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
Names of the Berber people as Numidians and later as Mauri in classical antiquity. These are umbrella terms that would include populations whose self-designation was a variety of tribal names, although Strabo asserts that "Mauri" was also used indigenously. The "Libu" of ancient Egyptian sources, eponymous of the name "Libya" may also have been an early Berber or Proto-Berber population. The term "Berber" is a variation of the Greek original word "barbaros" ("barbarian"), earlier in history applied by Romans specifically to their northern hostile neighbors from Germania (modern Germany) and Celts, Iberians, Gauls, Goths and Thracians. The variation is a French one when spelled "Berbère"