The world’s a big place, and the BBS is, at least in theory–I admit I have not fully tested this assumption, on the World Wide Web. But it’s full of people who know how to, and do, speak English.
Let’s have some fun and post only music that isn’t in English. Techno and instrumental only kind of counts… depends on whether it’s something we’ve heard before… if you get my drift. For example, I don’t want to rule out all European electronic music, but we’ve all heard Daft Punk.
I got to see these guys play live, a hip-hop/swing band called Movits from Sweden:
This is Adonis Puentes, an Afro-Cuban Jazz artist (who also sings in English, sometimes):
I like non-English music, mostly for listening to the sounds and patterns the language makes, like in opera. It’s kinda soothing, in a weird way. Like being sat at a table with a bunch of non-English speakers, all conversing in their own language.
Trouble is, one day I’m sure I’m gonna fond out I’ve been grooving to hymns to Hitler or something equally shit by mistake, LOL.
Already happened to me. Back during the salad days of Limewire, I downloaded what I thought was a song by the German group Rammstein… but they sounded kinda shitty. The words “Hitler” and “Juden” came up, but I knew that Rammstein could be political at times and that they definitely weren’t pro-Nazi, so maybe they were making an anti-Nazi reference?
Eventually the smell test dictated I Google stuff (maybe I was AltaVistaing back then,) whereupon I discovered it was a Neo-Nazi group whose song was relabeled as Rammstein and uploaded to Limewire. By then it had been a month. Owing to my shitty data sanitation, organization, backup and transfer habits I was still finding it on random media years later, too. Awkward, awkward moment explaining why a random ass song about Hitler and the Jews popped up on my new iPod to a friend.
The first track was one of my jams from way back when I became friends with a Ukrainian exchange student during my first year at university. She told me the song title is a phrase that means ‘You’re driving me crazy’ and judging by the music video, not in a romantic sense. Beyond that? No idea what they’re saying.
The second I just stumbled upon a few years ago when it was first released. Stumbling is a very inefficient non-method of discovery, so I’m kinda stoked about this thread.
Yo, @popobawa4u: I know you jam hard to this stuff. Share some wisdom!
I’m pretty sure I have stuff like this somewhere. I’m a fan of genres that seem to attract Nazis (Death Metal, loud angry punk, Oi! etc.), listen to non-English music and download from dubious places so there’s almost certainly something in there like that. I should probably punch myself in the face, just in case there is.
Likey that. Oh yes.
Changing gears, I dig chansons stuff. Like, Brassens and such.
If you watched Kill Bill you know this song and one other. Kaji Mieko acted in a bunch of great films back in the 70s. The song was originally for Lady Snowblood
Dont know much about Jero but he’s got a great voice and has received respect in the Enka scene even appearing on NHK’s big annual end of year music show.
Rough title translation “Ginza love story”. Absolute classic song to sing with your sweetie of a certain generation at karaoke.
Well, woo! Non-English language music is mostly what I listen to these days, mostly because even if the lyrics are absolute shit (as about 90% of lyrics are), I will have no idea whatsoever.
So some Russian/Polish/German folk metal are what the doktor ordered.
