Listening and understanding music – the conflict

by i | Aug 12, 2023 | Uncategorized

Was talking to a friend of mine about a week ago, and he showed me this song, spoken in a foreign language. The song was on Youtube, and it had subtitles, therefore i was able to understand what was being sung. After listening to it for about 2 minutes, i realized it was something i was familiar with the message, and i told him that the song lost its meaning to me. He kept insisting that i should listen to it, with my heart, because it sounds good, and it makes him feel good when he listens.

i told him something which i don’t think he understood.

Yes, i will often listen to music that’s spoken in foreign languages. For the beat, for the vibe, it’s cool. Music speaks to everyone. i am particularly fond of Deutschrap because the beats are quite well. i was joking one day that these guys could be talking shit about my mother, but i’d still be enjoying the music because i don’t know the words.

However, one day, there was this song i particularly liked, and i made the mistake of going on Google, getting the lyrics, and translating them. Evidently, it was a mistake, because the beat was sick, but the lyrics were garbage and thus, the song got utterly ruined for me. Since then, i kinda really don’t translate any of the rap songs i end up listening to, unless maybe the video is that good or if it’s auto-subtitled.

Another day, in the suggested videos, came up this Egyptian rap video, which had a really nice color palette, white, orange, and blue, and the video itself was nicely made, showing around some neighborhood in Egypt. Now, as i liked the beat, and as i liked the imagery, i wanted to know the words. i was so pleasantly surprised to learn that the words were nice. It talked about their neighborhood – Talbeya, how girls can walk safely around it at night, how they grew pigeons on the rooftops of the buildings, how they passed around plates of food between the houses and it always comes back full, the workouts and so on.

So you can see how it all comes together – It was great when the beat, the vibe of the song, aligns with the imagery of the video, and then the meaning of the words being spoken completing this whole work.

Coming back to my friend, i explained that although that song had a nice vibe, as soon as i understood the message that it promoted, the song lost any meaning or value to me. By now, you should be able to understand why.

We also have to keep in mind, that the people singing the song, know the message they are singing, and they still choose to do it, even though it’s a terrible message, so it’s a conscious decision.

So now i ask: How can i in good judgment, continue listening with my heart to a song that although is well spoken, but then i realize the message is so disappointing?

Come to think of it, people have for centuries taken terrible messages, sung them, put them on pedestals, surrounded them by gold and crowns and riches, and then those messages, even if they were terrible on their own, people treated them as valuable, with respect and humility, not questioning them, their validity or the people that chose to promote those messages, so i guess that says something about the character of the majority of people. i guess it’s easier to shed responsibility for one’s actions and to think that if only …