If you know how to look, there's a vast amount of music from around the world that is readily available to western consumers (or would-be consumers, as the case may be). Latin American music blew up in the U.S. in particular in the '60s with the release of Black Orpheus in 1959, and there's no shortage of music from that area available in the west in my experience. Asian and African music are admittedly maybe a bit tougher, but there's tons of crossover and lots of English-language (here referring to packaging, if not necessarily lyrics) releases of major musicians from both continents (particularly those who dabbled a lot in English-language or just Western-influenced musical styles). There are a lot of online archives seeking to show off some of the fruits of Western influence. Awesome Tapes From Africa is a blog with free direct downloads that distributes incredibly obscure (and almost universally delicious) African tapes from Afrobeat to Soukous and beyond. Outside of things that have anything to do with Euro-American influence in either direction, the Smithsonian Folkways record label, for one example, is a massive resource for ethnomusicological recordings of a wide swath of (primarily indigenous and/or oppressed groups of) people from around the world, as are Sublime Frequencies and Dust to Digital.
Ooh, cheers for this, I'm familiar with a few of the sites you mentioned but that Awesome Tapes From Africa one seems to be pretty cool, I'll try get some stuff from these (Though like I said my internet sucks and these sorts of downloads usually crash half way through 🙁 ).
So does this mean you focus intently on the lyrics of English-language music at all time?
I wouldn't say I need to focus intently on lyrics to absorb their meaning, or at least the flavor of them. Also, once I've understood them once, it requires less focus for the meaning to make its impact on later listens.
Quote:
Interested in your mileage with Saibou Bungaku and Tomoaki Saito, two Japanese singer-songwriter types (the latter I believe is a member of the former and both have released self-titled albums to which I've listened) with a lot of instrumental atmosphere a la your Neil Youngs, Bob Dylans, what have you. Without knowing a scrap of Japanese, they're some of the most emotionally ravaging albums I've ever heard and serve as a good barometer in my mind for testing your claim.
I haven't heard them, though I'm certainly interested to try it out.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's impossible to enjoy lyrical music without understanding the words. I've just found it's more difficult for me. Different people experience music differently, so it may be that the meaning of lyrics is more important to me than it is for some others. I know Necharsian has said he doesn't pay much attention to lyrics, for example.
meccaleccaVoice of ReasonProfile The Land of Enchantment
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's impossible to enjoy lyrical music without understanding the words. I've just found it's more difficult for me. Different people experience music differently, so it may be that the meaning of lyrics is more important to me than it is for some others. I know Necharsian has said he doesn't pay much attention to lyrics, for example.
I'm with you man. Not that I can't enjoy foreign lyrics, but the emotional stuff just hits way harder when the words are there to jab you like daggers. No way i'd enjoy Joanna Newsom and Elliot Smith as much if I didn't understand what they were saying. _________________ http://jonnyleather.com
Yeah, I think it's a waste of time to worry about "chart quality" anyway. That's pretty subjective.
Don't wanna listen to cultural music? Your loss but to the people that do, I enjoy/would like to discuss it more with you. _________________
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