Reflections on North Beach Part II by Satrinya for the Gilded Serpent

1. Meeting Jamila Salimpour
I went to my first Thursday night class in Berkeley at the Alxandra Zubeck School of Ballet and I was totally unprepared for what I saw. At the time I participated in these classes, Jamila was 49 years old, and not in bad shape at all. She could "out-do" some of the best students in the class in both shimmies as well as the more complicated finger cymbal patterns.

I met the regulars, Libby, Linda, and Meta. By the end of the two-hour class, I saw that Jamila was portraying her interpretation of a Middle Eastern type of image. Sometimes Aida would show up before heading over to the Casbah Cabaret in San Francisco. She was also imitating the image that her teacher and mentor, Jamila, was projecting.

I also continued to take lessons at the "Grace Mann School of Ballet". Grace knew Jamila by reputation. Grace Mann was a former Prima Ballerina for the Ballet Ruse de Monte Carlo. Grace asked me if Jamila ever mentioned a male dancer named Roman "Bert" Balladine. Grace told me that Bert used to dance in the Ballet Ruse, and that he and another ballerina toured around the Mid-East and had been bitten by the "Belly Dance bug". Bert and she became dance partners and she told me that my teacher, Jamila, would sit in the club every night, watching them perform. She went further to state that Jamila and Bert operated a dance studio as partners. Then they had a disagreement and split the dance studio partnership. I couldn't believe it,

I was also taking karate lessons on Grand Avenue in Oakland at the now defunct Karate Ways. My instructor's wife was also a Belly Dancer and instructor, Carol Israel. My karate instructor told me that his wife had a big falling out with Jamila. There was a radio talk show back then that was called "California Girls" hosted by Dan Chamberlain. The show was mostly sex talk, relationships, and that sort of fare. Don and his crew were having the first annual "Love Faire". It featured books, relationship experts, psychics, astrologers, lotions, potions, and.Belly Dancers! My instructor told me that the radio station had hired his wife and her dance troup to entertain at the faire and that they were to be paid fifty dollars.

He said, "Will you ask Jamila if she remembers a woman named Janet?" Jamila and Janet used to share a house together and there was always an interesting string of comings and goings. Grand Avenue was a very entertaining place.

After about three months, I started to take belly dance classes three times per week. Jamila said that I was showing great promise and that she saw no reason that I should not take Saturday classes at the "Old Poultry Company" in San Francisco. That is when I first saw all of the "Bal-Anaters", including Jamila's little daughter, Suhaila. The majority of them considered themselves the most elite. They were, therefore, the most aloof of any of Jamila's dancers. Very few would talk to us mere mortals (i.e., the new dancers). Aida and Hillary would (probably because they were dance teachers), but the others treated us like non-entities. I recall seeing John Compton, Habiba, Katura, Rubaba, Sonya, Kismet, and Nancy Kerr, just to remember a few. When Jamila asked me "Why aren't you in Bal-Anat?" the attitude of the other students regarding me changed. I became "acceptable"!

2. Membership in Bal-Anat
I took costume classes from one of her dancers named Sabah (but not the same Sabah as Jamie Miller).

I selected a professional dancing name, Masalima, mostly because it was a name that nobody had claimed previously. Jamila commanded, "Use it!" Thereafter, I did. I remember Aida exclaiming jealously, "She has the best name!"

For instance, Jamila not only danced at the Bagdad, she was the part owner of it. She described her co-owner, a man named Yousef, as "an Armenian opportunist". Jamila also told us dancers of the nicknames she was called by the other dancers and their teachers. "Mother J." and "The Fortress" were two of the names. Jamila herself talked about her past in these Saturday classes. She said that her first husband was East Indian, "before it was fashionable to marry an Indian." She and her first husband parted ways when she came to dance in San Francisco. Then Jamila told us some things about her second husband. He was Persian, and when they married, he swore that he would slash her legs if she ever danced in public again. This was Suhaila's father.

I heard of one teacher named Jodette who lived and taught in Sacramento. She had been a child star in Jordan, and was hustling for students in the audience at the Renaissance Fair for her own benefit, though she was not performing there.

This infamous poster sported a photo of Jamila that was snapped at the Bagdad Cabaret twenty years prior and the musicians in the background included Fadil Shahin.

One summer afternoon in 1973, Yousef came to sit in on Jamila's Saturday class . He kept eye balling me, and he asked Jamila who I was. Jamila informed me that Yousef wanted me to audition at his nightclub.

At our little tete-a-tete, I got an earful! Jamila and Youself were not only business partners. According to Yousef, they had been engaged. Yousef said that Jamila and the Persian drummer ran off and got married. Jamila telephoned him and gave him her news. He told me, "Jamila said, 'He loves me!'" Anyway, I auditioned at the Bagdad and was assigned one night per week to start. The Bagdad's décor was, in my father's opinion, "Upholstered Sewer", but this is where I met the lovely dancers Raina, and SimSim, who were the regular weekend dancers. Armand was the kanoon player, George Dabai the drummer extraordinare, George Elias the singer and oudist.

