Edmond-Nathan Yafil

Edmond-Nathan Yafil was an Algerian Jewish musician and educator. As a young man, he learned the music of the ṣanā‘a genre, a local musical repertoire with roots in medieval Cordoba, by playing in the Arab cafés of Algiers. His mentor was the Muslim conductor and musician Mohamed Ben ‘Ali Sfindja. Later, Yafil worked as local facilitator for Jules Rouanet, the French ethnomusicologist. Yafil himself was a ṣanā‘a aficionado, and in 1904 he published in Arabic as well as in Judeo-Arabic two editions of his authoritative anthology. The Judeo Arabic version was titled Diwan al-aghānī min kalām al-Andalus, while the Arabic collection was named Majmū‘āt al-aghānī fi al-alḥān min kalām al-Andalus (Anthology of Songs and Melodies of Andalusian Heritage). He also contributed to Albert Lavignac’s Encyclopédie de la musique. In 1911, he founded a music school dedicated to ṣanā‘a, and in 1922 he inherited Sfindja’s chair of Arab music at the Conservatory of Algiers. Yafil also made recordings with the Compagnie Française du Gramophone.