Berber music bands of musicians traveling from village to village, entertaining at weddings and other social events with their songs, tales and poetry. Most Berber music is of the village- and urban-folk musical variety. Berber music and culture is influenced by the Berber people's long-standing struggle to achieve basic language rights and identity recognition in modern North African societies, aside from aesthetics and style. Berber music is characterized by its use of folk oral traditions, as well as particular scales and rhythmic patterns, which include pentatonic music and African rhythms. All these elements are combined together to form one of the main
Berber languages today. It was borrowed from Latin "barbari". The Latin word is also found in the Arabic designation for these populations, البربر ("al-Barbar"); see Names of the Berber people. Etymologically, the Berber root "M-Z-Ɣ" ("Mazigh") (singular noun: "Amazigh", feminine: "Tamazight") means "free man", "noble man", or "defender". The feminine "Tamazight" traditionally referred specifically to the Riffian and Central Atlas Tamazight languages. Many Berber linguists prefer to consider the term "Tamazight" as a pure Berber word to be used only in Berber text while using the European word "Berber/"Berbero"/"Berbère"" in European texts to follow the traditions of European writings about the Berbers.