Darío Moreno

Biography

Darío Moreno was born to a large Jewish family. He was orphaned in early childhood when his father, who worked in a train station in Aydın, was shot dead under tragic circumstances. He was placed in the Sephardic orphanage of Izmir (Nido De Guerfanos) by his mother and remained there until he was four.

After a primary education in the Jewish educational establishments of Izmir, he had many odd jobs during his early youth. He put great effort into continuing his education while simultaneously working to make a living. He started working as an errand boy in the law firm of the city's prominent lawyers, and he was eventually trained to become a clerk in the office. In the evenings, he would study French in Izmir's Central Library. With a guitar that had fallen into his hands by chance, he also learned to play the guitar, mainly on his own with occasional tutoring from acquaintances.

He started singing at Bar Mitzva celebrations as a second job. In his early twenties, he had already become a well-known singer in Izmir, and particularly among the Jewish community. During his military service in the Turkish Army, he was employed as a singer in officers' quarters in various garrisons and became more focused on music. His first truly professional musical performance started in his hometown right after his discharge, and was arranged through connections established while in the army. When he started making money with his music, he moved to the better-off Jewish quarter of Karataş to a house in a street leading to the historical building of Asansör, one of the city's landmarks (and which literally means the "Elevator", people taking an actual elevator to go to the higher part of the quarter, this part being separated by the coastal strait with a steep slope). Nowadays this street is named Dario Moreno Sokağı (Dario Moreno Street) in his legacy.

A hyperactive personality, Darío Moreno died of a heart attack in a taxi on the way to the airport in Istanbul on 1 December 1968. He was only 47. According to his will he wanted to be buried in Izmir, Turkey but he was buried in Holon, Israel, by his mother Madam Roza.

Ya Mustafa

Ya Mustafa is one of the most remembered of Moreno's songs. It was very famous in the 1950s and early 1960s. The original version of this catchy song (having a Greek style music) and the identity of its composer are disputed. It appeared in one of the films of the Egyptian actor Ismail Yassin in the 1950s and in another Egyptian film of Sabah from the same era. Dario Moreno performed it in the late 1950s. In Europe, the song became popular with the help of Bob Azzam (a Lebanese singer who was born in Egypt in 1925 and died in Monte Carlo 2004), who released it in 1960 in France with lyrics consisting of at least 3 languages: "Chérie je t'aime, chéri je t'adore – come la salsa del pomodoro" (Darling, I love you, darling, I adore you – like tomato sauce). Bruno Gigliotti, (Orlando) the brother of famous singer Dalida, also covered the song. This song, with its Greek style music and polyglotic lyrics, can be considered a historical documentation of the cosmopolitan era in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. During that era, a large cosmopolitan polyglotic community, mainly Greeks, Jews and Italians, lived in the Egyptian city. A sizable portion lived in the Attareen district, where the events of the song take place.

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