Can Music Transcend Language?

At the annual Latin Grammy awards, Ricky Martin championed the power of Latin music and the Spanish language, telling reporters, “Music breaks borders and unites cultures.”

And yet the success-—or lack of—-of foreign language songs in English-speaking countries, notably the US and the UK, says otherwise. Songs that aren’t in English just don’t rate the same success. The songs of Juanes, the biggest-selling pop artist in Latin American, for example, have yet to cross over to non-Spanish speakers. While his songs play continuously on virtually every Spanish-language radio station, only a minimal percentage of non-Latin stations are playing his music.

Other Latin artists, like Shakira or Ricky Martin, who have attained popularity across the cultures, have prepared different albums for different countries, recording both in English and Spanish. And only certain types of songs are able to cross-over: the biggest recent hits belong to Daddy Yankee with "Rompe" in 2006 and, prior to that, "Gasolina." As the article points out, “both are reggaeton tracks, synonymous with danceable.” And “the last big Spanish-language hit on mainstream U.S. radio was ‘Macarena,’ the queen of easy-to-dance-to tracks. That was a decade ago.”

Of Juanes, a British article states, “He's now trying to extend his popularity to the UK, with his album Mi Sangre (My Blood). His label, Polydor, has big plans for him, convinced our sceptical island is ready to welcome him as our continental neighbours have. But there's one thing Polydor seems to have forgotten - the British don't buy records not sung in English.”

My thoughts on this? I’ve always thought that music lyrics must be the hardest thing to translate; it’s where the gap between languages appears most sharply. In music, lyrics have to be perfectly fitted to the rhythm of the song (down to the number of syllables) and have a certain appealing sound; the words are so important for the song’s meaning. The word choice radically affects the song’s tone, and there are certain expressions in each language that will not survive literal translation. The translations end up sounding just silly, as in the case of Chinese singer Jay Chow, whose song titles translate to “Hair Like Snow” and “Romantic Mobile Phone.” So it was gratifying to read that Juanes refuses to compromise the integrity of his songs by translating them into English for the different market.

As well, the fact that songs in English achieve popularity in other countries whereas foreign language music doesn’t fare as well in English-speaking countries speaks to the connection between language and culture. There are a lot of factors that could be involved in the disparate rates of success: the US’ role as a major player in the world of entertainment, the attitudes of the Americans and the British towards all things foreign (an ingrained perceived cultural superiority?), the ubiquity of the English language all over the world. So music has to overcome far more than the language barrier in order to truly cross cultures!

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN0938009720071110

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1757374,00.html

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.htmlres=9F0CE7DD163EF93AA2575AC0A965958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all