as small as a world and as large as alone, Dear Chen, do you know Habiba Msika? She was one...

4:32am April 7, 2015

Anonymous asked: Dear Chen, do you know Habiba Msika? She was one of the badassest female musician in Tunisia, and she's Jewish. On wikipedia there is a hebrew article, but the french one seems more complete (I can't read/understand hebrew)

smashtheshell:

i heard of her a bit but i haven’t had the chance to truly read about her life, thank you so much for bringing her to my attention !!!!!!!! i didn’t know so many things:
she played shakespearean roles, include romeo ?! and a riot broke out in the theater when she kissed juliet?? omg
after a performance w/ pro-independence anti-colonial themes she was arrested by the authorities along w/ her fans
she had multiple lovers of muslim, christian and jewish background, and didn’t give a fuck
she was murdered by her ex :(
this is a pic of her in another one of her roles omg:
she seems like one of those iconic jewish maghrebi figures, like salim halali, and maurice el madiouni, at once both cosmopolitan & rooted in their cultures. only unlike madiouni & halali, being a woman who promoted these ideas put her in a much greater risk…
it’s really striking how opposite their lives are to what the israeli public constantly imagines maghrebi people to be. ofir touboul wrote a bit about how maghrebi jews in israel have two options: either deny our heritage in order to be accepted as legitimate participants in israeli/global culture, or, if we want to acknowledge our maghrebiness in our art/cultural output, we have to do it in a fully religious, conservative way, as if progressive ideas such as feminism, anti-racism, anti-colonialism etc is solely the domain of europeans. habiba msika and countless other jewish artists of the maghreb exemplify how false and racist this notion is, and for that they’re constantly being erased here. i’m definitely going to think of her the next time some asshole tries to tell me my values are ‘ashkenized’.