Foreign language songs/music

sure! I do it all the time.

I just picked up "Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill," most of which is in German, natch. The only German song that struck my fancy was, "Mack the Knife." Her interpretation only meant something to me because I knew what she was singing about. (I also enjoyed "Alabama Song" and a couple of cuts from "One Touch of Venus," but they were in English.) I haven't tried listening to it while following the English translations in the booklet yet, which may help. Similarly, with opera, even if you don't know the language you generally do know what's going on, and just why Violetta's got such a bee in her bonnet.

If you don't know what the words mean, it's just scat. Now, scat can be good, but remember that this wasn't intended to be scat.

Enjoying what we don't understand is normal. The fair sex, deities, and Mick Jagger's early vocals come immediately to mind. More seriously, better audio examples I enjoy are folk music from Scandinavia and Africa, and medieval choral music sung in Latin. If you like it or it expands your mind it's all good!

I can listen to Edith Piaf in French, Ladysmith Black Mambaso in Zulu, opera in a variety of languages and greatly enjoy it all without understanding a word. Beethoven's 9th often has the words to the choral section of the last movement in German and in English. By 21st century standards, these words by Schiller(?) are such drivel that I'd rather just listen and not know they are singing. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Okay, I'm ready for the brickbats.

Language is a mediated understanding. It is a natural abstraction of other stuff, like perceiving. Singing is not lingual, even though we may put words in the singing. That is why singers can easily sing in other languaages but cannot speak words without a native accent. So you react to music, which is immediate. Singing is music and is immediate. Words can cetainly be enriching if you get there, but they can also loose their meaning over time, even if you are fluent. Even cavemen like Elgordo can knock their hairy knuckles on the stone floor in appreciation. He is right, this drivel dispairs of 21st century standards such as Hallmark Cards, Bittany and so many others of large audience. Though I envy his rather complete bliss, he would like Robert Musil's passage in "A Man without Qualities" where two young lovers play the 9th, together at the piano, singing those words. The protagonist watches this rediculous performance and thus realizes what drivel those words truly are.