Re: Iva Bitova (jara: maggelity and Satritain)

Is that true??  The CD I have, Jan, has her singing what looks to be a
Slavic language, but if she is producing a musical glossolalia, as I've
termed it (Deirdre DuBois, for instance, Lisa Gerrard, Bobby McFerrin, The
Cocteau Twins), then I'd like to know about it.  What is a Kurt
Schwitters-like conlang?  This interests me deeply.  What evidence do you
have of this?  Are you sure she isn't just singing in dialect?  Let me go
listen to her CD again and read the words.

Okay.  Her first song on this un-named CD (just Iva Bittova) is called Driv
Nez ("Before").  I'm sorry that I can't reproduce the diacritical marks.

Driv nez major v majoranku
pohrouzi se stranik v stranku
zasekne se kolo dejin
expres stane v Kolodejich

"Before the sergeants wrapped in serge,
The party man will be rapt in his paper,
The wheel of history will pause,
And the fast train call at Kilodeje station."

Now part of my problem following the words is that she stops a musical
phrase in the middle of a word and starts the end of the word with the next
musical phrase.  Listening as hard as I could, this is what I heard,
transliterated (sorry for the lack of SAMPA symbols):

Djeelish... mayov majov an...
ku po hrau  Jesus stanik stang...
ku sasek knasek olo yayeen...
EX-press...stanev Kolo yayee.

So unless these words are made up, she seems to be following the written
text.  Is this Czech?  A dialect of Czech?  Or a made-up language?  If she
is making up musical words on other CDs, let me know, please, and let me
know how you know.

I might add that her melodies are breath-takingly strange and compelling,
often a cappello, and she plays the fiddle to accompany them in places.

Sally
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."



----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan van Steenbergen" <ijzeren_jan@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2002 2:06 PM
Subject: Iva Bitova (jara: maggelity and Satritain)


> --- Sally Caves skrzypszy:
>
> > John, If I understood things correctly, Iva was singing in a non-
> > standard accent... not that I know Czech.  She kept dropping sounds
> > out and slurring over others. [...] I was impressed by how her words
> > were shortened when sung, and sounds missing [...]
>
> Well, I may be wrong, but as far as I remember the recordings of Iva
Bitová's
> performances that I've heard, it is not Czech she is singing; rather, she
> produces sounds without meaning. A kind of Kurt Schwitters-like conlang,
so to
> speak.
>
> Jan
>
> =====
> "Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones
>
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