From French electronic and Japanese indie to K-pop and
Spanish jazz, it’s common for people to listen to songs they
don’t necessarily understand. Not knowing the language of
the lyrics, it seems, doesn’t stop people from liking—and
sometimes even singing along to—a song. Unless the listener
is looking up the dictionary meaning of the lyrics, then the
dictionary meaning of the lyrics doesn’t make or break their
appreciation of a song. But why?
“It’s a complicated answer,” said musicologist Lisa
Decenteceo, adding that it all starts with what’s called “sound
symbolism.” Sound symbolism refers to the study of the
relationships between utterances and their meaning. This
doesn’t have to do only with music. Marketers, for example,
can tune into sound symbolism as part of their strategy in
coming up with appealing brand names. In music as well as in
branding, Decenteceo explained, there’s something about the
appeal of words as sounds, beyond their meaning in a
language. While things like culture and personal experiences
affect people’s responses to different kinds of music, she
explained there are certain musical techniques that are
generally used to convey certain moods. One of which is scale.
“Songs in a major scale usually have brighter, happier sounds,
while minor scales usually have the slightly darker,
melancholic feel,” explains Thea Tolentino, a music teacher.
The human brain is wired to respond to sound, she added.
In a process called entrainment, the brain “synchronizes our
breathing, our movement, even neural activities with the
sounds we hear.” This is why fast-paced music is so popular
for running, for example, or why some yoga teachers play
rhythmic and melodic tracks in their classes. And there are
also the things that accompany the words. “Elements of sound
and music like pitch, melody, harmony, timbre, and amplitude
have an affective, emotional, psychological, cognitive, and
even physical impact on listeners. Music adds so much
meaning and dimension to texts through a complex of these
avenues,” said Decenteceo. What all these things do, she
added, is liberate the words. “Song frees the voice from any
burden of saying anything meaningful”. It’s important, then,
to understand music as a discourse between musical
elements. But all in all, Decenteceo said there’s value in
whatever immediate appeal people find in the music they
listen to, whether or not they understand the words. Music,
after all, is the universal language.
Disponível em https://www.vice.com/. March, 2022. Adaptado.