Taos Amrouche (1913-1976)
French and Algerian, Christian and Kabyle, novelist and singer, Taos Amrouche remained all her life in a singular in-between. Conscious of her complex heritage, the one who lived all her life in exile, devoted her life to the art of storytelling.
Telling his story and echoing that of Franco-Algerian relations, telling the Kabyle heritage with his exceptional voice; tell the story of a woman in a man's world. Taos Amrouche is a lifetime of paradoxes, between the mountains of Djurdjura and the literary cafés of Paris.
The conversion to Christianity of his family, deeply attached to their Kabyle culture, will trace a painful road for those who wanted to be faithful to the Algeria of their ancestors and to French culture. Born in Tunis in 1913 into this family from Kabylia exiled to Tunisia because of her Christian faith, Taos spent a solitary childhood there, between the Kabyle mother tongue and the French language of education, between the world of the colonized and the world of colonizers who rub shoulders without knowing each other, between the Arab Medina of Tunis and the Catholic Church of the European district.
" The family that remained Muslim, in Kabylia, therefore, will attack the Amrouche couple, that is to say Fadhma and Belkacem (mother and father of Taos). So, one of the reasons why the couple will go to Tunisia was the non-acceptance, by their families who have remained Muslim, of their conversions or of their Christian religion. " Akila Kizzi , doctor in French-speaking literature and gender studies
Passions were the incandescent engine of his whole life. Writing first, since she became the first French-language Algerian novelist to publish a novel, Jacinthe noire in 1947. The feeling of exile, linked to her "transplanted" condition, is recounted in her texts. First North African to publish autobiographical texts, she will question all her life the singular trajectory of her family. The one who was surrounded all her life by the great names of French literature, from Jean Giono to her brother Jean Amrouche, will however fight all her life to see her works published. The double culture of the Amrouche places the family in a role of intermediary during the war of independence, a role which nevertheless revives the heartbreaks induced by their "antagonistic loyalties".
" My father left Kabylie, he was once a teacher, and he came to take a job on the railways in Tunis. I had exemplary parents: my mother is a woman very cultured in French andAmazigh, who was part of the first secular school trial in 1883. But she also had a sense of tradition, a sense of her race and we were taught respect for ancestors, respect for traditional values and a sense of honor ." Taos Amrouche
She passionately sings Amazigh melodies transmitted by her mother, the writer Fadhma Aït Mansour. The artist engages, with ardor, in an incessant fight for the recognition of the Amazigh language and for oral traditions. His work of transcription and interpretation of the songs and tales of his ancestors has made it possible to perpetuate a threatened heritage. She was the first to make Amazigh songs known to the French public but nevertheless remained unknown to the Algerian public of the time. She, who performed on stages from Fez to Florence, from Dakar to Paris, has never officially sung in Algeria.
" The people around me didn't speak our language, so I saw that I didn't look like anyone. I saw that in class, for example, there were, say, 29 students who could form a group, and I I felt alone and on the sidelines, always on the sidelines. On the sidelines because of the reactions, because of the look, because of the way of laughing... Really, I didn't fit in. I also felt on the sidelines because I was also cut off from the Muslim world. I was not part of it. So much so that we were always more or less at odds. " Taos Amrouche
To talk about it
Akila Kizzi , Doctor of Francophone Literature and Gender Studies, author of Marie-Louise Taos Amrouche. Identity passions and heartbreaks (Fauves editions, 2019)
Naïma Yahi , historian specializing in the cultural history of Maghrebi artists in France
Kamel Hamadi , songwriter and performer, specialist in Algerian music
Houria Aïchi , singer and anthropologist
Yann Seweryn , filmmaker and grandson of Taos Amrouche
A documentary by Hajer Ben Boubaker, directed by Vincent Decque. INA Archives, Marie Decaëns. With the collaboration of Annelise Signoret from the Radio France Library. New webpage, Sylvia Favre.
