Re: OT: slightly OT: language ID's?
| From: | Matt Pearson <pearson@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, May 3, 2001, 3:03 |
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Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> I picked up a couple tapes in a series called Global Celebrations,
> because I thought it'd be neat to get samples of music from around the
> world and they were going for $3 (U.S.) each...but I can't *identify* the
> languages or world-regions/nations/cultures from whence the songs came.
> Help, anyone? Even general indications of location would be neat.
I know, or can guess, a couple of these:
> Ceremonies Against the Night of the Devil, Bachir Attar
The name looks South Asian. I would guess India or Pakistan.
> Celiesti, braliti (the a and i have macrons? over them in the 2nd word),
> Skandinieki, Folkloras Draugu Kopa
Lithuanian or Latvian is my guess.
> Hähkämine (a-umlauts?), Leiko, from Setu Songs, recorded in Värska
Probably Finnish.
> Awungilobolele, Udokotela Shange Namajaha, from the Indestructible Beat
> of Soweto
Zulu (or Sesotho, or Xhosa), from South Africa.
> Seelinnikoi, Värttinä (more a-umlauts), from Seleniko
These women are Finnish, and well known to many on this list.
> Famadihana, Tarika Sammy from Fanafody
As Shreyas said, this song is from Madagascar. Tarika Sammy is a group,
though, and not an individual ("tarika" means "ensemble" in Malagasy, so this
is "Sammy's Ensemble"). "Famadihana" is the name of one of the most important
ceremonies in traditional Malagasy culture, in which the relatives of a dead
person exhume his or her bones from the family tomb and rewrap them in fresh
bandages (the Malagasy are big on ancestor worship). In English, the ceremony
is sometimes called the Turning of the Bones ("famadihana" means "turning").
"Fanafody" means "medicine"; my guess is that this is the name of the album
the song was taken from.
> Arape, Temaeva, from Chants & Rythmes du Pacifique Sud (mais *ou`* dans
> le Pacifique Sud?)
Polynesian or Melanesian, obviously, but not Hawai'ian (no /r/ in Hawai'ian).
Maybe from Tonga, or (given the use of French) Tahiti?
> Seif El Battar, Nass El Ghiwane
Pretty obviously an Arabic name, but beyond that, I don't know...
Matt.
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