Les Variations - Moroccan Roll (France 1974)

North American Jews weren’t the only ones making an impact on pop music and trying to maintain a bond with their Judaism. This was occurring throughout the Diaspora. In the mid-sixties, Moroccan Jews Issac "Jacky" Bitton (drums), Marco Tobaly (guitar), and singer Jo Leb (replaced by Tunisian Jew Robert Fitoussi), who were living in France, co-founded Les Variations. The band sang in English and melded rock guitar and song structure with the indigenous rhythms and instrumentation of North Africa and the Sephardic melodies and Hebrew songs of their youth. Throughout the first half of the seventies, Les Variations was turning heads in the States with the albums Moroccan Roll and Cafe de Paris and were opening shows for the likes of Kiss and Aerosmith before personnel problems broke up the band in 1975. Today, Bitton lives in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn and leads a band that plays "Jewish rock 'n' roll." Tobaly and his family live in Paris. (excerpt from Stars of David: Rock'n'roll's Jewish Stories By Scott R. Benarde)







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