Watch these two episodes from the programme “Tamghart” (lit. woman) on two leading Amazigh women from Morocco – the episodes are in Tamazight, Moroccan Darija, some French and English, with Arabic subtitles and they have beautiful music and photography.

The first episodes is on the activist and researcher Meryem Demnati. The second one is the singer Hindi Zahra. 

Demnati is a researcher at the Royal Institute of the Amazigh Culture (IRCAM, in its French initials). In this interview with her, she first talks about her childhood in Aghadir and her adolescence in Marrakech, to which she constantly returns even now despite living in Rabat. Demnati studied Sociology in Bordeaux (France), and it is there, where she encountered many Maghrebi students, that she began thinking about Amazigh identity and language. Back in Marrakech, she joined the Moroccan Association for Research and Cultural Exchange and started to be involved in the defence of Amazigh rights and cultural and linguistic visibility. Demnati has worked on the production of pioneering didactic books for children written in the Tifinagh script, as well as on materials to teach Tamazight. Together with her fellow activists, Demnati joined the 20-F movement which emerged in Morocco within the so-called ‘Arab Springs’ in order to continue to visibilise the Amazigh issue and rights, as well as to denounce patriarchal social and cultural attitudes and state provisions.

As a child, Hindi Zahra lived in Casablanca and Agadir in Morocco and then her family migrated to France. In the interview, she recounts that she knew from an early age that she wanted to be a singer and explains that she took the artistic vein from her mother, who also sang and played theatre when she was young, and her uncle, who would play guitar as Zahra was growing up. She plays live for the programme and talks about her career trajectory – since she started playing in small Parisian cafes and clubs where particularly Cabilian people used to go, to the different concerts which she’s given around the world! You can also see Hindi Zahra painting and in her concerts.

Read the interview with scholar Tassadit Yacine-Titouh (in French) by Maria Àngels Roque. 

Interview a Tassadit Yacine_Maria_Angels_Roque_QM23 Yacine was born in the Algerian Cabile region. In the interview, she explains some of the most important events in her life and her struggles, and how she became a scholar in the anthropology of domination, specialising in Amazigh (literary) cultures and language and gender issues. When Yacine was starting research on Spanish migrants to Algeria in the 19th century, she encountered the well-known author and scholar Mouloud Mammeri, who insisted that she should carry out research on Amazigh culture. She eventually did her PhD, entitled “Cultural Production and Agents of Production in Berber Societies (16th-20th centuries)”, under the supervision of Mohamed Arkoun and Pierre Bourdieu. In 1985, Yacine founded with Mammeri and the assistance of Bourdieu the journal Awal: Cahiers d’études berbères, which she continues to direct. She became the first Algerian woman to be appointed at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and is also a researcher at the Anthropologie Laboratory of the Collège de France. Among others, Yacine has authored the book Chacal ou la ruse des dominés: Aux origines du malaise culturel des intellectuels algériens (2001) and Si tu m’aimes, guéris-moi (2006).

You can also read this interview with Tassadit Yacine-Titouh on the journal Awal: Cahiers d’études berbères, which she founded with Mouloud Mammeri and the assistance of Bourdieu in 1985, and which she continues to direct. 

Read this interview with Lhoussain Simour on his work on Mririda n’Ait Attik.

Interview Lhoussain Simour FINAL.docx

Watch this video (in Spanish) on the Riffian anticolonial leader ‘Abdelkrim Khattabi (1882-1963). This two-episode documentary on the Riffian leader surveys the epic struggle which the Riffians, led by Khattabi, fought against the Spanish army in the 1920s. Khattabi was a scholar, a judge and a writer, and founder of the Rif Republic (1921-6). The struggle he led set a precedent for the anticolonial movements that emerged after World War II.

In this talk given for the MULOSIGE project, Professor Daniela Merolla addresses contemporary directions in Amazigh oral/written narrative and cinematic works set against the historical and literary background of the Maghreb as well as of the Amazigh diaspora in Europe

This final event of the MULOSIGE research project showcases the corpus of Moroccan Amazigh oral and written literature translated into English. Lhoussain Simour presented and discussed oral literature from the Moroccan Middle Atlas,  Mohamed Daoudi explored selected Riffian literary texts, and Fadma Aït Mous discussed gender and Amazigh literature, with some examples from the Souss region.