Sunday 20 August 2017

Multiculturalism and Music

Il n'y a pas de hasard, il n'y a que des rendez-vous - Paul Eluard.

Also the first verse in Ouverture by Etienne Daho.

Babeldad is somewhere on a Swiss mountain doing what he loved doing best when we first met some sixteen years ago: looking at the night sky and photographing stars.

I, naturally, instead of going to bed early and catching up on some well-needed sleep, sit at the computer, typing furiously on the keyboard. And I listen to music.

Why Etienne Daho? Maybe because he used to live in Manchester and London. Maybe because he reminds me of some of the music I used to listen to when Babeldad and I first met. Or maybe because he was born and spent a large chunk of his childhood in Algeria, before being uprooted to France...


Music is powerful. It can bring up and trigger unexpected emotions. I do sometimes burst into tears when hearing or singing a song.

What is interesting is that being multicultural, I find myself responding to wildly different genres and languages. Below is a selection of memorable songs and artists to me, in different languages.

Dahmane El HarrachiYarrayeh (Arabic)
Abdelkader ChaouChehilet Laayani (Arabic) 
Raina RaiMimouna (Arabic)
NouaraAmmi azizen (Kabyle)
Enrico MaciasJ'ai quitté mon pays and many others
Daft PunkSomething about us
Adriano CelentanoDon't play that song (that Italian accent!)
Carlos SantanaMoonflower

And too many songs by the Beatles and the Bee Gees to list!

Do you listen to music in different languages?

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