Probably Libya’s most famous musician, this was Fuad’s second time touring Germany. In 2017, he performed in front of 600 students of the high school Gymnasium-Othmarschen at the famous Metropolis cinema in Hamburg. He also talked with refugees and migrants in the southern district of Hamburg-Harburg about their experiences in Libya and tried to tell hem his understanding of current developments there.

In December 2019, he was on stage in three German cities with the musicians Aymen Al Houni and Farah Elle during the Blackbox Libya project, playing together as the “Breaking the Ice” band.

When did you start to play an instrument?

In 2008. Because people told me that I couldn’t do it and I wanted to prove them wrong. I had one female friend who said that I should give it a go. She was my main motivation, since I have already written songs before and I always dreamt about playing an instrument. She knew my voice and wouldn’t give up, so I finally made that old dream true and learned to play the guitar.

Did you know a lot of people around you who already played an instrument?

Not a lot of my old friends were into music. But I’ve been writing (lyrics) for musicians since 2005 and most of the guitarists who’d been around since 2000 had become my friends.  None of them wanted to teach me at the beginning. I applied for a course and the teacher was good. However, my problem was that I had no patience at all and struggled to understand music theory. Eventually, I started learning with the help of Youtube. Two weeks later  I wrote my first song and two more weeks later I had my first concert.

I was asked by some friends to join them playing at a gig. After that, I just continued month after month with more live gigs.

I heard that it was forbidden to play Western music before the revolution. Many Libyan musicians I met, told me that society was not that accepting of foreign concepts of music. Were you free to sing what you want?

That’s not entirely untrue. The generation before me, people like Aymen Al Houni, wwere not allowed to play for years. Their instruments were taken away from them. For us, it was easy. However, with that said, I only started to play freely in Libya in 2009. Don’t forget that Gaddafi had been in power since 1969, yet only in 1986 he turned entirely against the Western World. That’s when he started to have a problem with the English language and the Western music. Musicians like Aymen Al Houni and Essam had their instruments confiscated and were questioned by security forces because of the music they played.

Why did Muammar Gaddafi turn against all kinds of Western symbols, or against the West in general?

It was the strike on his house in 1986 by US airplanes in retaliation to the bombing of the La Belle discotheque in Berlin that turned him against the West. Gaddafi even refused to answer interviewers’ questions in English. Every single word of English I learned was from the internet.

So, did geopolitics have a political impact on Libyan youth?

That was Gaddafi’s personal choice, and a lot of people agreed with that. The general feeling was that, if you want to mess with us Libyans, we will do the same as well. It’s a matter of choice, though a lot of us didn’t agree.

To be fair, I was never prevented from playing during 2009 and 2010. But there was a lot of social pressure. People my age, who had respect for lawyers or doctors, would look at you when you told them you played music and sort of say, OK, but what do you really do?

For many Libyans music is just a hobby. In Libya, you never sing when something bad happens, so people are confused as to why I’m singing when there are so many terrible things happening in our country.

I suppose Libyans still consider music a celebration more than a form of expression.

What drives your music, the culture, or the country?

You really can’t apply a nationality to it. When it comes to concerts, that’s where nationality and borders disappear. You’re a human with genuine emotions and feelings.

And that culture was lacking in Libya?

I wouldn’t say anything was lacking. Rather, it was that it was suppressed for many years. Most of the artists had no space. You could either perform what was politically convenient or you were out.

Your public performances became quite political after 2011, on the streets and in your show on Tripoli FM, Libya’s first English radio station where you invited an imam to discuss homosexuality.

That was the idea of Tripoli FM. They wanted to discuss what the rest of society were afraid to discuss. We discussed everything, from relationships to families to sexual preferences. Consequently, we created a big buzz and subsequently were shut down. That was in 2014 at the beginning of the war in Tripoli. The war was an excuse to shut us down.

We resumed, but even if someone was gay and listening, they would never say anything against the majority. To be safe, everybody goes with the majority, so they don’t feel threatened. It’s a difficult environment

Farah said that there is a kind of Libyan vibe. Do you think there is something like that?

Again, when it comes to music and art, I drop nationalities. We are trying to grab what we can from other musicians, so every musician has its own journey. For Farah, this journey shows up in her music.Farah, Aymen and me found out that we are from different generations, musical backgrounds and yet we discovered that, on stage, we could bring all those experiences together.

How would you characterize your music?

It’s literally the fusion of three different music styles. Aymen plays more oriental Libyan influenced music, while Farah plays straight Western pop, but is interpreting whatever random oriental music comes her way. I don’t really have a genre, I bounce. I think it helps I don’t really have a very particular style.

In any other band, I am usually doing the arrangements, the singing, but this time I tried to take my place and adapt. That all worked well for us.

In the last two years, we’ve seen more solo artists emerge than ever before. Last week there was a concert in Benghazi with six bands, all different styles and music. Such concerts were neither available nor welcome two years ago. You wouldn’t find a lot of musicians in 2013, although it was safer and freer than in 2017. Now people are buying instruments. They were influenced by the people who were there at the time.

I think in three years’ time the music scene in Libya will be much bigger. We have now hip hop, folk, pop, Western, Chaabi and Reggae musicians.

Can you make a living with your music in Libya?

The copyright game ended in Libya a while ago. Most of the artists, even the big names, don’t make money by selling music online andare selling music for almost nothing nowadays. They’re just trying to get people to come and pay to see them play. The money you get online is not enough even to produce the songs. Others are trying to be influencers, or trying to make one song that could lead to invitations to private parties. Even in times of conflict I have played a lot of live events in Libya.

To play in public is not possible anymore?

I’ve performed during protests in Algeria square in Tripoli, where most of the civil resistance against some militias took place. On other occasions, I’ve played to unite families and militias, to ease the tension. The concept of civil society was new to us

Blackbox Libya is a cooperation of Heinrich Boell Foundation and Breaking the Ice

https://tn.boell.org/en/blackbox-libya-political-dynamics-and-spaces-artistic-intervention