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Lost in Translation By Jon Lusk
English is the world's most widely spoken language. It dominates 'Popular Music' to the virtual exclusion of any other, even where it is only a second, third or even fifth language for many.
But what about 'world music'? What is its appeal to those who can't understand the words? Should non-Anglophone artists who find themselves performing in a language most of their audience don't understand start singing in English? Are lyrics that important anyway? Or is music more about grooves, hooks and ambience than words?
 You could arguably say that what attracts people to world music is its very 'otherness'. A little mystery goes a long way, and some get a kick out of guessing what singers are on about without really wanting to know. Maybe the greatest beauty of art is the part we'll never understand after all, even native speakers often struggle with lyrical ambiguities.
The flip side of this coin is the aesthetic that exoticises world music; the more alien the better, and God Forbid that said artist should 'sell out' and say something intelligible. Or perhaps, like most pop lyricists, they have nothing special to say anyway, and we would rather be kept in the dark.
 Some choose to sing in a language other than English as a political statement, such as this year's nominees Wai. And for a band like La Bottine Souriante, singing in English might be taken as an affront to Qu茅becois nationalism. Such expressions of the world-wide resurgence of pride in indigenous cultural identities offer an important buffer to globalisation and linguistic homogenisation.
Many if not most artists marketed as 'world musicians' actually find their biggest audience in the home market. And often the rhythms and timbres of their music are intrinsic to the language they sing in. French rap has a totally different quality from its English language counterpart. Imagine flamenco sung in English. Camar贸n de la Isla never called himself Shrimp of the Island, did he? The vowels and soft consonants that dominate Lingala give Congolese rumba/soukous a fluidity that English can never match. Or maybe you'd prefer a little Anglo-qawwali...
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