Before kicking it off, I just want to thank everyone who has subscribed to this newsletter and sent me a message commenting on the 001 playlist! Hope you enjoy reading and listening to this second edition, and let me know your thoughts in the comments if you feel inclined. I'd love to hear from you.
Listen along on Spotify as you read.
Being an immigrant sometimes also means being bilingual. How does it feel to learn a new language not for fun but to survive? In her book In Other Words, the writer Jhumpa Lahiri says it is like “to give up a palace to live practically on the street, in a shelter so fragile”.
My life has become bilingual two and a half years ago when I moved to London. However, for most of my day, I still speak Portuguese with my wife, siblings, and friends who also live here. I've also never stopped working in the Brazilian music industry, so I often use the language in meetings or writing articles.
That kind of double life makes me inhabit a mysterious place between two worlds (also two words, or too many words, I just noticed these all sound pretty similar in English. Anyway). That place is at an address I don't know exactly where it is, although sometimes I even like being there. Becoming more familiar with a new language is a race in which every small learning is a reward. So frequently, it feels nice. (Dopamine, you know).
But sometimes, I want to jump off that fence, and the only possible way out is to meet someone with whom I can talk in my mother tongue. It provides relief comparable to sitting down after standing for hours.
Around the world, more than half of people – estimates vary from 60-75% – speak at least two languages. Many countries have more than one official national language – South Africa has 11, and Bolivia can reach 37. "So to be monolingual, as many native English speakers are", writes the British journalist Gaia Vince in The Guardian, "is to be in the minority and perhaps to be missing out".
Musicians have also investigated such an exciting subject. In this 002 Distante episode, I've selected a few examples of this fascinating planet of music bilingualism.
// THE 002 PLAYLIST
You're going to find Caetano Veloso turning the word "better" into his sister's second name through its verses in Maria Bethânia; the Brazilian indie artist Sophia Chablau's fusion of Portuguese and English in every line of her song Hello; the US-based Venezuelan-born Devendra Banhart doing a power pop piece in Spanish with an English hook; the French-Brazilian band Čao Laru interweaving French and Portuguese to praise feminism; the UK band Smoke City (co-founded in the 90s by my dear friend Chris Franck) plays with words celebrates a Tom Jobim hit. And two Latin America stars, Brazilian Marisa Monte and Uruguayan Jorge Drexler, sing together every word of Vento Sardo's lyrics in Portuguese and Spanish - you never know when they will switch languages here.
There is also Kyungso Park, a gayageum master and composer from South Korea, whose songs frequently have a Korean and an English name. Or Malika, by the French producer Voyou and the Armenian singer Jacqueline Baghdasaryan, a song I can't find out which language she is singing in. That doesn't matter, though. As the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote long ago, “music is the universal language of mankind".
The playlist has a few more songs non-related to bilingualism. Among them, only one piece is entirely sung in English. So, if you appreciate the others as much as I do, even though the poet's quote might sound cliche, then you and I and this humble playlist will have proved his point in the end. :)
Time to swap your reading glasses for headphones and listen to Distante 002:
// ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eduardo Lemos is a music journalist, playlist curator for businesses and co-founder of the record label Pequeno Imprevisto. Having worked in many different roles across the industry in the last ten years, Eduardo had the opportunity to collaborate with artists such as Milton Nascimento, Paralamas, Da Lata, and many contemporary names from Latin America, Europe and the UK. He is the artistic director of the show Lua Rosa, in which Brazilian musicians perform their interpretations of Nick Drake's songs. As a music journalist, he has interviewed music legends such as Gilberto Gil, Arnaldo Baptista and Beto Guedes, and indie artists like Kings of Convenience, Tim Bernardes, Perotá Chingó, and many more. He writes monthly articles for the Brazilian Union of Composers (UBC) website and magazine. Eduardo is also the creator of the newsletter Distante, wherein he writes about music and immigration. He was born in Brazil and currently lives in London, UK.
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