Listening to Foreign Language Music Essay Example
📌Category: | Entertainment, Music |
📌Words: | 996 |
📌Pages: | 4 |
📌Published: | 07 September 2021 |
Recently a big music related controversy on social media is if you can actually enjoy music that you don't understand. Music is meant to be a “right" brain, as opposed to a “left" brain, experience. It is “felt" more than it is “understood". So I think that you can enjoy music in any language. Listening to music in different languages might even be helpful, you can learn a different language from it. For most music it is the beat and the instruments that are what attract a fan rather than the lyrics, whether it's in english or in spanish doesn’t matter, the music is what people like. I know for a lot of people and speaking personally a curiosity for different cultures might have you listening and enjoying their music. I personally like the Latin and Albainan culture and when I listened to their music I enjoy it and immediately added them to my playlist.
Listening to different language music might actually be helpful in learning the language. You pick up words here or there from listening and singing along, you might even start to understand a lot of the music. An article written by Dylan Lyons on Babbel Magazine says “A study by researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland found evidence that singing can help facilitate language learning. Sixty adults participated in the study, which involved 15 minutes of listening to Hungarian phrases and then repeating the phrases normally or through song. When the participants were tested on the material, the researchers discovered those who used singing scored higher than the others”. Listening to music might not be as helpful for learning as singing. For some people listening to the music might peak an interest and one thing leads to another and you research and learn the language. So learning the new language might not come from the music itself. An article by Rocco Romano of University of Iowa states “ passionate music lovers willing to do a bit of research might find themselves falling down the rabbit hole of language learning. What starts as merely going to YouTube and finding a translated lyric video might turn into wanting to know certain phrases or words in that language, to wanting to learn the entire language”. Some people just wanna know what they're listening to and tend to always dig deeper and always learn more than they intended too.
When you first hear a song are you paying attention more to the lyrics or to the beat? Most people pay attention to the beat and the lyrics come second. If I like the way the music sounds I start to learn the lyrics to sing along. In an article posted on NPR Music by Stephan Thompson it says “ So I'll split the official verdict right down the middle: When judging a song based on first impressions, my primary concern is that 1) the music is done right; and 2) the words, whether in content or presentation, aren't done wrong. Putting it that way, strictly by definition, lyrics and singing play a slightly secondary role to music: Music without lyrics is still music, but lyrics without music are poetry”. So basically lyrics are second to the music. In an by Rocco Romano it states “ People tend to like contemporary songs more for their catchy rhythm than what the singers are saying. Modern music genres like electronic dance music (EDM) and pop have fewer lyrics, and the ones that do are usually taken up by the chorus. The same applies to music in foreign languages, which also have choruses that are easily identifiable due to their repetitive nature.As the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, ‘Music is the universal language of all mankind,’ which can’t be closer to the truth when you tune out the lyrics (i.e. the foreign language) and focus on the melody. Whether it’s instruments or synthesizers making the sounds, the pleasurable and relaxed state they produce is at the heart of why people listen to music”. So whether we listen to a forgein song or not, what attracts us to the song is the music, not the lyrics.
For most cultures music is a big thing. It can bring you closer and help you find out more about that culture. For a lot of people a peak in interest in a culture might bring you straight to their music. In an article written by Liesl Ulrich-Verderber it states “ Music is one of our most remarkable cultural artifacts. Unlike language, food, or art, with technology almost anybody at any time can experience a slice of another culture in a rich way with a click of a button. For musical traditions that have been lost or are at risk of being lost, technology is giving us a remarkable outlet to celebrate and restore these cultural gems and keep them alive for generations to come”. The article overall just talks about how important music is to any culture. In an article written by Rocco Romano it says “ When you are listening to music in a foreign language, often the music reflects some aspect of a culture dissimilar to your own. Knowing even the bare bones of a song’s background and meaning is enough to comprehend (at a basic level) another culture’s religion, customs or values...Listening to just one song in a foreign language is enough to spur a desire to learn more about other cultures, enabling you to be more empathetic to other peoples’ beliefs or experiences”. You can learn a lot about a culture through their music, and whether you enjoy the music or not, if you are truly interested in a culture you will end up listening to their music one way or another.
So what do you think, is it weird to listen to music you don't understand? Can it be helpful? Does it matter if it's in a different language? Can you learn something new about the culture that comes with the language? I like to think it's normal, I like to think that it can be helpful in any way you want it to. And honestly music is music, it's a way to express yourself, for a lot of people it's the only way they express themselves. So listen to what you wanna listen to no matter what anybody says. Nobody can tell you can't enjoy it whether it's in english or not.