Music and Language

I’ve had some people ask me why I listened to music in a foreign language if I couldn’t even understand the lyrics. It had never actually crossed my mind before that unintelligible lyrics would somehow be a barrier to listening to music. To me, the actual musical aspects – melody, rhythm, etc – were always the most important, and lyrics were secondary. Perhaps it’s because I started playing violin before I really got into popular music, but to me vocals have always been “another instrument” in a sense. I have a friend who, aside from this would consider to have good taste, refuse to listen to anything that isn’t in English because it “makes no sense” to him. I always hear the saying that “music is the universal language” (although math has been thrown around too occasionally), and so his logic makes no sense to me. To me, as long as it “sounds good,” I can listen to anything. The most interesting part to me is the stylistic difference in music from different cultures. It’s really interesting to hear the slightly different takes on various genres, such as when you hear traditional ethnic instruments in modern pop music recordings from Asia or Africa.