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Ask HN: What is your best native song that is unknown due to language barrier?

75 points by internetbird ↗ HN
Sometimes I wished more people could know some of my amazing childhood songs which are unknown due to the language they are sang at and the country in which they became popular. I wonder are there songs like that in your country. Here are some of my personal favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mieEeD0Kfk (Brit Olam/ Matti Caspi)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE5cHysMf5o (Hine Hine/Matti Caspi)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV2rGPHvB8g (Lakahta et Yadi/ Yehudit Ravitz)

48 comments

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galfarragem
Very easy to listen, my favourite album in Brazilian Portuguese - Elis and Tom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiKfu7sQXA8

Easy to listen - Amor Electro - Portuguese band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwCyqvpJZwE

More difficult to listen - Ornatos Violeta - Portuguese band with brilliant but honest lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRDr4ivis4o

Even more difficult to listen - Zeca Afonso - songs against former Portuguese dictatorship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaLWqy4e7ls

culopatin
I have a flight coming up next week and I’ve downloaded the first album in my Spotify. Thanks!
aviditas
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IKmPci5VXz0 Hasta la Raíz by Natalia Lafourcade

She's one of few artists that I can listen to her entire discography as a playlist and enjoy every single song.

I love finding new music in other languages so I appreciate this post.

axaxs
Great idea, I love finding music I'd typically have never heard about, foreign or other. I can't wait to go through this thread later.

Just to participate I'll share one I consider obscure, though it's not my language and I don't speak it(Gaelic), I find it calming.

https://youtu.be/r1CuSimHpTw

internetbird
Thanks for this recommandation. Realy liked it! I love Gaelic/Scotich music and instruments
culopatin
Some of my favorites from the south of the planet:

The intro ends at 0:14 and I can never keep my feet still with this song: https://youtu.be/yf6kTjLVG2Y

A band with an incredible history. The singer is an Italian-Scottish born after his family escaped China. He attended the same school as Prince Charles but ran away one year before graduating. Somehow landed in the middle of the mountains in Argentina and started a reggae band that would morph into what’s in the link below. The most influential band of the underground music in Argentina in my opinion.

https://youtu.be/-hGUyebsf60

https://youtu.be/jlUXIfPt5tk

And a band with lyrics you wouldn’t understand even if you knew the language:

https://youtu.be/AG_0HlSSUdw

https://youtu.be/pntSoXv-cqU

robotmay
I'm an English folk musician and it's perhaps surprising to many people, considering the prevalence of English and our modern music, that we as a country have lost a huge amount of our songs and music over the years. We have however re-entered a folk revival since the 70s and it has combined with the national pastime of peculiar hobbiests having documented a lot of really obscure things.

But anyway, my partner sings one of our oldest documented songs, which I would classify as fairly unknown outside of historical circles and in an older form of English that is quite tricky to decipher: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr2LRpx4Uyk

I learn quite a few tunes and songs from various countries and it's interesting as to which I find immediately feel familiar to me. Scandinavian, French, Belgian, Breton, Quebecois stuff etc is very popular in folk circles here in the UK and I both listen and play a lot of it. Though a lot of us might struggle to sing along you might be surprised at how far some traditional songs travel :D

angrais
Daft question: how do we know if the pronunciation is correct in the song your partner is singing? Given its in an older form of English and English is not well known for being spoken as you read it (like Latin).
robotmay
Good question! I'm not super knowledgeable about it myself. I think anything from that far back is likely to be a reasonable amount of guesswork, but there are often some indicators as to how things are pronounced. A good one I've seen before is looking at rhymes; if it's likely that two words were intended to rhyme in a song/poem etc it can help indicate some pronunciation. I've seen this used for Shakespeare original pronunciation studies which is quite interesting.

From personal experience of trying to play old tunes (rather than songs), I definitely have to make my own interpretation of it based on my own experience. Sometimes you do come across some truly perplexing notation though, that really makes you wonder how it sounded originally. Some of the tunes in the Playford collection are super weird but as Playford was basically Top of the 17th Century Pops you have to assume it _did_ sound good however they used to play it :D

sgroppino
Quebecois stuff... this one is great https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyNYrmmdUd4 :)
robotmay
Ooh thanks, haven't come across them before. I'm a big fan of Le Vent du Nord and Le Freres Brunet, but I really want to expand my album collection further. The one disappointing thing with the Quebecois folk scene is that they're so slow to digitise their albums and sell them on Bandcamp!
constantinum
From across Indian subcontinent: In India, music and songs are predominately from movies as a source. So collected a few numbers that might be earworm or makes you tap your feet.

