Paris (AFP)

Getting out of the shadows the heroines of "our daronnes": a show until September 25 at the Cabaret Sauvage, in Paris, unveils in songs a little-known story of North African female immigration, between exile in France and the struggles for emancipation.

After the success of "Barbès Café", which retraced the career of Algerian immigrant singers, workers by day and artists by night in the bistros of the capital, make way for "Do not free me, I take care of it!" on immigrant women. They who have braved the weight of traditions and patriarchy to impose themselves as much in their home as in French society, are honored on the stage of the famous marquee of the Parc de la Villette.

From wives back home who refuse the double life of their husbands, to stay-at-home mothers daring to proclaim loud and clear "My place is not in the kitchen", "the ambition is to show that North African women are not only as we try to show it, "Méziane Azaïche, director of Cabaret Sauvage and director of the show, told AFP.

But also to "pay homage" and to make known to the general public the great singers of exile like Cherifa, Hanifa, Noura or Cheikha Rimiti, who sublimated in Berber or in dialectal Arabic the demands of these women for freedom, and their fights against racism and discrimination.

This Franco-Algerian story, which traces the period from the 1950s to the present day, is told on stage by Tanina Cheriet, daughter of the Kabyle singer Idir, who died in May 2020, and symbol of these thousands of children and grandchildren of immigrants who have become heirs to this double culture.

The common thread of the show, the 30-year-old artist tells from the life of his fictitious mother, who listens with passion to these singers from exile, the journey of these many women in search of emancipation between lines, danced passages, and cult songs.

The Algerian flag during a demonstration for equal rights on International Women's Day, March 8, 2019 in Paris Bertrand GUAY AFP / Archives

- "French heritage" -

A rich and varied musical repertoire, brought up to date by five musicians and two other singers Nadia Ammour and Samia Diar, which is part of "French heritage", recalls Méziane Azaïche.

"Most of these songs were created in France! The French, unfortunately, do not know them ... The contribution of immigration to French cultural heritage must be recognized at its true value", he pleads. .

Algerian War, October 17, 1961, slums of Nanterre, March for equality and against racism of 1983, Family code ... Images from archives and biographies are also projected on screens to allow the uninformed viewer to understand the historical context which marked the installation in France of the Algerian community.

HLM buildings under construction to relocate the former occupants, in particular thousands of Algerian immigrant families, from the slum of Nanterre which was razed, in June 1971 AFP / Archives

A form of transmission, with the approach of 60 years of the Evian Accords, while the feminist struggle remains lively on both shores of the Mediterranean, between repeated feminicides and unfulfilled political demands.

"I would especially like it to be non-Algerians who learn about this story," Tanina Cheriet told AFP.

"It remains a feminist spectacle, a universal subject in which even men must be the actors."

"It is also a duty of memory to thank these women who traced this path before us, and these artists who sang this pain of exile and put words, always current, on what some women are going through now, complete - she. They are heroines ".

"There is a desire to pass on to new generations," Méziane Azaïche still supports. And beyond that, to share moments, perhaps very hard in the history of immigration, but also and above all moments of joy because that at the end of the show the narrator says that she is proud of her mother ".

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