Popular Expressions Relating to Epidemics, Pandemics in Algeria. Collection and Classification

As soon as the pandemic spread in Algeria in 2020, a significant number of singers, popular poets, as well as ordinary people knew how to evoke the circumstances and habits imposed during confinement. The guasba songs, the poets of melhoun, the berrahs in the weekly markets are those who have expressed themselves in a remarkable way on this disease. Several language expressions, proverbs, linked to the pandemic have emerged.

This is not the first time that the Algerian artist has mentioned epidemics; in 2018, when cholera spread to parts of the country, rai singers came up with the song “dangerous like cholera.”

Through popular expressions (songs, tales, proverbs, etc.) Pandemics, epidemics have been mentioned for several centuries in Algeria. What interests us in this project is to return to the different phases of the history of Algeria to find, through the different forms of popular expressions (songs, popular poems, proverbs, tales, idiomaticexpressions, etc. ), the theme of the pandemic and the epidemic mentioned.

This theme is in fact only one among others, present in this intangible heritage, and which cannot be studied in a single project. We therefore decided to start working on the axis of epidemics and leave the other athematics for future projects. We intend through this project to collect as many materials as possible where the pandemic and epidemic are reported in order to be able to classify and analyze them later.

Two projects are therefore envisaged, theoretical research which concerns written and published documents, and field research whose missions consist of approaching poets, singers and people who memorize materials relating to epidemics and pandemics.