Music related to Linguistics & Lx-Anthro?

Wed Feb 3 20:50:16 UTC 2010

This is a very fun topic. Thanks for starting the discussion and to everyone who has shared ideas. Here are a few more suggestions that I hope might be useful for classes dealing with multilingualism in various forms.

There are many Hip Hop songs by Latino artists that demonstrate codeswitching. Mellow Man Ace's "Mentirosa" is a particularly skillful example. Kid Frost's "La Raza" has less CS, but does  a nice job of highlighting the identity politics aspect of using Spanish in the US. There's one verse with explicit metalinguistic commentary on his use of calo. While these two examples are a couple of decades old, there are plenty of more recent songs that do this too. One I recently discovered is "Estoy Enamorado", by Yolanda Perez and L.A.-based comedian Don Cheto. The song is framed as an intergenerational conflict over a boyfriend which in part plays out in the difference between Don Cheto's stereotypical Ranchero talk and Yolanda's standard Spanish and SoCal English. Molotov's "Frijolero" uses alternating Spanish and English verses to address racial tension across the US/Mexico border. You can find any of these quite easily on YouTube.

Of course, there's plenty of Hip Hop from other parts of the world, too, that might link up with case studies you've already assigned in class. 
Daara J is a  Senegalese group that raps in Wolof, French, and English. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D7dxtV4Nbo

Le Fabulous Trobadors sing in French and Occitan, take up Occitan nationalism as a topic in their songs, and perform a sort of verbal duel in their concerts that they say is inspired by Occitan troubadour traditions.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhzYA_dyfWo

"Ras Trent" from recent episode of Saturday Nigh Live got some laughs in my class last year in conjunction with a discussion of linguistic crossing.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/40968/saturday-night-live-digital-short-ras-trent#s-p6-sr-i2

"La Chilanga Banda", originally by Jaime Lopez, but also covered by Cafe Tacuba, is nothing less than a master class in Chilango (Mexico City Spanish) slang. The song is almost incomprehensible to many non-Mexican native Spanish speakers. If you have enough Spanish speakers in your class, it might be fun to use this to subvert the idea of Spanish as a single language or as a way to start a discussion of sociolects.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrEU44aMNlM

"Prisencolinensinainciusol", by Adriano Celentano is a nonsense song by an Italian artist that mimics English phonology.  
http://music.todaysbigthing.com/2009/11/03

Eric Hoenes del Pinal
Department of Anthropology, NYU
25 Waverly Place, Room 710
New York, NY 10003
ehd1 at nyu.edu

On Feb 2, 2010, at 8:50 PM, Richard J Senghas wrote:

> Hey LingAnthers,
> 
> I am looking for music (popular, obscure, whatever) that plays with linguistic (& especially anthropological) topics.
> 
> I am now teaching a somewhat large (~70 students) undergraduate, lower division Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology course.  It hits us at that just-before-and-going-into dinner hour, when students, even those interested in the topics, begin to fade as their blood sugar-levels drop, and the daylight begins to fade (especially now).  When I taught my Intro to Cultural Anthro course, I found that playing relevant, especially upbeat, music just before class started helped up the energy for the class session, and I would like to use this trick again in this course.  I also found that many of the students started to pick up on the anthropological themes I planted in these selections.  By the end of the semester, students started asking me for my sources, often asking me if they had indeed figured out the thematic connections.  (In a very real sense, this became a not-grade-related extra credit opportunity.)
> 
> I plan to start with some more obvious choices (e.g., Laurie Anderson's "Language is a Virus" from her "Home of the Brave" album), but I'm looking for other pieces for later this semester.  Do you have any tracks you'd recommend?  If the topic is obscure, I wouldn't mind being given hints at the reason for your choices, though we could make it a game for this list if you choose to respond on-list.  And energetic music is preferred; we're looking to juice them up!
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> -RJS
> ======================================================================
> Richard J. Senghas, Professor            | Sonoma State University
> Department of Anthropology               | 1801 East Cotati Avenue
> Human Development Program                | Rohnert Park, CA 94928-3609
> Richard.Senghas[at]sonoma.edu            | 707-664-3920 (fax)