Fadhma Ait Mansour

Marguerite-Fadhma Aït Mansour Amrouche ( Central Atlas Tamazight ⴼⴰⴹⵎⴰ ⴰⵜ ⵎⴰⵏⵚⵓⵔ Faḍma At Manṣur ; * 1882 in Tizi Hibel , Algeria ; † July 9, 1967 in Saint-Brice-en-Coglès , France ) was an Algerian singer and the mother of writers Jean Amrouche and Taos Amrouche .

Mansour was born in a Berber village around 1882 as the illegitimate daughter of a widow. Severely discriminated by her surroundings, she left her home village to study at a secular school. Later, while she was in the Aït Manguellet Hospice with her sisters, she converted to Roman Catholic Christianity . Her husband, whom she married in 1898, Antoine-Belkacem Amrouche, was, like her, a Berber who had converted to Catholicism . The couple had a total of eight children, but only two of them survived the death of their parents. Before the birth of their first child Taos, the family moved to Tunis and then to France.

The folklore songs of the famous singer were translated into French in 1939 by her son Jean under the title Chants berbères de Kabylie . In 1967 Tao released a musical album in the Kabyle dialect based on his brother's notes.

Her autobiography De ma vie was published posthumously in 1968. This book deals with the life she lived as a woman between two worlds: On the one hand the life and language of her Berber homeland, on the other hand the colonial power France, its language and religion, Christianity.