Sometimes a music's power rests largely in the poetry or politics of the words themselves. Anybody who has sat through an evening of Latin American nueva canci贸n protest pop and seen the audience go inexplicably wild will understand this. Should such artists try to translate their work? Not all those who jump over the language barrier get there with their art intact, just as not all great singers are good linguists. Does their pronunciation draw attention to itself in some negative way or is it a positive feature of their 'new' music?
Tanzanian rumba poet Remmy Ongala sounds so much more prosaic in English than he does in his native Swahili. And when Youssou N'Dour started singing Senegalese mbalax in English it sounded odd to many ears. It's surely no accident that he seems a lot more comfortable singing English on the westernized 7 Seconds, nor that it remains his biggest hit ever. It's significant that Baaba Maal's latest return-to-roots album has none of his previous English vocal experiments and is all the more convincing for it. But will it sell as well as his previous two?
One obvious reason for singing in English is to communicate with a wider audience. It's a fact that we are often missing out on plenty when we don't understand the words, and there are many who will switch off when that happens. The world music market makes up a small proportion of the Anglophone CD buying public, and crossing over to a broader pop market can mean big bucks. Manu Chao realised this and covered up for his lack of proficiency by singing in a jive talking mixture of French, Spanish, Portuguese and English. He hit the jackpot with European audiences.
Whether people sing in English in order to be understood or because of economic incentives the end result will be judged on its merits. It's to be hoped that those who choose to can do it on their own terms, free from ideological or commercial concerns. In a perfect world they would.
Jon Lusk
Tanzanian rumba poet Remmy Ongala sounds so much more prosaic in English than he does in his native Swahili. And when Youssou N'Dour started singing Senegalese mbalax in English it sounded odd to many ears. It's surely no accident that he seems a lot more comfortable singing English on the westernized 7 Seconds, nor that it remains his biggest hit ever. It's significant that Baaba Maal's latest return-to-roots album has none of his previous English vocal experiments and is all the more convincing for it. But will it sell as well as his previous two?
The world music market makes up a small proportion of the Anglophone CD buying public, and crossing over to a broader pop market can mean big bucks. Manu Chao realised this and covered up for his lack of proficiency by singing in a jive talking mixture of French, Spanish, Portuguese and English. He hit the jackpot with European audiences.