Read also: Idir and "A Vava Inouva", the story of the Kabyle lullaby that has been around the world
Bibliography
Akila Kizzi, Marie-Louise Taos Amrouche. Identity passions and heartbreaks (Michalon, 2019)
Taos Amrouche, The magic grain. Berber tales, poems and proverbs from Kabylia (La Découverte, 2007)
Marguerite Taos Amrouche , Intimate Notebooks (Gallimard, edition by Yamina Mokaddem - French Literature Collection/Joëlle Losfeld, 2014)
Marguerite Taos Amrouche, Jacinthe noire (Charlot, 1947. Gallimard, 1996. Preceded by a letter from André Gide. French Literature Collection/Joëlle Losfeld, Gallimard)
To talk about it
Akila Kizzi , Doctor of Francophone Literature and Gender Studies, author of Marie-Louise Taos Amrouche. Identity passions and heartbreaks (Fauves editions, 2019)
Naïma Yahi , historian specializing in the cultural history of Maghrebi artists in France
Kamel Hamadi , songwriter and performer, specialist in Algerian music
Houria Aïchi , singer and anthropologist
Yann Seweryn , filmmaker and grandson of Taos Amrouche
A documentary by Hajer Ben Boubaker, directed by Vincent Decque. INA Archives, Marie Decaëns. With the collaboration of Annelise Signoret from the Radio France Library. New webpage, Sylvia Favre.
Read also: Idir and "A Vava Inouva", the story of the Kabyle lullaby that has been around the world
Bibliography
Akila Kizzi, Marie-Louise Taos Amrouche. Identity passions and heartbreaks (Michalon, 2019)
Taos Amrouche, The magic grain. Berber tales, poems and proverbs from Kabylia (La Découverte, 2007)
Marguerite Taos Amrouche , Intimate Notebooks (Gallimard, edition by Yamina Mokaddem - French Literature Collection/Joëlle Losfeld, 2014)
Marguerite Taos Amrouche, Jacinthe noire (Charlot, 1947. Gallimard, 1996. Preceded by a letter from André Gide. French Literature Collection/Joëlle Losfeld, Gallimard)
INA Archives:
Program Moisson de l'exil by Taos Amrouche, Office national de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF, Monday, September 23, 1974)
Interview with Marguerite Taos, Compartment reserved , RDF / RTF / Others (1949-1963) broadcast on 07.03.1961
Recital of Berber songs at the Théâtre de la Ville, Inter actualités extract from 1:00 p.m. (France Inter, 09.12.1972)
Archive of the program Les dossiers de l'screen , program entitled L'Algérie en 1960 (RTF / ORTF, 22.10.1969)
Report at the Algiers Festival, Office national de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF, 12.08.1969)
Music (excerpts):
Taos Amrouche, excerpts from the anthology (five-disc set) Chants berbères de Kabylie (Frémeaux & associés, 2009)
Youssef Dhafer , instrumental from the album Divine shadows (Jazzland label, 2006)
For further
Biography of Taos Amrouche proposed by the site Algériades.com .
Dossier of the magazine Algérie littéraire / action (n°167-170, 2013) devoted to Taos Amrouche , including an interview with his daughter, Laurence Bourdil.
Taos Amrouche: at the origin of Kabyle world music? Article by Fazia Aïtel published in Études et Documents Berbères , n°31, 2012.
Birth and early childhood of a boy in Kabylia, testimony . Text of a program by Taos Amrouche at the Poste de Tunis PTT, broadcast on Tuesday, September 19, 1939, published in the journal Encyclopédie berbère , n°33 (2012).
Interview with Taos Amrouche collected in 1968. To see on YouTube .
The impossible agreement: writing, speaking out, commitment and multiple identities in Marie-Louise Taos Amrouche . Literature thesis by Akila Kizzi, University of Paris 8 (2016).
André Breton about Taos Amrouche . Handwritten letter of February 22, 1955, to read on the website of the association Atelier André Breton.
Source : websites