Irminsul wrote:Craig Maxim wrote:
You guys are making me want to check her out!
Language is often musical in intonation and inflections used to express emotion, and conceivably from earliest times, I imagine that gutteral emotional noises were used as the earliest form of language. Maybe we respond to things like that because it harkens back to our more primitive origins? Just speculating.
Just my view, but I don't think that's what it is...she is tapping into something definitely of the "higher" spiritual mind. And it's so individual. I watched an interview with her and she said anybody could do this, but it would sound different from person to person.
Ok, I checked some videos of her on YouTube.
Languages are merely tools to communicate. Some languages express ideas better, or more fully than other languages, but it wouldn't impact you if you didn't understand the language. As this is a made-up language, possibly rooted in her travels growing up, because of her parents she was exposed to Greek, Turkish, Italian, Irish and Arab (so says Wikipedia anyway). That would have exposed her to diverse languages and cultures, and she likely found all the various dialects enthralling.
Without her mesmerizing voice, the affect would disappear. If the language were holy, or endowed with some special power, then when spoken, it would still retain some of that power. I think this would not be the case.
The value, I think, of singing in a unique language is several things:
1) While words convey messages, which can be important, they can also be distracting, as people sometimes "think" too much on the message, or get caught up in the words. The absence of this allows her to focus solely on emotion and tonal qualities, and bypasses conscious messages altogether. You can't "contemplate" the message of her music, you can only "feel" it. It makes it more emotionally captivating, because you go straight to "feeling" - straight to emotion.
2) Not being restricted by language itself, she can formulate "words", that fit the melody, that flow as perfectly as she wants. The words then, become melodic in themselves, and become one with the melody. Words are restrictive, sounds aren't.
I wish I could remember who it was, or whether it was an actress or a singer. I'm think it was an actress. There was, in the past, a famous foreign actress, and at a party once, showing that she was such a good actress, that you could feel the emotions and "understand" even without knowing the words. She recited a monologue, acting it out. It brought everyone in the room to tears. When asked what she had recited, she replied that it was the alphabet of her language.
She brought them to tears with the alphabet. Of course, the words were unimportant. She conveyed the emotion so movingly, that the words were meaningless. It didn't matter what they were.
I think this is something similar, but more powerful because it is carried on a melody, which increases the emotional and sensory level.
In the sense that it may be spiritual. I think that because she is not bound by words, it may be allowing her to go deeper within herself, giving it a spiritual quality. But the melodies help too, of course, because they are like gregorian chants, almost hypnotic. The combination of all these things, makes for a powerful experience. I am quite sure, that YouTube, cannot possible begin to capture the experience of being there live. I bet the effect is ten fold.
