But it was rock music that bore the real brunt of Hoxha’s prohibitions, and the flowering of Albanian-language rock took place in Kosovo rather than the country’s own capital. In a situation where beards and long hair were banned, even opportunities for sartorial signs of countercultural thought were vanishingly rare, but Tirana’s youth would not be discouraged and defied official proscriptions for decades before they were finally lifted in the 1990s.
The
liqeni ('lake') bands were the nucleus from which Albanian rock later grew, so named for their illegal gatherings at the artificial lake in the south of Tirana. Here they would play the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix songs they had heard on crackly bootleg tapes and homemade radios tuned to Italian stations. In the absence of electrified rock instruments, folk guitars and anything that might be used as a drum were utilised, and among this loosely formed, DIY collective were Gjergj Jorgaqi, Aleksander Gjoka, Dashnor Diko and Elton Deda who would all go on to musical success in post-communist Albania.