Earlier this year, Bad Bunny (the most streamed artist on Spotify, by the way, or maybe Taylor Swift has passed him – either way, he’s incredibly popular) performed the Super Bowl halftime show. It was a good time; he really showcased Puerto Rican culture and put on a show that looked and felt like a big party. He also sang in Spanish, because he’s Puerto Rican, and that’s his native language. The FCC received a lot of complaints about this, many mostly about the fact that performing in Spanish is somehow anti-American. (Never mind that Puerto Rico is in America.) Personally, I thought it was a good show. (Technically, I guess I thought it was fine.) I didn’t understand all of the lyrics (despite having studied a LOT of Spanish… it’s been a long time), but to say I didn’t understand the performance would be wrong. It was pretty apparently what the songs were actually about – life, and love, and family – all of the things that featured in the performance. (And some sexy stuff. Turns out, people like sexy stuff.)
Toward the end of last year, I saw Avatar at the Fillmore in Silver Spring. One of their openers was a band I hadn’t heard of before I saw them on the bill – a band from New Zealand called Alien Weaponry. The band’s members all have Maori ancestry, something of which I know little. The band performs in a way to really express that, though. Their set started with a haka (one part of Maori culture I am somewhat familiar with) and right out of the gate, they were intense. They sing in Maori, so like Bad Bunny, I didn’t necessarily know what words they were saying, but I understood.
See, you can tell exactly what the song is about, even if you don’t know the words. (And if you’re not 100% certain, you can just look it up – a Taniwha is a guardian spirit that protects people and places, and these indigenous folks are calling on that spirit to get rid of the colonizing forces. (Not gonna get further into any opinions about that, but it owns.)
More recently, I saw another band that didn’t perform in English, and also made it very clear what they were talking about. I’m talking about The Hu, a Mongolian folk metal band. It sounds simplistic, but these guys are Mongolian; they sing in Mongolian (including throat singing), they play Mongolian folk instruments (some of them – there’s a guitar player and a more contemporary drummer) and their songs are basically war chants or, as far as I can tell, more generally about how badass they are. (There are some more serious ones, like Song of Women which is about how important wives and mothers are, too.)
You can’t tell me you don’t have a very good idea of this band’s vibe after that. Or that you don’t at least feel like you’re getting a little slice of authentic Mongolian culture. (Maybe it’s a little shallow, but you know what, a lot of American music can be pretty shallow.)
Anyway, I just wanted to throw those out there. Go listen to some music you don’t understand. It’ll be fine.
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