Listening to Taos Amrouche, a Kabyle Woman’s Singing Voice in a Context of Exile and Immigration : Between a Search for Intimacy and Independence

Authors

• Melek Chekili, Lake Forest College, ChicagoFollow

Keywords

Taos Amrouche, vocal materialities, music and resistance, Amazigh women, exile, gender and indigeneity, hybridity

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This article analyzes the vocal, musical and literary strategies Algerian Kabyle singer and writer Taos Amrouche employs to determine the place voicing holds for her in contexts of colonization, exile and migration. I demonstrate through her singing career and her 1975 autobiographical novel l’Amant Imaginaire, that within the ambivalences stemming from her birth in Tunisia to exiled Kabyle Christian converts and her emigration to France, Taos Amrouche’s singing voice provides a space where those ambivalences can co-exist. By being adamant about keeping her artistic activity close to her body and explicitly referring to sex in her writing, she exerts a subversive impact on this taboo, pressuring the restrictions imposed on Maghrebian women’s bodies. However, for Taos Amrouche, the power of voicing stems from both an emphasis on and an erasure of her material voice. Her intervocal translation mission, embodied through a visceral rehabilitated listening to her mother’s singing voice, involved a willingness to erase herself for her ancestors and a culture muted by both the French colonizer and the Algerian State. Conversely, her material voice was an avenue to honor her own desires, separate from Kabyle traditions and the shackles of the colonizer—represented by her French husband and lover. Through the figure of the androgyne, conceptualized through writing and an elusive voice alternating between head and chest tones, Taos Amrouche unites diverse styles characterizing her hybridity: Cante Jondo, Gregorian Chant, Kabyle traditional music, and Tarab. While she seems obsessed with fidelity to the “chants de vérité” (songs of truth), a deeper listening reveals authenticity holds a different meaning. Her voice enables her to exist as an individual woman resisting a community where her desires were repressed. Ultimately, Taos’ resistance occurred on multiple fronts: resistance against the erasure of an ostracized indigenous culture, resistance against archaic traditions favoring men, and resistance against a colonial view taking her voice as an exclusive representation of the Kabyle people.

DOI

10.5642/jas.EEXE7278

Recommended Citation

APA Citation: Chekili, M. (2026). Listening to Taos Amrouche, a Kabyle Woman’s Singing Voice in a Context of Exile and Immigration : Between a Search for Intimacy and Independence. Journal of Amazigh Studies, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.5642/jas.EEXE7278

MLA Citation: Chekili, Melek. "Listening to Taos Amrouche, a Kabyle Woman’s Singing Voice in a Context of Exile and Immigration : Between a Search for Intimacy and Independence." 4, 1 (2026). doi:10.5642/jas.EEXE7278.