons with Maurice El Médiouni on piano. Commenting on the classification Jewish-Arabic music, Boniche reportedly said: “Do they say a Muslim musician plays Islamo-Arab music? I play Arabic music, that's all!” Boniche died in Paris on 6 March 2008.