Jo Amar

Moroccan-born singer and hazzan who brought the liturgical music of Moroccan Jewry to Israel after his aliyah in 1956. Songs like Yismah Moshe and Barcelona helped carry Mizrahi music into the Israeli mainstream, and he later served as a cantor in New York.

Who was Jo Amar?

Jo Amar was a Moroccan-Israeli singer and hazzan who brought the music of Moroccan Jewry into the heart of Israeli culture. In an era when Israeli popular music looked mainly to Europe, his voice, steeped in the liturgy and melodies of the synagogues of Morocco, opened the way for the Mizrahi music that would later fill Israel’s airwaves.

From Settat to Israel

Yosef “Jo” Amar was born on 1 June 1930 in Settat, Morocco. He grew up in the world of the Moroccan synagogue, with its piyyutim and its Andalusian melodies, and began singing professionally in Morocco in the late 1940s.

In 1956 he emigrated to Israel. In his new country he brought Moroccan Jewish liturgical music to a wide public for the first time, through concerts, radio and recordings. In 1960 he placed third at the Israel Song Festival with “Leil HaChag,” sung with Lilith Nagar.

The singer and hazzan

Amar recorded more than twenty albums, including two with the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra. His songs, among them “Yismah Moshe,” “Shalom LeVen Dodi,” “Barcelona,” “Song of the Drunkard” and “Ani Havatzelet HaSharon,” joined sacred and popular traditions, and mixed Moroccan, Spanish and Israeli styles. Later Mizrahi stars, among them Zohar Argov, who recorded “Barcelona,” Eyal Golan, Ishai Levi and Oren Hen, named him as an influence.

In 1970 he moved to New York, where he served as a hazzan, leading prayers in the tradition he had grown up with, and continued to perform.

Death and legacy

In 2008 a tribute evening was held in his honor in Jerusalem. Jo Amar died on 26 June 2009, at the home of his son in Woodmere, New York, and was buried at Moshav Yad Rambam in central Israel. His recordings preserve the voice of Moroccan Jewish prayer and song, and his career marks the moment when the music of Moroccan Jews stepped out of the synagogue and onto the national stage.