The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Wow, this dog and pony show has been falling apart the last few days. Blame it on the gravitional pull of the Nur Ein. Everybody's too busy enjoying some bullets and lovers.

QotD: Do you listen to music in a language other than English? If so, what are some of your favorites?

drc: I have been very busy at work. I'm involved in three different projects, each at a critical phase (two are in bugfix mode getting ready for release, and one is in the design phase and I'm the lead architect). I barely even have time to breathe.

qotd: I have quite a lot of music in Chinese and Japanese, some in Swedish, and bits and pieces in French, Danish, Hebrew, and other various languages. Since my musical listening focus is on the sound and texture and not so much on the lyrics, I don't care that I don't understand any of it.

DRC: Work is going exceptionally slow today... for some reason... ugh!

QotD: Yes, it seems I tend to like either German, Russian, Ukrainian or Japanese... however I like Golem, and they sing in Yiddish(?) or Hebrew(?) sometimes.

ujnhunter wrote:DRC: Work is going exceptionally slow today... for some reason... ugh!

QotD: Yes, it seems I tend to like either German, Russian, Ukrainian or Japanese... however I like Golem, and they sing in Yiddish(?) or Hebrew(?) sometimes.

Yes, they sing in Yiddish and Hebrew. I believe they also sing in Ukranian sometimes.

I listen to some music in Spanish from time to time, an there's a few Kraftwerk songs in German that I like... There's also a coulpe of random songs I enjoy on my wife's iPod that are in French. Other than that, I don't extensively listen to music in any other language.

QOTD: Except the occasional German version of 99 luftballoons, no.

QOTD: Farsi (? Middle Eastern pop), Spanish, French, Russian (well, the Red Army Men's Choir - or whatever they're named - anyway), would be the top 4 non-English for me.

I likes me some Mariachi type music in the right setting, but I don't seek it out or have the desire to take it home with me. I have a few records by a psychedelic Swedish hippy folk band called Dungen that I like. Could be singing about raping puppies for all I know. Hell, I hardly understand English, so I'm easy.

Got a new bass head today. An Ampeg SVT-6 Pro. Ball crushing goodness on top of the Joe's 1x18!

- Lots of Café Tacuba albums (Mexican rock, in Spanish)
- Bjork
- Nana Mouskouri in a variety of languages
- Paolo Conte in Italian
- Peter Gabriel's Ein Deutsches Album (German language version of III)
- lots of Indian pop and Bollywood
- I used to listen to Magma a lot, who made up their own language, Kobaïan

Totally. Did we talk about this before? Anyway.

Italian - I am studying Italian so this is a good fit:
- CapaRezza: a crazy Italian rapper.
- Subsonica: electronic rock.

German - I used to study German:
- Kraftwerk: early industrial.
- Einstuerzende Neubauten: more recent industrial complete with machinery and rock-scraping and such.

Spanish - Going even further back, I studied this in high school:
- Kinky: electronic rock from Mexico. They did a song with the singer from Cake.
- Ozomatli: Latin/hip-hop ensemble, sings in Spanish and English.

French - I have not studied this except for when we went there a little bit:
- Autour de Lucie: hmm, downtempo, female vocals.
- Kamini: French rapper. Got somewhat famous on Internet for posting video about growing up in a small town.

Random languages I don't know at all:
- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: sang Pakistani Qawwali.
- Israel "Iz" Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole: Hawai'ian.
- Ondar: Tuvan throat-singing, but I don't recall if there are actual words in it too.
- Sigur Ros: Icelandic, kind of proggy, hard to describe music.
- Malka Spigel: weird pop? Sings in Hebrew on one album.
- Värttinä: Finnish traditional/pop group with several female singers.
- Yellow Magic Orchestra: Japanese prog/pop/electronic or something.

Enya sings in all kinds of languages. A lot of electronic bands have songs in various languages. Also various Indian soundtracks are a lot of fun incl. remixes.

Wow, that's a lot of bands and a lot of languages. Languages are fun!
-bill

PS roy: I thought about mentioning Magma too, but I haven't heard them in some years... cassette tape!

I love music of various languages, but the big three for me (in foreign languages) are Spanish, Japanese and German. Though I also have enjoyed some Korean, Chinese and some others.

As for favorites, easily my favorite foreign language artist is Tommy Heavenly6. Japanese with a touch of broken English.

Both Zappa and Bowie flirt with German, I always like that.

Uz Mez Doma - is my favorite Czech band that sing in Czech, I have like 5 albums and they get regular listens.

Cornelius and Pizzicato Five and sometimes Ex-Girl- represent the Japanese I listen to.

There's like one Skankin Pickle song in Korean I like.

Charming Hostess does several obscure languages that are awesome too!

So it's more of an anomaly from bands, but I always dig it.

Especially when I read a translation of Uz Mez Doma lyrics:

"Rubber Tree, what are you doing here? You're not a ruralist!"

I thought Sigor Ros sang in Gibberish, like the Cocteau Twins , both of whom I love as well.

glennny wrote:Uz Mez Doma - is my favorite Czech band that sing in Czech, I have like 5 albums and they get regular listens.

This is totally the wrong thread for this but you reminded me of my favorite Czech song ever.

japanese is my favorite. i enjoy whole genres of music in japanese that i wouldn't be able to stand in english.

Here.

I only really listen to other language music in a classical context. Although I did have a couple of cool russian undergraound things in teh late 80s that someone was releasing here - I guess it was on a comp called "red wave."

Karyn Allyson sings in many different languages, and I listen to her.

Also:
Buena Vista Social Club
Putumayo Presents: French Cafe

Whoah! I just travelled back in time a year!

You don't need to understand a language to listen to its music. Often it just has a peculiar sound which is as if different instruments are used, and a lot of the time you also get actual different instruments and styles as a bonus.
But these days Babelfish or Google will even give you a rough translation of any lyrics you can find.
Off the top of my head:

• Italian: Il maniscalco maldestro, Rein (ska etc.), Angelo Branduardi (ballads), folk stuff
• Spanish: flamenco, Los Van Van (Cuba), Argentine and Chilean stuff (Los Jaivas and similar; folk prog rock in various combinations)
• French: Georges Moustaki, Jean Ferrat (old chançon), Louise Attaque, Stupeflip (rap & craziness)
• Russian: Okudzhava, Visotsky, Mityaev ('bards'), Leningrad (punk), Lyube (rock)... Canadian Yves Desrosiers did a great translation in French of Visotsky songs ("Volodia")
• Bulgarian: Balkandji (folk metal), Wickeda (ska), folk songs (check Valya Balkanska)
• German: Puff Mutti & die Haschpapis (quirky shortlived band?), Eisbrecher (industrial dance)
• Dutch: Boudewijn de Groot (pop), Wannes van de Velde (folk)

Greek (Theodorakis!), various Japanese, Chinese, Indian stuff... also lately impressed by Ethiopian and West African music (Mali, Senegal)... don't understand a word but it wouldn't be the same in English I think.