Mar 02 2009
So, You Listen to Japanese Music but Don’t Speak Japanese?
So tell me if you’ve ever had a conversation that sounded remotely like this:
“What are you listening to?”
“Oh, just some anime themes/Japanese pop”
“Oh you speak Japanese?”
“A little”
“So how can you enjoy it if you can’t understand it?”
And that’s the big question. I swear, if I had a nickel for every time I could remember this conversation taking place I’d have… a quarter. But if we included all the times that I don’t remember I assure you that we’d be hitting two quarters… with possibly an extra dime. It’s a legit question that a lot of anime fans get asked though, why do we enjoy Japanese music if we’re not fluent enough in the language to actually understand every word?
Once again I can only speak for myself on the matter. I like J-pop, admittedly I started off much like Patricia Martin and only listened to the anime themes. It didn’t take long for me to put two and two together though and realize… if I like the song that the performer did for the anime, than just perhaps they might have other songs that I would enjoy as well. Brilliant!
And that’s how my iPod got absolutely slammed with a heap of new Japanese music over the years. I’ve made it abundantly clear in the past that I am not fluent in Japanese though I am learning as fast/best that I can but that does mean that I am in the group that doesn’t understand every word being said. Even worse, I listen to Japanese rap and sometimes I wonder if even the people of Japan can understand what they are saying half the time.
So why do I do it even if I can’t understand all of the words? Well lots of reasons not the least of which is that it helps me learn new words. But more than that though, my own personal reason for enjoying Japanese music is how much more complex the compositions are to my ears. American music is good but Japanese artists never seem to be afraid of using instruments that normally aren’t included in rock or pop songs. You don’t often hear strong violin harmonies in American rock or pop but it’s harder to NOT hear one when you listen to enough J-pop.
Admittedly the lyrics aren’t that much more substantive on one side of the Pacific than they on the other but as long as the music and beats keep calling out to me, I’ll continue to be a listener.
Millions of people around the world listen to English Music without knowing enough English.
This isn’t really any different.
Knowing what the lyrics mean, even if you have to look up a translation elsewhere, is a plus, but not a requirement for enjoyment.
I mean, you can’t possibly believe that everyone on this planet who listens to.the average American popstar really knows enough English. 3
They like how it sounds and have maybe picked up a few words, but that’s it.
I agree with Namida that there are many people who listen to English songs that don’t understand the language itself. It’s the same as with songs sung in any other languages…you don’t have to know the language in order to enjoy the music and the songs. I enjoy listening to songs in Thai, Hindi, French, Spanish, operatic pieces…even though I hardly know what the singers are singing about. That’s the beauty of music. The language barrier doesn’t detract from one’s musical enjoyment and preference.
I’ve always believed in the saying “Music is a Universal Language”. As long as the song as a whole sounds great, who cares what the lyrics mean? If understanding lyrics is a requirement to enjoying music, then what of instrumental music (i.e. no lyrics at all) and music where the vocalists only sing gibberish (eg sounds such as “lalala”, “doo be doo be doo”, or “dum dum dum”; or how about “Scat” music) instead of real words? Are those kinds of music garbage?
In fact this arguement doesn’t apply to Japanese Pop alone. There’s also K-Pop, Chinese Pop, and Pop music from the non-English European countries that have fans from outside their countries of origin. Here in the Philippines for example (where the most common languages spoken are Filipino and English) there were a few French Pop songs that were big hits, even though nobody even had a hint of what the lyrics meant (eg. Liberte, and Angelina, to name a couple), and Latino music is also quite popular (even if only very few actually speak Spanish or Latin around here). There’s even one Italian ballad I like listening to titled “Non So Che Darei” by Alan Sorrenti, even though I have no idea what the lyrics mean since I don’t speak Italian.
Well, really being completely disillusioned with the state of music in the English speaking world is one valid reason for me. Music industries suck. And in japan bands and musicians can do stuff that would not be looked on with favor in the ‘west’, which is great.
Although, you know, if you judge the current state of rock and rap music by the what’s played on the radio/is popular then of course the lyrics are gonna be complete rubbish and the themes all the same. One lesson that’s important is that popular music is really just the surface of a genre and that there are plenty of rather obscure rock and rap artists who sing about other things. You just have to persistent and find them.
well said.
It doesn’t bother me too much; I know enough Japanese that I can usually guess what I’m listening to even if I don’t understand it perfectly, and when I can’t, I just enjoy it the way I enjoy instrumental music.
Besides, after four years in the gamelan singing tunes in High Javanese that I had a hard enough time just faking an accent on, let alone understanding, a little difficulty figuring out which of several possible topics I’m singing about when I’m trying to sing along to stuff in languages I haven’t studied (the Japanese I understand. The Spanish I can work from cognates. The Latin I can also work from cognates. It’s when I get into languages where I don’t quite understand the phonetics (Cyrillic-family languages, Swedish sort of, and any Gaelic tongue more complicated than Welsh) that I start giving up on learning the lyrics from a Convenient Website and stick to just listening.