Listen to music in languages you don't understand.

I am mostly monolingual speaking English and only a small amount of Danish. For the past 20 years or so I have listened to non-english music almost exclusively. I've found that not getting bogged down in understanding lyrics has allowed me to just appreciate the music and the human voice as a  instrument.

I've accumulated quite a collection of ecclectic music that the garbage American pop-music scene would never admit exists and I feel my life is richer for it. I didn't know bow awesome Icelandic sounded. I had no idea how gritty Tourag rock could be. How did I not know that Mauri Metal would be so obviously awesome? Why is finnish upside down? 

I don't really have a point here, other than to say pick a language you don't understand, go to youtube, type in __________ Music and see what kind of fun new things you didn't know you were missing.

In reply to AClockworkGarage

It may be easier to go to Radio Garden rather than youtube. One can hear streaming radio broadcasts from just about every where, maybe no N. Korea & a couple of other countries.

One of my favorite bands is The Hu and I don't understand Mongolian

In reply to Antihero (Forum Supporter) :

You should check out Tengger Cavalry.

I listen to a lot of Jazz from Japan. It's pretty good. 

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

One of my favorite bands is The Hu and I don't understand Mongolian

Coincidentally (and it's a doozy) I've been thinking about them a lot lately because I've had the phrase "Horton Hears The Hu" stuck in my head, with an image of the named elephant at a Hu concert drawn in the standard Dr Seuss book cover style.

I dig the notion of listening to stuff in other languages, but have to note that lyrics are important to me as well, and the musical world is not divided into the incomprehensible due to language barrier on one side and pop dreck in English on the other.

...and then there's the Cocteau Twins. :)
 

Rammstein

AClockworkGarage said:

In reply to Antihero (Forum Supporter) :

You should check out Tengger Cavalry.

I have actually and like them as well

I listen almost exclusively to instrumental music, which is of course language-agnostic.

Some of today's best trip-hop, post-rock, and stoner-rock artists are from Central Europe and South America.  Greece, too.

I do this a lot. I've been swimming in the deep end of the death core pool lately, and let me tell you, the Russians do a great job- particularly a band called slaughter to prevail. There's also the Japanese kawaii metal band ladybaby (sort of like Babymetal) what can only be described as German techno core(it came up on a death core playlist) via we butter the bread with butter, and Eskimo callboy, the aforementioned hu, and the Ukrainian electro folk band Go_A. I've found that the versions of music that I'm a fan of get more interesting when they're interpreted by a culture I dont know. 

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

One of my favorite bands is The Hu and I don't understand Mongolian

I don't speak Mongolian, but I know *exactly* what they're singing about...

I love listening to The Hu when lifting weights. Just sets a mood without getting into my head thinking about lyrics. "Wolf Totem" is my deadlift PR song.

Running D&D games, I like foreign language metal as background music for action scenes. No one is listening to the lyrics. Just imagining crushing their enemies, seeing them driven before them, and hearing the lamentations of their women.

...and now I need to go listen to Maori metal.

True, you don't have to understand the language. The message can transcend that. 
Two very different examples. 
 

The rhythms on the language have an effect on how music is written in order to fit the flow of the lyrics, it's why French and Italian opera are different. So by searching out music from a different language, you're going to get musical styles and forms that have to be different. You're also forcing yourself to listen to music you haven't been exposed to through your own culture.

And there is dreck in every language :) You just don't realize how crap the lyrics are if you can't understand them.

Ska works surprisingly well in Quebecois for some reason.

I usually can't make out the lyrics in songs that are sung in English so I tend to not pay attention to them anyway.

Wizo, punk from Germany. 

While most of their stuff is in English, a song or two in their native Swedish language - Millencolin

In reply to Keith Tanner :

And certain languages suuuuck for certain musical styles. Like French rap.

Crikey.  We need to class this dump up.

This guy might have his own musical genre: Susumu Hirasawa, or as you might know him, "Mr. Paprika Soundtrack"

I never listen to lyrics, I'm not interested in a message and, I generally find vocals in music to be annoying.

Like Duke, I listen to predominantly instrumental music, but if I did have to listen to music with lyrics, I prefer that it's in a different language. I'm not generally a fan of hip-hop but in languages other than English, I don't mind it. The voice just becomes another instrument to me when I'm not distracted by understanding the words.

The only non-English album I'm familiar with is the last release from Opeth. Sounds like they're English stuff though.. looks like I need to branch out more. 

Romanian Hip Hop has a vibe close to the early 90's hip hop, usually has a really good instrumental.

There is a Japanese rock group that is really good and uses a mixture of Japanese/English lyrics. I think they are called 'Band-Aid' or 'Band-Maid'. 

yupididit said:

I listen to a lot of Jazz from Japan. It's pretty good. 

Japan has awesome jazz and also metal.

I will have to try this.  Currently the only thing that I listen to that fits this is music from anime.

I used to listen to old REM stuff.  Does that count?