Messaoud El Mediouni

Messaoud El Medioni (25 November 1886 in Oran - 23 March 1943), also known as Saoud l'Oranais, was an Algerian band leader and proprietor of the original Café Oran. He was the uncle of Algerian pianist Maurice El Mediouni.

Around 1938, the mother of a 13-year-old blind girl from Tiaret, Sultana Daoud, sent her to study with "Saoud l'Oranais" - this girl was later to become famous as Reinette L'Oranaise, the most prominent of all Jewish Algerian singers.^[1]^[2]

Medioni was arrested by the Germans in Marseille in January 1943 and sent to Sobibor extermination camp, where he was murdered in the gas chambers on 23 March 1943.^[3]

References

^ John Shepherd Continuum encyclopedia of popular music of the world Volumes 3-7 "From the 1940s until her emigration to Paris in 1961, the blind singer Reinette l'Oranaise was the acclaimed star of hawzi. Other musicians on this scene included the band leader Saoud el Medioni and his nephew the pianist Maurice el M..."
^ Philip Sweeney The Virgin directory of world music 1991 "Reinette I'Oranaise was born Sultana Daoud in Tiaret, Algeria, in the early 1920s. Blind from the age of two, she was sent by her mother to study music with the Jewish master Saoud Medioni, "Saoud l'Oranais," in whose Oran cafe in the ..."
^ Hatikvah Music (selections #4 and #5)