I live and work In Dearborn, Michigan which has the largest concentration of Middle-Eastern peoples outside of the Middle East. Consequently, we have a lot of Middle Eastern culture around here including at least three cable television channels. Often when I am channel surfing I hit these channels when they are in the middle of some sort of musical show. Not speaking any form of Arabic or Farsi or any other language from that region, the music sounds to me like a lot of monosyllabic moaning, not because I am bigotted but because I don’t understand it, as I am sure our music (particularly Elvis’ music) must sound like a lot of gibberish to people who don’t understand English.
That brings me to my question. In Western music, a lot of emphasis is placed on rhyming or similar-sounding words. Do the lyrics of music that originates in non-Western cultures, such as Middle Eastern, Asian, etc., also rhyme?
As a side note, what happens to rhyming lyrics when Western songs are translated into other languages? The other day I heard (in a Chinese restaurant) a recording of a Chinese woman singing Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons” in Chinese!
Although Japanese lyrics sometimes rhyme, most often they don’t. There is nothing as formulaic as Asian pop, and for sure there is a Golden Rule of verse ending for writing Jpop lyrics.
In Japanese, words can only end in the following vowel sounds: a, i, u, e, o, and n.
“N” in songs is treated as a vowel and in enka-type singing is often used over long held notes.
A, i and e are considered bright and cheerful songs. U, o and n on the other hand are the dark sounds. Thus, when writing bubble gum pop, avoid verse endings in u, o and n. It’s that simple.
What happens when songs are translated? The last major translated hit I remember is the ever so awful “Goldfinger 99”, the Japanese version of “La Vida Loca”. Let’s compare:
The rhymes are all gone from the translation and my translation of the translation. Notice how often the Golden Rule is broken too…
Chinese songs rhyme. Not all of them, of course, but not all Western songs rhyme either.
As far as translated lyrics go, I imagine they retain their rhyme. As I’m sure you’re aware, a song have to really be mangled to make it work in another language; it wouldn’t be word-for-word, and may in fact diverge pretty drastically. So changing it to something that rhymes shouldn’t be a big deal.