Lost in Translation

When I went to Bonnaroo, back in 2006, I was really excited to see that one of the groups playing was Senegalese. I’ll admit that I’d never heard of Orchestra Baobab before then, and probably wouldn’t have given them a second look if I hadn’t seen that they were from Dakar. My dad and I went to see them, and they were pretty fun. He bought me the CD, and I listened to it a bit, and was excited to learn that they were performing at a local restaurant/bar/jazz club in Dakar that I’d been to a few times.

To explain what the music is like, I will literally quote directly from Wikipedia. Ahem: “Orchestra Baobab is a Senegalese Afro-Cuban, Son, and Pachanga band. Organized in 1970, as a multi-ethnic, multi-national club band, Orchestre Baobab adapted the then current craze for Cuban Music (growing out of the Congolese Soukous style) in West Africa to Wolof Griot culture and the Mandinga musical traditions of the Casamance. One of the dominant African bands of the 1970s, they were overshadowed in the 1980s and broke up, only to reform in 2001 after interest in their recordings grew in Europe.”

Feel free to peruse the Wikipedia page and click around to find out what a griot is, or about the Mandinga… I’ll have to save those explanations for another entry. Anyway, my point was that, although the band is quite good and I enjoyed seeing them again, it wasn’t the same kind of experience that I have with American music. For instance, when my mom asked if they’d played any songs I recognized, I had to say no. [Left: Orchastra Baobab at the jazz club 'Just 4 U'].

Despite being a compete music-phile, and loving the French language, I can never really “get into” French music the way I do music in English. The problem is that every song in French becomes background music unless I am making a concerted effort to understand what they are saying (preferably lyric sheet in hand). I’m basically fluent in French, but only get about every tenth word in most French songs. The few French songs that I really love to sing along to are pop songs that were drilled into my head by an over-zealous teenage French pen-pal when I was visiting her. Even despite hearing the songs zillions of times, I still had to look up the lyrics in order to memorize them. (Jenifer and Kyo are some of the French pop artists I’m talking about. Think Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, if you will.) Of course I’m a sucker for Edith Piaf, but I mostly listen to her songs for the beautiful vocals and accent… not for the words themselves.

Perhaps this is stretching it a bit far, but I feel as though this language barrier applies to making friends and dating cross-language barriers as well. So much of the words, tone, and subtleties of language are lost in translation. As someone who talks way too much and way too fast, it’s harder (not impossible!) for me to make really close friends with someone who I only understand even 90% of the time.