Re: Conlangs in music (was Re: Jon Anderson a conlanger?)

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

> There are several other cases.  Enya is known for singing in
> Sindarin on the LotR movie soundtrack, and apparently later
> used another conlang (as discussed here two weeks ago).
> There is also a Sigur Ros album titled _()_ with lyrics in
> a conlang.  Not to mention the many, many songs in Esperanto.
I wouldn't describe Sigur Ros's Hopelandic/Vonlenska as a conlang. It
has no phonology aside from what it's easy for an Icelandic-speaker to
say, no grammar and no lexicon. It's just gibberish with a particular sound.

 From their faq at <http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/band/faq.php>:
hopelandic (vonlenska in icelandic) is the 'invented language' in which
jónsi sings before lyrics are written to the vocals. it's of course not
an actual language by definition (no vocabulary, grammar, etc.), it's
rather a form of gibberish vocals that fits to the music and acts as
another instrument. jónsi likens it with what singers sometimes do when
they've decided on the melody but haven't written the lyrics yet. many
languages were considered to be used on ( ), including english, but they
decided on hopelandic. hopelandic (vonlenska) got its name from first
song which jónsi sang it on, hope (von).

--
Tristan.