Google Doodle celebrates Taos Amrouche’s 111th birthday

Cultural Kabyle icon Taos Amrouche is being celebrated by Google Doodle on 4 March

The artwork depicts Taos Amrouche surrounded by books and music (Google Doodle)

Google Doodle is celebrating Taos Amrouche, a Kabyle-Algerian-French singer and author, who was among the first Algerian women to publish a novel.

Born in 1913 in Tunis, Tunisia, after her parents moved there from Algeria, today would have been Amrouche’s 111th birthday.

The author attended school in Tunis before moving to France in 1935 to attend university, Google Doodle said.

She collected and interpreted Kabyle songs with her mother and brother, a skill she would continue to use when she earned a scholarship to analyse Spanish and Berber music at the Casa Velasquez, an art institution in Spain.

The Kayble people are Algeria’s largest homogenous cultural-linguistic-ethnic community, part of the Berbers in North Africa, according to Algeria.com.

Becoming more engrossed in the oral traditions of the Kabyle people, she visited Algeria and began learning more about her ethnic heritage.

Her first novel, Jacinthe noir (Black Hyacinth), was released in 1947 and is considered one of the earliest books published by an Algerian woman. The book describes a Tunisian girl who belongs to two cultures.

Another Amrouche novel, Rue des tambourines (Street of the Tabors), is autobiographical and reflects her childhood, Google Doodle said.

She also released La Grain magique (The Magic Grain), which is a collection of Kabyle poems, proverbs, and legends translated by Amrouche into French.

Amrouche, however, did not stop at writing when making Berber culture more accessible, as she also performed traditional Berber songs in French.

Chants berbères de Kabylie, her first album, was very successful, leading her to create four more albums throughout the 1970s.

The stories and songs helped Amrouche document and preserve parts of her oral heritage, as well as connect with both her French and Kabyle identities, Google Doodle said.

She also helped co-found the Académie Berbère, a Paris-based Kayble association which discussed Berber culture, and she occasionally hosted meetings at her Paris home.