In the south of Libya, amongst the Berber or Amazingh populations, the most popular form of music is the unique folk music of the Tuareg peoples. Tuareg culture is quite matriarchal, and the prominence of women in the musical tradition is reflective of this. Songs are sung in the native Temasek language.

The two most important instruments in Tuareg music are the tindé drum, and a one-stringed fiddle called an imzad, which are played almost exclusively by women in Tuareg society. However, men may play the lute and the shepherd’s flute. They may also participate in choir singing and rhythmic hand clapping.

Desert Blues, is a popular music genre of Tuaregs of the Saharan regions of North Africa and is known by many other names including Desert Blues, Saharan Rock, Tuareg Rock, Takamba, and is locally termed ‘Assouf’ or ‘Tishoumaren’.

Desert Blues is best described as a combination of rock and blues with elements of indigenous Tuareg music included. Apart from its popularity in Libya, particularly in the southern Saharan regions of Libya, it is also extremely popular in Algeria, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso³.

The fusion inherent in Desert Blues music is reflective of the cultural experiences of the Tuareg peoples over the past fifty years. As people who emerged from French colonial rule over their land, only to find their people split across several newly formed nation states, their music evoked the diaspora of the Tuareg people from their lands in the post colonial period, together with the inevitable experience of wandering, displacement, loss and rebellion as they sought to forge lives in these newly formed states⁴.

In fact, one of the names for Desert Blues, ‘Tishoumaren’ derives from the French term for an unemployed individual, a ‘chomeur’, and was coined as a slang for the young Tuareg peoples who flooded urban centres of Northern and West Africa looking for jobs when the severe drought of the 1970s made the traditional nomadic way of life, with its significant reliance on animal husbandry, tremendously difficult to sustain. These young, displaced Tuareg men were dubbed, ‘Ishumar’, and the musical scene which developed in tandem reflected at once the feelings of deep nostalgia and pride for the Tuareg culture, the rebellious sentiments and the loneliness and displacement of these young men⁵.

Desert Blues music is a unique blend of Middle Eastern, Sub Saharan and driving rock music. The most common instruments used are the tende drum, the Malian lute and, of course, more recently, electric guitars and western percussion sets. Lyrics are usually sung in the Tuareg Temashek language⁶.

The most famous Tuareg band is Tinariwen, whose members originally hail from Mali⁷, and originally formed in Tamanrasset, Algeria, in 1979. However, the band is also strongly associated with Libya, as the band’s formative years and their distinctive sound developed in military camps which Gaddafi built specifically to train young Tuareg men to fight as in the military. Many young Tuareg men, disenfranchised and unemployed due to increasing desertification of their home areas in the Sahara region, accepted employment in these Tuareg specific military training camps in Libya. There they were trained as Gaddafi’s militiamen and were also introduced to the pan-Arab movement, and world music.

During the 80s and 90s, the Tuareg youth were often embroiled in political uprising against the various North African governments. During the uprising against the Mali government in the 1980s, Tinariwen became a scion of the young Tuareg men and women, who took inspiration in Tinariwen’s songs, composed of Temasek lyrics that recount the trials and tribulations of the Tuareg people and their relationship with their desert environment⁸.

The music of Tinariwen is known for its distinctive blend of traditional Tuareg instruments and the rock sounds of electric guitars, which they blended into their music upon forming in 1979. Tinariwen began to gain international exposure through their association with the popular French band Lo’jo in the 1990s⁹.

They played at the first Festival in the Desert in 2001, which brought their music to the attention of a wider audience, and launched them into the World Music scene¹⁰.

During the 2011 revolution, Libya saw a resurgence of its local music scene, as the protesting masses sought expression of their revolutionary sentiments in music.

The song, ‘We Will Not Surrender, We Win or We Die’, written by Irish-born Libyan musician Rami El-Kaleh, became the anthem of the uprising against Gaddafi’s regime. The 27 year old engineer had been visiting his home town of Benghazi when the revolution began. El-Kaleh felt the need to capture the revolutionary spirit in a song he penned, which featured the inspirational words of a speech given by famous leader of the revolution against the Italian colonialists, Omar Mukhtar, who was killed by the Italians in 1931 and whose memory carries significant weight in the Libyan psyche. Sadly, Rami El-Kaleh was killed on 8 March 2021 by a Ghadafi loyalist who opened fire in a sector of Benghazi through which Rami El-Kaleh was driving at the time. Rami El-Kaleh did not live to see his song become a standard bearer for the revolutionary masses¹³.

The rap music of Ibn Thabit, an anonymous musician who produced hip hop with an anti-government slant in Libya during the Gadaffi period, became extremely popular during the 2011 uprising. In particular, Ibn Thabit’s Thabit’s song, ‘Al Al-Soo’al’ (‘The Question’) became a standard for anti-Gaddafi protestors. The lyrics of ‘Al Soo’al’, which first appeared in a youtube video released on 27 January 2011.

The National Anthem of the Kingdom of Libya

‘Libya, Libya, Libya’ or ‘Ya Beladi’ (‘O my country!’) was the national anthem of the Kingdom of Libya from 1955 - 1969. The anthem was composed by Mohammad Abdel Wahab and the verses of the anthem were written by Al Bashir Al Arebi¹⁸. Following Gaddafi’s coup d’etat in 1969, this national anthem was replaced by a new anthem for the Gaddafi years. However, in the aftermath of the revolution of 2011, ‘Libya, Libya, Libya’ was reinstated as the national anthem of Libya with minor changes such as the replacement of references to King Idris with modernised verses, and the inclusion of new versions which referenced Libya’s historical struggle against colonialism and the heroics of Omar Mukhtar¹⁹.

Anthem of Libyan Arab Republic

Following Gaddafi’s coup d’etat of 1969, a new national anthem was adopted as the official anthem of the newly created republic or ‘Jamahiriya’. The new anthem, ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘God is Greatest’), was developed from the melody of an Egyptian military marching song, However, following the fracture of Llibyan relations with Egypt following Egypt’s signature of the peace treaty with Israel in 1979, Libyan authorities stopped crediting the original Egyptian melody²⁰.