Taos Amrouche

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Taos Amrouche , also Marguerite Taos Amrouche or Marie-Louise Taos Amrouche (born March 4, 1913 in Tunis ; died April 2, 1976 in Saint-Michel-l'Observatoire ), was a Kabyle writer and singer.

Life

Her mother was the singer and writer Fadhma Amrouche and she was the only daughter of seven children. Her brother Jean Amrouche was also a writer. She was born in Tunisia , where her family had to flee from Algeria due to their conversion to Catholicism . Through her mother she got to know the songs and folklore of the Kabyle from an early age. After graduating from school in Tunisia in 1934, she moved to France to study at the École normal supérieure de jeunes filles in Sèvres .

From 1936 on, she began collecting and performing Kabyle folk songs together with her mother and brother Jean. In 1939 she received a scholarship at a singing competition in Fès to research the connections between Berber folk songs and Spanish folk songs at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid from 1940 to 1941. At the Casa de Velázquez she met her future husband, the French painter André Bourdil . Together with him she had a daughter, who later became comedian Laurence Bourdil . The couple moved from Madrid first to Tunis , then to Algiers and finally to France in 1945.

Her first autobiographical novel Jacinthe noire , written in 1935, was published in 1947. This was one of the first novels in French to be published by a North African woman. Together with Djamila Debèche , who published her first novel Leïla, jeune fille d'Algérie in the same year , and Assia Djebar , she is regarded as a pioneer of female Algerian literature . Le Grain magique from 1966 is considered her most important literary work. It is a compilation of folk songs, poems, sagas, short stories and proverbs from Kabylia .

In 1953 she and her brother Jean conducted a series of interviews with the writer Jean Giono .

From 1954 she had her breakthrough as a singer in Paris. She recorded radio broadcasts and made numerous appearances. In 1966 she was invited to the Festival des arts nègres in Dakar .

In 1967 she was involved with the founding of the Berber Academy in Paris .

Taos Amrouches house in Saint-Michel-l'Observatoire

Most recently she lived in Saint-Michel-l'Observatoire.

Works

  • Jacinthe Noire (1947)
  • La Rue des tambourins (1960)
  • La Grain Magique (1966)
  • L'Amant imaginaire (1975)

Discography

  • Chants berbères de Kabylie (1967)
  • Chants De L'Atlas (Traditions Millénaires Des Berbères D'Algérie) (1970)
  • Incantations, méditations et danses sacrées berbères (1974)
  • Chants berbères de la meule et du berceau (1975)
  • Au Theater De La Ville (1977)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Marguerite Taos Amrouche | Algerian singer and writer. In: Encyclopaedia Britannica . Retrieved March 19, 2020 .
  2. ^ A b c Jacqueline Arnaud: Amrouche Taos (1913-1976) . In: Encyclopaedia Universalis (ed.): Dictionnaire des Musiciens: Les Dictionnaires d'Universalis . 2015.
  3. ↑ Diana Haussmann: Speeches and Silences: The Representation of Algerian Women in Assia Djebar's Work . 2016, p. 17 .
  4. ↑ Nikola Tietze: Imagined Community: Affiliations and Criticism in the European Immigration Society . 2012, p. 339 .
personal data
SURNAME Amrouche, Taos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Amrouche, Marie-Louise Taos; Amrouche, Marguerite Taos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Kabyle writer and singer
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Tunis
DATE OF DEATH April 2, 1976
Place of death Saint-Michel-l'Observatoire