Hey guys!
So a few weeks ago, before I left home for Moscow, I wrote a post about my love for Disney music in other languages, and the bilingual a cappella group Penn Masala, and how this music has guided, inspired, and amplified my passion for learning other languages.
But when I wrote this post, I forgot to include two other musical groups that have had a very similar influential and inspirational role in the formation of these passions of mine - one is the Soweto Gospel Choir, and the other is a girl called Rachel Ong who posts original music of hers on YouTube. And today, I will share with you all some information about the groups, the story of how I first heard and fell in love with their music, and their influential roles in my life since.
When I was twelve years old, right around the time I was beginning to fall deeply in love with foreign languages and cultures, my mother took me to a Soweto Gospel Choir concert when they were performing in Ann Arbor. Their incredible vocal talent and prowess greatly impressed me, and I easily lost myself in the warm and joyful atmosphere of the event, their vibrantly colorful traditional costumes, and the beautifully unfamiliar sounds of the Sotho, Zulu, and Tswana hymns they sang. In short, these rhythms and expressions of spiritual fulfillment all the way from Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban which they shared with us audience members had me hooked.
During intermission we ended up buying their CD Live at the Nelson Mandela Theater, a recording of songs from their album African Spirit in a live performance at the Nelson Mandela Theater in Cape Town. I remember lying in my bed late into the night in the coming weeks, listening to the songs over and over in a worn old walkman, which only closed with the help of a raggedy piece of duct tape, and making the album one of my first iTunes purchases when I received a bright red iPod nano as a Christmas present that year.
So a few weeks ago, before I left home for Moscow, I wrote a post about my love for Disney music in other languages, and the bilingual a cappella group Penn Masala, and how this music has guided, inspired, and amplified my passion for learning other languages.
But when I wrote this post, I forgot to include two other musical groups that have had a very similar influential and inspirational role in the formation of these passions of mine - one is the Soweto Gospel Choir, and the other is a girl called Rachel Ong who posts original music of hers on YouTube. And today, I will share with you all some information about the groups, the story of how I first heard and fell in love with their music, and their influential roles in my life since.
When I was twelve years old, right around the time I was beginning to fall deeply in love with foreign languages and cultures, my mother took me to a Soweto Gospel Choir concert when they were performing in Ann Arbor. Their incredible vocal talent and prowess greatly impressed me, and I easily lost myself in the warm and joyful atmosphere of the event, their vibrantly colorful traditional costumes, and the beautifully unfamiliar sounds of the Sotho, Zulu, and Tswana hymns they sang. In short, these rhythms and expressions of spiritual fulfillment all the way from Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban which they shared with us audience members had me hooked.
During intermission we ended up buying their CD Live at the Nelson Mandela Theater, a recording of songs from their album African Spirit in a live performance at the Nelson Mandela Theater in Cape Town. I remember lying in my bed late into the night in the coming weeks, listening to the songs over and over in a worn old walkman, which only closed with the help of a raggedy piece of duct tape, and making the album one of my first iTunes purchases when I received a bright red iPod nano as a Christmas present that year.
The timing of that concert and the effect it had on me was circumstantial, but greatly influential. Through that concert and the love of the group that it gave me, I enriched my musical knowledge with a truly beautiful collection of talented and unique cultural expression. And crucially, it greatly invigorated, catapulted, and accelerated my budding love of languages and cultures beyond those in which I'd grown up, and listening to it now reminds me of that formative time in my life. As such, I feel immense love and gratitude to the Soweto Gospel Choir's members and their music, and to this day I've maintained a great desire to travel to their incredible and diverse country, and hopefully see them perform live again someday.
Our second artist for today is Rachel Ong.
Once, when I was casually searching for videos on YouTube made by AFS students about their experiences, I came across one that was filmed by a Singaporean-Australian AFS exchange student to Japan named Rachel Ong, in which she filmed a collection of interviews with her fellow Australian AFSers in Japan at the airport as they were getting ready to return home at the end of their experience. There was a very beautiful song playing in the background, and I found in the end credits of the video that this song, called "Ano Koro Kimi To," meaning "That Time with You," was actually an original! I ended up watching a great many more of her videos and growing to greatly love a number of her other songs, but because of its sad but poignant lyrics, musical beauty, and the fact that I found it first, "Ano Koro Kimi To" holds a special place in my heart to this day.
Rachel's music has been greatly influential for me in two main aspects: Aside from the simple fact that I like it and listen to it, I started taking guitar lessons at Beloit my freshman year, which I had been wanting to do for quite some time, out of a desire to learn how to play Rachel's songs, and hopefully cover them someday. Secondly, though there are certainly a number of other cultural and historical motivations in addition to this one, the music has motivated and inspired me to start learning Japanese, which I intend to start taking at Beloit once I get back as a senior next year.
It's so strange and wonderful how the slightest and most circumstantial of decisions can bring us to things that we love, and life-changing decisions. I'm thankful for that, at the time, seemingly inconsequential YouTube search, for bringing me to one of my musical inspirations that has strengthened my linguistic passions too.
Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Be well.
