Marguerite Taos Amrouche
(born March 4, 1913, Tunis?died April 2, 1976, Saint-Michel-l’Observatoire, Fr.) was a
Kabyle
singer and writer.
Amrouche was the daughter of Fadhma Aith Mansour Amrouche; she was the only sister in a family of six sons and was born after the family had moved to
Tunisia
to escape persecution after their conversion to
Roman Catholicism
. Despite this exile, both she and her brother Jean returned to
Algeria
for extended visits. Through her mother’s influence she became interested in the rich oral traditions of the Kabyle
Berber
people. In 1934 she obtained her
brevet superieur
in
Tunis
, and in the following year she went to
France
for studies at the Ecole Normale at
Sevres
. She worked briefly as an assistant at a
boarding school
in Rades. Starting in 1936, in collaboration with Jean and her mother, Amrouche collected and began to interpret Kabyle songs. In 1937?38 she presented her
repertoire
in Paris and in Munich. At the Congres de Chant de Fes in 1939 she received a scholarship to study at the Casa Velasquez in
Spain
, where she researched the ties between Berber and Spanish popular songs.
Britannica Quiz
Pop Culture Quiz
Amrouche’s first
novel
,
Jacinthe noire
(1947; “Black Hyacinth”), recounts the story of an “uncivilized” young Tunisian girl who is sent to a French pension for studies. Differences in life-style, attitudes, and experiences set her apart, and exile,
prejudice
, and rupture are themes of the novel, which is one of the earliest ever published in French by a North African woman writer. A second novel,
Rue des tambourins
(1960; “Street of the Tabors”), describes a sense of marginality and owes a great deal to its author’s recollections of her childhood in Tunis.
Le Grain magique
(1966; “The Magic Grain”)?a collection of
legends
, short stories, songs, poems, and proverbs from the Kabyle, translated by her from Berber into French?is perhaps her best-known work. She recorded several phonograph albums and produced a number of programs for French radio and television, including
Chants sauves de l’oubli
(“Songs Saved from Oblivion”) and
Hommage au chant profond
(“Homage to a Profound Song”).