Editing Lounès Matoub (section)

==Early life==
[[File:Lounès Matoub.en 73.jpg|thumb|Matoub in 1973]]

Lounes Matoub was born on 24 January 1956{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}} in the village of [[Aït Mahmoud|Taourirt Moussa]] belonging to the {{Ill|Aït Aïssi|lt=Aït Mahmoud|fr|Aït Aïssi}} in [[Kabylia]].<ref name=":0" /> He was raised by his mother and grandmother in the absence of his father.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Reed-Danahay |first=Deborah |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Auto_ethnography/KnwSEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=matoub%20left%20school&pg=PT88&printsec=frontcover |title=Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social |date=2021-01-07 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-000-32425-9 |language=en}}</ref> When he turned 9, he built his first guitar from an empty car oil can and composed his first songs as a teenager. In his youth, Matoub was particularly fond of the [[White Fathers]], who were French Catholic missionaries who were in charge of schools in Kabylia with a secular curriculum, because they spoke [[Kabyle language|Kabyle]] and spoke to him about Berber history especially the Berber king [[Jugurtha]]. His political and cultural identity was awakened by armed confrontations between [[Kabyle people|Kabylians]] and government forces in 1963&ndash;1964. In 1968, the Algerian government introduced a policy of Arabization in the education system. Matoub reacted by skipping school; his memoirs recall: "We had to give up Berber and reject French. I said no! I played hooky in all my Arabic classes. Every class that I missed was an act of resistance, a slice of liberty conquered. My rejection was voluntary and purposeful."<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Joris |first=Pierre |author-link=Pierre Joris |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Poems_for_the_Millennium_Volume_Four/VKZt6Cs8d94C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=We%20had%20to%20give%20up%20Berber%20and%20reject%20French.%20I%20said%20no!%20I%20played%20hooky%20in%20all%20my%20Arabic%20classes.%20Every%20class%20that%20I%20missed%20was%20an%20act%20of%20resistance,%20a%20slice%20of%20liberty%20conquered.%20My%20rejection%20was%20voluntary%20and%20purposeful&pg=PA542&printsec=frontcover |title=Poems for the Millennium, Volume Four: The University of California Book of North African Literature |last2=Tengour |first2=Habib |author-link2=Habib Tengour |date=2013-01-31 |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |isbn=978-0-520-95379-6 |pages=541-542 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Aïtel |first=Fazia |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/We_Are_Imazighen/n37SEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=matoub%20first%20guitar&pg=PA182&printsec=frontcover |title=We Are Imazighen: The Development of Algerian Berber Identity in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture |date=2014-11-04 |publisher=[[University Press of Florida]] |isbn=978-0-8130-4895-6 |pages=182 |language=en}}</ref> By 1975, he had abandoned formal education.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}} He left for France in search of work.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Silverstein |first=Paul A. |author-link= |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Nation_Society_and_Culture_in_North_Afri/QcaPAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=lounes%20matoub&pg=PA98&printsec=frontcover |title=Nation, Society and Culture in North Africa |date=2004-08-02 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-135-76106-6 |editor-last=McDougall |editor-first=James |editor-link=James McDougall (academic) |pages=98 |language=en |chapter=Martyrs and Patriots: Ethnic, National and Transnational Dimensions of Kabyle Politics |chapter-url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13629380308718498}}</ref>