3. On Broadway and North Beach
Back then, North Beach was an area ripe with stories. I learned that Fadil used to work at the Bagdad, and then he intended to open his own club. When he told George Elias his news, George asked him where he was going to open his club. Fadil told him, "Almost next door". Fadil, according to George, not only took dancers with him, but musicians too, along with the bartender Haroun, and even George the Doorman! That exodus is when blood began to boil. Dancers used to work back and forth between the two clubs, but now, not anymore! We used to sneak into the Casbah before the Bagdad opening hour. We were always careful not to be caught.

I remember the one and only student night that Jamila held at the Bagdad while I was there. Yousef and she had a falling out at the last minute and she refused to attend. She sent Meta to represent her.

Another student apparently told Aida what had happened. Meta was not in good stead with her teacher for a while! There was a big and ongoing rivalry between Meta and Aida. They both started taking lessons at the same time and each was thought to be the consummate dancer by her peers. One night in the dressing room of the Casbah, Meta was going to dance at one of the "Moon Celebrations" and forgot her perfume. She grabbed a bottle of "Jungle Gardenia" and I told her, "That belongs to Aida". Consequently, she slammed the bottle down hard.

On Wednesday nights, I danced along with Kismet and Vallie. Though Kismet danced in Jamila's troupe, she had previously taken lessons with Magana Baptiste at the Royal Academy of Dance in San Francisco, which was not the first dancing school where Belly Dance was taught in San Francisco but was, perhaps, the first formal one. (By the way, my father knew Walt Baptiste and said that Walt was a fine body builder and his wife was known as a "Hindu Dancer".)

All of the time there was gossip about the people in the clubs and about some dancers sleeping with customers. My first night there, in the dressing room, I heard one dancer ask another something truly vile about her activities, and to this day, I do not know if she was serious!

Vallie told me plaintively, "He used to tip me twenties when he liked me." Apparently, he had become more entranced with a dancer named Shiraz who had been one of Bert's students. Yes, Prince M. had an unusual reputation. People said that he was a silent partner subsidizing the Casbah, but I would not know anything about that. I do know that when he entered the Casbah, everyone seemed to pay some sort of homage to him. However, some of the dancers disdainfully referred to him as "The Cockroach" - behind his back, of course.

At the Bagdad, I also met Sula. Sula was a dance teacher from Walnut Creek in the East Bay and she owned "Sula's Belly Dance World", a studio and costume shop. She and her sister designed, made and sold beaded costumes, dance skirts, veils, and all the accessories for the modern dancer. Lisa, one of her students told me that Sula started her business as her own income and started the "Belly Dancer of the Year Pageant". Sula wanted to be able to purchase things without being told by her husband, "Now, Sula, you really don't need that, do you?" I never actually saw Sula dance, but I saw a photo of her performing the "Dance of the Flickering Flame". I became acquainted with her, but a sad postscript to this was when Lisa told me that Sula died at a fairly young age of pancreatic failure during a bout with skin cancer in 1978.

Naji Baba

Another fixture in the dance scene was Naji Baba. He used to have his own television program on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoon. It was called "Belly Dancing with Naji Baba". Naji usually played the drum and sang. Sahara was Naji's house dancer, and often did a solo every single show except the one that Najia and I did for him with Najia's dancers, Abdullah on the violin, and Taka playing the drum also. Jamila told all of us during a break in her class that Naji would "Even make you breakfast if you dance on his show." What she was implying I do not know, because Naji treated Najia and me with great respect. Naturally, we all watched his show and harshly analyzed the dancers. He and Aida had a mutual dislike for each other. He accused her of murdering every Arabic song she ever sang. I do not know what it was that she held against him... perhaps it was that he accused her of murdering every Arabic song she ever sang.

Najia

The Casbah was, according to Jamila, THE place to perform. There was Flamenco dancing as well as Belly Dance. George the doorman would entertain on the sidewalk out in front, as he smoked his stogies.

When Jamila held her student night, the first Monday night of every month, the house would be packed. She had talks, films, and once a film crew was there to document her and her interpretation of the dance. When the girls danced the "Moon Celebrations" each month, every one of us wore silver and black, and coin bras and girdles. Each of us did nothing to offend Jamila!

Jalaladin Takesh was the kanoon player at the Casbah then and a little Arabic man named Gilli-Gilli was the drummer and comic relief. Fadil Shahin was the singer oudist, and not to be out-done, produced his own record album. Aida was the reigning queen of the Casbah, dancing there as one of the three regulars five nights per week, until she had a run in with Prince M. and was reduced to three night per week. What the particulars were, I do not know, but when she danced, and they worked the crowd for tips, he would disappear until she was back on the stage.

Sonya was hired to dance at the Casbah. She was a Russian girl and came from a strict Orthodox family that begrudgingly allowed her to perform with us in the dance troupe only during the Renaissance Faire. Unbeknownst to the family she also became the new number one performer and was the darling of the nightclub. The Arabs loved her. When told how wonderful Sonya was, my friend Judy had to see her perform. "I was never so disappointed," she complained to me. "All she did was prance around the stage and for her 'floor work', she fanned herself and I could hear Jalal tell her to start dancing." She continued this way for about one year until her brother accidentally saw her photos in the nightclub's glass display window in front of the club. Her family put an abrupt end to her dancing.