While Libyans and other supporters of the Arab Spring celebrate after finally bringing down the government and “decapitating” the regime by killing Khadafi, I thought to myself, “why isn’t there any Libyan music?”. I have plenty of music from countries brutalized by dictatorships: Congo, Syria, Russia, Cambodia, Iran, and Iraq, just to name a few. Only North Korea can rival Libya for having absolutely no shelf space in my fairly voluminous world music library. I even did a recent show with author and KCRW afternoon host Lisa Napoli on Bhutanese music. Can anybody tell me why Libyan music either hardly exists or just never got outside of Libya? Could it be because Libyans rarely leave Libya. I know of no Libyan community in the U.S., and didn’t really encounter any Libyans during my three year stay in Paris. So it remains a mystery to me.
