Crossing The Border, One Playlist At A Time

Illustration by Sydney Hanson

There are thousands of languages in the world and I have the privilege of being able to speak two fluently – English and French. I say privilege because I believe that being able to speak another language opens up a whole new world and an entirely new culture for you. In reference to music, it allows you to understand slang from the artist that may not translate easily. However, as someone who prides themselves on being open minded with my music taste, and consistently tries to expand my horizons, I always challenge myself to not let language be a barrier and to listen to music even when it’s in a language I don’t completely understand. I’ll usually listen without reading the English translation for the lyrics, if I even search them up at all. There’s beauty in the feelings and unspoken understandings that are not explicitly stated but rather transmitted through the subtleties of the music. The most recent example of this was Bad Bunny’s album and how the titular track had such an impact on individuals as they thought about their hometown, their families, and their heritage. To be able to get past this first step of not understanding, allows you to instead make even more of an effort to feel and absorb what is being presented to you.  

When you listen to music in your first language, there tends to be a focus on the lyrics, the imagery, and the story that the artist is telling with their words. While this may be beautiful and lead to a satisfying music-listening experience, getting comfortable with that can also mean that it becomes a passive process. While this is not inherently wrong, listening to music can be something that someone does for background noise, or to pass the time, In contrast, when you are listening to it as an art form, it can require a little more depth of analysis. 

When there is that barrier of a language that you don’t understand, you grasp on to the elements of the music that you can pick up on such as the instrumentation and the way the singer is singing. While I don’t speak Spanish, I found myself listening to an artist named Yerai Cortés who makes flamenco music. The fact that I cannot understand what he is saying forces me to focus on the masterful guitar playing, the layered vocals, and the use of the body as a form of percussion. The listening experience then becomes not just what I am being told, but what I hear and how that makes me feel. While it is often described as a language barrier, I’d argue that it is rather a gateway to a completely different kind of experience.  

Often, Western society is deemed the centre of the world and the height of all things artistic. While this may be true for art and media, sometimes it is easy to ignore that when listening to music, because there may be diversity in the appearance or experiences of those that we listen to. However, there is one aspect of the music creation process that often gets ignored and that is the infusion of cultural norms, values, and sounds. It can be easy to pick on the influence of someone’s upbringing in the subject matter that they talk about, but often individuals – especially in a non-western context, will use traditional instruments and sounds to create a modern fusion. Being able to decenter Western artists allows for you to learn more about other regions of the world simply by listening to a song or album. Not only does it open you up to learning about culture but it may also teach you about the material conditions of that region, and become a learning experience for how other people live.