By “foreign” music, I mean music, possibly with styles, definitely with lyrics that are not what you typically listen to? If so, why?
For instance, I listen to various metal bands, rock, hard rock, etc, all mostly with lyrics written and sung in english. Sometimes though, usually when headed home from work, I just can’t let the stresses of the day go and listen to my music selections without my bad mood poisoning it. On those occasions, I switch over to one of the local mexican language stations and listen to that music. Since it’s in a language I can’t follow, it seems better at soothing a foul mood for me as I have no way to impose whatever thoughts or feelings onto it. I can just enjoy the music.
So do you do something like this, maybe for similar reasons, maybe for totally different reasons?
I’ve found that the best cure for an earworm is a song from an entirely different musical tradition. I usually use a Dakota hymn for that purpose. The idea is that it displaces the song you don’t want out of your head, but since it doesn’t fit the patterns you’re familiar with, it won’t get stuck in its place.
I could listen to bossa nova all day long. I like the music, I like the phonology of Portuguese though I don’t understand much of it.
That’s probably for the best, since, a lot of it seems to be about crying and longing and crying about the longing, but in another language it really seems like someone else’s problem.
Foreign bands and artist have always been part of my playlists.
Japanese (Wagakki Band, Meiko Kaji)
French (Barbara, Piaf, ZAZ, Mireille Mathieu, Jacques Brel)
Spanish/Latin (Bebe, The Warning, Luis Fonsi)
Mongolian (The Hu)
Siberian (Otyken)
Russian (Grai)
Brazilian (Elise Regina)
Cornish (The Changing Room, Brenda Wootton)
I like some opera. Mostly the popular bits, like “Libiamo!” and “Lascia ch’io pianga” and such. Other bits that I couldn’t name to save my life. Oddly enough, I don’t really like operatic music sung in English. I find it off-putting. I prefer the mystery of not knowing what they’re singing about. As Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding said of an opera bit, “To this day I have no idea what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are better left unsaid.”
*I actually have looked up the lyrics to some opera songs, and I’m not necessarily disappointed to know what they were saying. Although the song that moved Red so, I’m sorry to tell him that the song (open spoilers for centuries-old opera) is about two women conspiring to catch an adulterer.
Also, I love a pretty broad range of “ethnic” music, with Latin Jazz at the top of that list. I also dig the Gipsy Kings and music of a similar vibe. And laugh at me all you want, I find Enya’s singing in Irish Gaelic (and also her fictional language) positively haunting.
Technically, I almost listen exclusively to foreign music, because English is not my first language and rock/pop/country/soul from the anglosphere is what I like the most. But I don’t mind music in a language I don’t understand, as long as the music is fine, I don’t have to understand the lyrics to appreciate a good song.
The OP would’ve been better phrased as “Not English language music, “ since English is the world’s llingua franca and many artists around the world use English no matterr what their native language is. So not only do a lot of people around the world listen to music where the lyrics are not in English but they also sing lyrics in English.
I have a pandora station that’s a huge shuffle of some pretty diverse music, it’s not uncommon for various languages to come up, I get a lot of Khmer because one of the bands I liked was Denge Fever and the algorithm feeds me Cambodian acid rock.
Yep. Though I’m not sure for me if it fits the spirit of the OP–like EinsteinsHund listening to “foreign” music in English as a second language, I am listening to “foreign” music in Portuguese as a second language.
Regardless, the old Bossa from the 60s was really something.
I am possibly the polar opposite of someone who listens to foreign music in order to take a break from processing English lyrics. The only non-English music I habitually listen to these days has cadences and emphases that makes it sound like they’re singing in English, just using foreign words. I can only think of two examples, both of which are rock sung in Ukrainian, so it’s quite possible that rock makes me assume that it is in English and that Ukrainian naturally sounds like English when sung. Because there is a rock band called Chinese Football who sings in Chinese and whose style of music I otherwise like, but I cannot get into them because singing in non-English is distracting to me in their case.
Not just for english speaking-as-a-first-language folks.
Sorry for the poorly worded op, the events that sent me down this trail of thought have also left me a bit more muddle-headed than normal.
I did mean in a language you don’t normally use or maybe don’t understand at all. Maybe japanese or hungarian or finnish or Australian Aboriginal music, whatever it is that you listen to.
Oh yes - I love getting Spotify to unearth all kinds of musical artists and styles I haven’t heard of from around the world, although I’m still working on breaking the algorithm to get it to give me as much variety as possible.
The other day I asked the AI playlist generator to find me “Mongolian pop, Bollywood, Finnish death metal, and zydeco”. Admittedly finding Bollywood stuff that isn’t just Arijit Singh mush is a challenge and a lot of Finnish death metal turns out to be terrible, but I can report that the Mongolian pop scene is booming. And even bad zydeco is pretty good.
The previous attempt churned up a lot of jazz from west Africa - mostly Mali and Senegal but I’m now a fan of Cesaria Evora from Cape Verde.
As for classical music, well - that is what I usually listen to.
