ABSTRACT
The Algerian music community in London is relatively small but includes a significant number of women who are actively involved as performers, composers, event organisers and audience members. In recent years, these women have been at the forefront of a vibrant local diasporic music scene. Music-making provides a means for social interaction, offering Algerian women from across the city an opportunity to meet and perform together. However, while many of these women are successful professionals and accomplished musicians, their experiences of music-making in London are shaped by the expectations placed upon women within contemporary Algerian society. Individual and collective ties connect the UK with France and North Africa, and the combination of familial pressures and societal conventions serve to configure the music produced and consumed by Algerian women in London.
This chapter draws upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork within London’s Algerian community. Through interviews and conversations with Algerian women, I unpack the complex, and sometimes contradictory, relationship between music, gender and Algerianness within contemporary London. I explore how music encourages social interaction and community-building while simultaneously producing gendered spaces for Algerian men and women in the city. By interrogating some of the tensions between agency and constraint that play out for Algerians in London, I seek to understand how issues of class, religion and language contribute to the lived experiences and musical practices of these women.
