Do you like listening to music that's in a language you don't speak?

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There a dozens of version of this Scottish Gaelic song, but I find Niamh Parsons's the most touching.
 
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Couldn't speak Chinese even if there was a gun to my head, but I stan Higher Brothers.

Behold, Chinese hip hop.
 
Of fucking course. I'm listening to Brian the Sun right now, the ending they did to the first season of My Hero Academia. Love that ending.

 
I'm a big fucking weeb so I listen to alot of 80's City pop. it's pretty relaxing tbh and catchy compared to western pop at least from the US. I like classic jazz from Europe.
Most of my playlist consists of anime/game ops/osts ,City Pop,Jazz,blues and Vaporwave and some Japanese punk
 
Rammstein is the first band that comes to mind. They're a classic, but their newest music is pretty bad. I'm a viking weeb and teaching myself Old Norse to understand these songs. I don't really care if I can't understand a song, I think it adds more to it because then I can explore the meaning and get a feeling of the instruments on a more emotional rather than lyrical level.
I also like some good 'ol Mongolian music.
 
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"Rasa Sayang" is a children song of Southeast Asia; both Malaysia and Indonesia claim it as theirs.
Here, Japanese-Brazilian singer Lisa Ono sings the Malay version and naturalizes it in her native musical language of Bossa Nova:

 
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Okra Playground is a Finnish elecro-folk band with three women singer-instrumetalists and three male instrumentalists. To me their female chorus sounds like Värttinä.

A lot of their songs tell the stories of women. "Chasing the Moon" is about a woman persuring her dreams, against all difficulties, when she finds out she does not have long to live.


Raivopyora "The Whirl of Rage" (by their member Maija Kauhanen) is a harrowing, painful song about domestic violence, inspired by the story of Kauhanen's friend.
 
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Understanding lyrical content has always been of secondary importance to me, either due to it being in another language or having content I couldn't parse.

From when I was very young, I remember my grandparents and others singing or reciting nursery rhymes to me in Polish, High German, or Yid. Reunions & holiday gatherings always had lots of singing, and my extended family often sang in Czech.
Russian wasn't spoken in any of my family households, but I often heard pre-Soviet or pre-Nazi era music being being played at family functions (most having left prior to the farm collectivisation & purges in Russia, or as the Nazis were coming into power).

Conversely, I've had friends that absolutely hated music which contained lyrics in other languages (or even English dialects); as kids, they were never exposed to anything other than American pop, rock, r&b, or country music. My wife was one of those people, but she came around fast once.

For as much as I dislike YouTube as an entity for their business & social practices, it's still our digital age's visual & audio Library of Alexandria. Without it, I'd never be able to expose my infant daughter to the variety of music that I was afforded.

And it seems to be working with my little girl. She absolutely loves certain things like rural E. European & Japanese acapellas; Siberian, Mongolian, and Tibetan polyphonic singing; Polish polka and Imperial German drinking or martial music (often one & the same), Native American powwows/chants, old Norse... hell, even French jazz. No videos, audio only.
 
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My jam:

Radio Sing Sing

Evadé des radios en ligne commerciales, dégouté des formats étriqués, Sing-Sing vous ouvre ses portes...musique débarquée à Saint-Malo, Dinan, Cancale en provenance de tous les continents...
www.sing-sing-bis.org

I like everything music wise as long as it is good and mixed with other amazing tracks. I am also one who finds it easier to concentrate when lyrics are unintelligible.
 
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I mostly stick to English but if I like the way something sounds I don't really care if I can speak the language. Things like Hindu and Buddhist mantras in particular, which are about as far removed from English as possible.
 
I like Raubtier.

But im not realy sure if this fits here. i dont speak swedish, but its close enough that i get most of it.
 
Djivan Gasparyan's voice is as poignant as his instrument, the Armenian duduk:
 
Digging out the three albums I have on Bebel Gilberto, famous for her electro-pop take on Samba Bossa Nova. She's a new album out shortly:

 
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I listen to foreign music but I find that the older I get, the more I care about lyrics (the poetic quality of a song), which can't help but make foreign music much less interesting to me.

Most of the foreign music I listen to is Mexican or Russian. In particular, Linda Ronstadt and Anna German.
 
Some of my favorite songs are in foreign languages.
(Japanese)
(German)
(Russian)

It took me a little while but I can now sing the entire song in Russian.
 
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