JOY Eurovision

16 Feb 2012

Musings – the lingo thing

Posted by Andrew Bell (adapted from a blog posted in 2011 on “The Full Catastrophe“)

As some woman or bloke once opined: “music is the universal language”.

Tower of Babel

So, when the Eurovision Song Contest began in 1956 most of the effort was put into the minims and crotchets NOT the words.

The words that were there were in German, French, Italian and Dutch. English came along the next year.

Fast forward a couple of decades and the universal lingo of pop music (whatever happened to pop music?) overwhelmed the ESC.

English ruled the roost, apart from the hold-out French and a few aberrations along the way.

The result has been to undo the mystique, but was there that much to undo ?

For example, in 1957 all you had to go on was: “De hele wereld geurt de lentebloesem bleurt ach waarom is er ieder jaar een nieuwe mei?”

The winning song sounded so mysterious and glorious.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTQtjqotFAg]

If only the viewers had known that Corry Broekken was singing: “The whole world smells good, the springflower is colouring ah, why is there every year a new May?”

It’s one example of the countless songs over the years that sounded so good thanks to them being in a language I (and many in the audience) couldn’t understand.

Ignorance was probably bliss.

Fast forward to 2010 and by then any linguistic horrors were understood by a wider audience.

English is the global lingo and we’re stuck with it.

As that year’s winner, Azerbaijan’s Safura with ‘Drip Drop, so beautifully put it: “You are my man, you are my half, tell me what’s happening I know something’s wrong.”

Poetry it ain’t, but it was probably never meant to be.

And topping the whole thing off, there was dear Safura mangling the vowels and leaving most of the consonants for dead.

In my humble opinion, she should have stuck with “Siz mənim adam var, mənim yarım, nə bir şey’s yanlış know baş mənim deyin görək.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxJsFWwA6NU]

By the following year Azerbaijan at least raised its pronunciation game at least !

And that’s why we’ll all be going Baku crazy come May !