It’s a song that resembles us. “L’Oriental”, somewhere between Paris and the Maghreb

The song “L’Oriental” is known today, most often, in a version by Enrico Macias. Signed Joseph Hagège, it was first a standard of the “francarabe” song embodied by Line Monty, Blond-Blond or Lili Boniche.

In partnership with the exhibition It’s a song that resembles us – Worldwide hits of French-language popular music At the Cité internationale de la langue française in Villers-Cotterêts, these chronicles look in detail at each of the stories presented there.

In 1962, the end of the Algerian War saw many French pieds-noirs return to Metropolitan France. But alongside them, other people also fled Algeria: Jews, who had been present in the Maghreb for 2,000 years, before the arrival of Islam, and many Muslims or Christians, of Berber or Arab origin, who no longer wanted or could live in a country where the war of decolonization had also been a civil war.

For them, The Oriental is not a song by Enrico Macias, but a song that appeared in the early 1950s. This song was first sung by Line Monty, the sublime and elegant “Marlene Dietrich” of the Maghreb, with the popular banter of Algiers in her accents. The albino artist Blond-Blond also had his version, he who could be nicknamed the Maurice Chevalier of Oran. Both are emblematic of a musical genre that would later be called the “francarabe” song.

In this episode of It’s a song that resembles usyou hear excerpts from:

Enrico Macias, The Oriental, 1962

Line Monty, The Oriental, 1952

Blond-Blond, The Oriental, 1960

Lili Boniche, The Oriental, 1999

Enrico Macias and Khaled, The Oriental, 2012

You can also extend this column with the book It’s a song that resembles us published by Heritage Publishing.

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