"Nabiha Karaouli at Carthage: Celebrating Tunisian Women Through Song, Memory, and Resistance"

On Tunisian Women's Day, coinciding with artist Nabiha Karaouli's concert as part of the Carthage International Festival, the ancient stage transformed into a space where memory intersected with celebration, and individual voice met collective consciousness. The evening was more than a musical performance; it was a tribute to an extended feminine legacy, and a celebration of an artistic journey that made Tunisian song a mirror of identity and the social and cultural transformations experienced by Tunisian women.

Before the concert began, the screen was adorned with the names of women from various fields—some who have passed away and others still leaving their mark—all united in their love for their homeland. This gesture was a symbolic opening, reminding us that Tunisian women, in all their positions and roles, have been and will remain a backbone in building the nation and shaping its future.

In the presence of the Minister of Cultural Affairs, Amina Srarfi, the Minister of Women, Family, Childhood and Elderly, Asma Jebri, the Speaker of the Assembly of People's Representatives, Ibrahim Bouderbala, and a number of officials, Nabiha Karaouli stepped onto the stage, carrying an artistic career that has, from its beginnings, made song more than just a space for tarab—but a platform for awareness, a window into collective memory, and a voice for untold stories.

Karaouli did not begin her concert with singing; she chose to greet her audience with words celebrating Tunisian women—simple yet poetic words that resonated in the stands with cheers and applause. This opening expressed her artistic philosophy, which believes that art begins where direct speech ends, and that song is an extension of the story, and that celebrating women is not through slogans but through listening to their voices and stories.

Nabiha Karaouli's presence on this occasion carries special symbolism. She is an artist whose project has been linked to exploring Tunisian musical memory and re-reading heritage from an angle that reclaims it and gives it new life. She is not merely a performer of songs but a guardian of memory, reworking tradition in a contemporary style while preserving its essence, much like Tunisian women do in their daily lives—maintaining traditions while keeping pace with modernity.

Her choice to sing on Women's Day is a natural extension of a path that has made women, in many of its stations, present in song through their voice, memory, questions, fractures, and capacity for resistance. In each of her songs, there is a woman who dreams, another who waits, a third who resists, and a fourth who celebrates life despite all difficulties. This is why her audience sees in her voice a reflection of their own experiences and personal stories told through music.

Her voice adds a new chapter to the memory of the Carthage stage, titled "Tunisian Women"—with all their social and cultural heritage, and the distances they have traversed to establish their presence in public life, art, and society. It is a voice that does not just occupy the stage but embraces history, evokes faces, immortalises moments, and makes the ancient theatre a witness to a journey of liberation and creativity.

This experience is inseparable from Karaouli's artistic personality, built on a reconciliation between authenticity and renewal. From southern Tunisia, she drew many features of her musical and linguistic memory, and from academic training, she opened up to broader possibilities of composition, arrangement, and performance. This blend of folk heritage and academic technique is what gives her voice its distinctiveness and makes it a bridge between generations.

In this context, singing on Women's Day is an opportunity to return to Tunisian song from a different angle. The song that carries a woman's story, or recalls the image of the mother, or tells a story of love and heartbreak, does not remain confined to its direct meaning when performed by Nabiha Karaouli with the orchestra conducted by Maestro Khaled Ben Issa. Her experience gives these songs a wider space, making the private meet the public, and individual stories intersect with the stories of many women—she who has never separated musical beauty from the human question.

In her artistic choices, social issues have always been part of her vision of the artist's role, making her performance an occasion to evoke the distance Tunisian women have travelled and the questions still open before them. She believes that art is not entertainment but a responsibility, and that when words are accompanied by sincere melody, they become capable of transforming souls and opening horizons.

Nabiha Karaouli does not need to turn the stage into a direct platform for her art to take a stance; it is enough for her to leave room for the song, to reclaim texts shaped by memory, and to lend her voice to the homeland and to women's experiences, for the performance itself to become a space for reflection.

In an intense moment filled with patriotism, the ancient stage of Carthage transformed into a symbolic space where more than one generation met, as Nabiha Karaouli's voice rose singing "Bladi" for Tunisia, joined by the Sidi Sami choir. The scene was majestic, as the boundaries between stage and stands dissolved, hearts united in love for the homeland, and the song became an expression of shared identity and living memory passed from generation to generation.

To the rhythm of songs etched in the memory of the Tunisian audience, a precise equation formed between tarab and message, between the audience's enjoyment of the performance and their simultaneous encounter with questions beyond music. It was an evening that made listeners leave with more than just passing melodies—they carried a new vision of life and a deeper appreciation for the women who made a difference in this homeland.

Through the gateway of Tunisian song, which carries within it the traces of places, dialects, genres, customs, and folk tales, the Tunisian artist stood before a wide audience to reclaim the voice of women from within the artistic experience itself. In Nabiha's voice, there is something of the south, of old chants, of folk song, and of the musical school that refined her experience—yet she does not stop at the boundaries of the past, turning heritage into living material that speaks to a new audience without losing its roots.

On Women's Day, this voice acquires another dimension as it portrays women's presence in Tunisian song—as beloved, mother, daughter, and the woman who waits, resists, and dreams. But Nabiha, in her experience, pushes this image a step forward: the woman who appears in her song possesses the ability to express herself, to transform pain into a stance, memory into action, and silence into voice.

From this perspective, the Carthage concert transcends the musical appointment to become a meeting between an artist and her audience, between the memory of a Tunisian woman and the memory of a nation, between an old song and contemporary questions. Perhaps the most beautiful thing music can give on such occasions is to make celebration less rhetorical and more sincere. When Nabiha Karaouli sings, women's presence goes beyond slogans, their humanity is revealed, their stories resonate, and they find in song a space to express what stirs within them.

Nabiha Karaouli's experience appears, in part, as a constant attempt to reclaim Tunisian song from oblivion—reclaiming the maqam, the melody, the dialect, and the folk image, then placing them in a new context. This is what makes her songs capable of reaching more than one generation: the listener who knows these songs from their parents' or grandparents' memory finds something familiar, while younger listeners discover them as part of a Tunisian music that can be renewed without denying its origins.

At Carthage, this equation becomes clearer. The theatre, representing one of the most important symbols of Tunisian cultural presence, hosts an artist who has made musical identity a fundamental part of her project. From this standpoint, the celebration of Women's Day cannot be separated from the celebration of Tunisian song itself—the woman who sings, the woman who wrote or inspired, the woman who preserved the song in homes and folk memory—all meet symbolically in one moment on the Carthage stage.

Nabiha Karaouli's presence on Women's Day is not merely a celebration of a female artist but a celebration of the idea that art can be both memory and stance. In a time when song is collapsing into rapid consumption, she chooses to give it some deliberation, to allow the voice a chance to rise, words space to take root, and heritage to reclaim its presence beyond the closed past.

On the Carthage stage, on Women's Day, Nabiha Karaouli sang for women as an extended Tunisian story—a story containing the mother, daughter, lover, activist, artist, and worker, and also the woman who is still searching for her voice in a world full of noise. For the first time, she performed "Mazalet Ya Lyam" live, and "Yima," a song she wrote before her mother's death—and there was no better occasion than Women's Day to sing it, in a performance dominated by longing and nostalgia.

When her voice rises, singing in its most beautiful moment becomes capable of doing what speeches cannot—making celebration a feeling, memory a melody, stance a song, and nostalgia a weapon against death. In a concert where the chemistry between her and her audience shone, Nabiha Karaouli moved between old and new songs, saying in her own way that Tunisian women are not only part of memory but also those who shape the present and write what will remain of it.