Oijos: OK, makis.

Have you ever listened to good Esperanto music?

Nope. But that's more of a factor of me not liking the genre of the music that is typically done in Esperanto.

Recommend me some punk/metal Esperanto bands and I would be very interested.

Oijos: What a f::*? Really? Have you listened to music in Esperanto? (standard) Esperanto isn't suitable for most genres of music, because of its regularity. If the most talented would make music in all the languages of the world, Esperanto would be among the 20 % least suitable for music (generally).

Sorry, but that's about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard regarding either music or Esperanto. Could you explain how you arrived at the conclusion that regularity in a language makes it unsuitable for music or how you calculated the percent-suitability for Esperanto compared to all the other languages of the world?

I've listened to all kinds of music in Esperanto, of all different genres. Actually, Pola Retradio does an excellent job of including a VERY wide cross section of high-quality pieces in a wide range of musical styles (including things like punk, reggae, etc.) in Esperanto.

Now I'll be the first to grant that there is also a LOT of really bad music/singing done in Esperanto. I'm reminded of the quote from Tom Lehrer to the effect that "the reason most folks songs are so atrocious is that they are written by the people." But once you get away from the overly folksy, amateur, corny, and ideology-driven songs, there's really a surprisingly large amount of good music being written and performed in Esperanto.

I don't listen to ANY music simply because it's performed in one language or another, and there are numerous Esperanto songs that I would enjoy listening to even if I didn't speak a word of Esperanto.

Amike,
Paul

erinja:Profanity isn't allowed in the forums; edit your posts accordingly, please.

That's the culture in the USA, which is the biggest contributor of readers and posters to the English-language forum section. But can you impose that on Esperanto sections, where there should be no reigning culture?

pdenisowski:

Oijos: What a f::*? Really? Have you listened to music in Esperanto? (standard) Esperanto isn't suitable for most genres of music, because of its regularity. If the most talented would make music in all the languages of the world, Esperanto would be among the 20 % least suitable for music (generally).

Sorry, but that's about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard regarding either music or Esperanto. Could you explain how you arrived at the conclusion that regularity in a language makes it unsuitable for music or how you calculated the percent-suitability for Esperanto compared to all the other languages of the world?

That's just my impression and conjecture based on my very small experience (e.g. only few Esperanto songs and total time maybe less than 10 mins.). I hope I'm wrong regarding Esperanto's suitability to music, that people in large numbers want to listen.

that's about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard regarding music

Why I have never heard Chinese music outside Chinese restaurants? Have you? Why they are overwhelmingly losing the battle in music to English language? Why Finland is never going to win Eurovision Song Contest singing in Finnish (given the voting functions reasonably, so not counting in some meme-inducing joke act)? I can honestly say that I can't name any good music track in my native language, which is Finnish. It definitely would be in my hypothesis among the 20 % least suitable for music generally. English would be in the top 20 %.

Oijos:

erinja:Profanity isn't allowed in the forums; edit your posts accordingly, please.

That's the culture in the USA, which is the biggest contributor of readers and poster to the English-language forum section. But can you impose that on Esperanto sections, where there should be no reigning culture?

For what it's worth, I agree. If Esperanto wants to have 'coolness', which is the theme of this thread, it needs profanity! Obviously not especially gratuitous or intentionally offensive though. The vortaro isn't too prudish.

From what I've seen, almost everyone on this site is above 18/16 or at least a teenager who will probably be accustomed to hearing or even using such words. Vortoj mem, sen intenco malbona, estas nur vortoj.

Oijos:Why I have never heard Chinese music outside Chinese restaurants? Have you?

Actually I have, it's quite common in the UK. It's usually classical Chinese music without words though, or slightly Westernized music, yet I only think that's because [some] British people would be a bit uncomfortable listening to Chinese, rather than Italian, Spanish or French, which may be perceived as sexier, and not that Chinese music inherently sounds bad. (Though, to be fair, the Chinese tonal system--and when it comes to music, Chinese scales--makes it a bit unusual, especially to Western ears.) Again the reason why you'd be more likely to hear American pop or whatever probably just comes down to this idea of soft/hard power and perceived prestige, rather than because American pop is the absolute apex of human music.

Politics also plays a part in why Finland won't win the Eurovision Song Contest (incidentally, the UK won't either, even though we always sing in the dominant language, English).

jismith1989:Politics also plays a part in why Finland won't win the Eurovision Song Contest (incidentally, the UK won't either, even though we always sing in the dominant language, English).

No, it's demographics, not politics. And Finland (or UK) can win with a good song. Don't you remember 2006, when Finland won? Even Germany won, when they had the best song. And televoting have been only 50% since 2009.

Ireland and United Kingdom are the most successful countries in history of ESC, and that is because of language issues. Most of the years it has been forbidden to sing in a foreign language, so they were the only ones to sing in English. It had to be liberated because Ireland and UK at the time were constantly over-successful.

You Englander have to bear in mind, that you are automatically in the final, so you have to compete in the final with the better half of the songs.

I don't remember hearing vocals in the Chinese songs. Are the Chinese incapable of making hit music with their language(s)? It would be disadvantage for their language war effort.

Oijos:

erinja:Profanity isn't allowed in the forums; edit your posts accordingly, please.

That's the culture in the USA, which is the biggest contributor of readers and posters to the English-language forum section. But can you impose that on Esperanto sections, where there should be no reigning culture?

It's not an imposition of cultural norms; it is simply the rule of the website, in order to keep discussions friendly. It's in the site's terms of service. If you disagree, you should perhaps find a different online forum with looser rules.

Oijos:

erinja:Profanity isn't allowed in the forums; edit your posts accordingly, please.

That's the culture in the USA

Profanity is the "culture" in the USA???

Oijos:That's just my impression and conjecture based on my very small experience (e.g. only few Esperanto songs and total time maybe less than 10 mins.).

So you listen to a few Esperanto songs for less than 10 minutes (3-4 songs, maybe?) and make blanket statements about how suitable or unsuitable Esperanto is as a language for music? Hmmm ...

Oijos:Why I have never heard Chinese music outside Chinese restaurants? Have you? Why they are overwhelmingly losing the battle in music to English language?

Yes, I have, many times. I also hear music in lots of other Asian languages as well. In fact, XM (Satellite) Radio has an entire channel (144) dedicated to K-POP (Korean Pop Music) that I sometimes listen to even thought my Korean is almost non-existant. The popularity of Gangnam Style shows that hundreds of millions of English speakers will listen to a song (over and over and over and over and over ...) in a language they can't understand at all.

Amike,
Paul

Oijos:I don't remember hearing vocals in the Chinese songs. Are the Chinese incapable of making hit music with their language(s)? It would be disadvantage for their language war effort.

I'm not sure what you mean by "language war effort" but it appears you're using your very limited exposure to other cultures' music to draw (inaccurate) generalizations. There is LOTS of popular (i.e. "rock" ) music being produced in Chinese, and many of these songs differ only from English-language pop in that the lyrics are in Chinese -- if someone did a cover of them in English, you would never know they were originally produced in Chinese.

I'll apologize in advance if this sounds somewhat harsh, but as someone who grew up and attended college before the Internet, it's always amazing to me how people now have instant access to information from all over the world but instead use the Internet to spread unresearched and uninformed opinions.

Amike,
Paul