1. 1957 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69pPYkGiEAQ 2. 1975 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2HQGNuIY-Y 3. 1991 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyUe_BWqoOE (fourth most popular song in a poll conducted by the BBC World Service worldwide in 2002) 4. 1956 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtV2i4JWzJg 5. 1952 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwXL_xznCmc

sgroppino
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X5LySoOiIA or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-6Li3CKflQ and the original one in (Brazilian) Portuguese https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RezuYwS0ngI
galfarragem
Old song that became so relevant and accurate recently, also from the brazilian Raul Seixas, "The day that the world stopped": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zbYY41Vus

A bit of trivia: Paulo Coelho started his career composing songs to this guy.

sgroppino
Indeed! The guy was a true Nostradamus!!
onecommentman
Mimaamakim - Idan Raichel Project ממעמקים - עידן רייכל

Zajdi zajdi - Tose Proeski

Vökuró - Björk

Native to somebody...

austincheney
I have noticed on YouTube a revival of traditional Mongolian music as modern rock/pop. As a dumb American that only speaks English I have no idea what the lyrics are but I really enjoy the music.
onecommentman
Gortoz a Ran - Denez Prigent

Muzinge - Samite of Uganda

Makambo - Geoffrey Oryema

Koloman - Sona Dibate

The Moon Over Mtatsminda - version on Jan Garbarek album

Like potato chips, hard to stop once you start...

Again, native for someone

5cents
A few Nordic contributions:

Byssan lull: https://youtu.be/ogYC4LgqqnM A lullaby I think all Norwegian children have heard their beds, but it's actually Swedish

Til ungdommen: https://youtu.be/CieUTG8Z6Z0 The song became very beloved after 22.07.2011 and I think close to everyone here will get tears in their eyes when they hear it

Mitt hjerte alltid vanker: https://youtu.be/27JqZ8eEZlw Since it's Christmas soon. Very popular in Norway, although it's originally Danish

I guess it demonstrates the close historical relationship between the Nordic countries

lowkeynthorough
Hey could you help me track down this probably Norwegian folk like song? Most likely its a oneoff song by some band but many on that thread have been keft hanging for years...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAZcAhIAUto&t=0m36s

5cents
Hi, sorry, I've really tried to track it down, but I don't recognise neither the melody nor the lyrics. I see that it is called "Draken flyger" by Henrik Wallgren in the end. He is Swedish I think, but the lyrics are probably written closer to Norse
lowkeynthorough
Thanks!! i have tried chasing that lead.. (found only childrens songs on youtube so I thought it might be based on a childrens song.. your posts above those were awesome but guess not the same style haha)

Also there was a deckhand on that ship called Henrik Wallgren[0], guess it could be the same person wonder how likely you think that is..

[0] https://youtu.be/VHeAlOcHeSI

dorchadas
I speak Irish (not my native language, though), and there's a bunch of them. Here's some of the more traditional, 'sean-nós' songs:

Amhrán Mhúinse - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By0QM8mlr28 (English lyrics are in the description) - This is probably my favorite of all Irish sean-nós songs. It's super haunting, and made even sadder by the fact the woman who wrote the song didn't get her wish to be buried in her home area.

Coilín Phádraig Shéamuis - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOjSOAxN9Wg -- Typical song about immigration, quite melancholic.

Also, Iarla Ó Lionard does quite a lot of good work in the sean-nós tradition (he was heard on the film Brooklyn); here's one of my favorites by him - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35U1sOOjdDg

FInally, it's hard not to mention Seosamh Ó hÉanaí/Joe Heaney/Joe Éinniú, a native speaker from the Galway Gaeltacht - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrSL3YtzP_w

And, for some newer works in the language that I enjoy

An Cailín Álainn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5l82gO7tuw

Pócaí Folamh is Cloigeann Tinn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0L54BJFRnw

Siar go Conamara - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tywACdkAgc

All of these songs are sung by natives, which, sadly, is getting less and less common as the native speaking areas dwindle and as summer camps get millions of views translating the latest English language hit for summer school kids with awful pronunciation to sing.