Music and Translation: Palgrave Studies IN Translating AND Interpreting

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN TRANSLATING
AND INTERPRETING
SERIES EDITOR: MARGARET ROGERS
MUSIC AND TRANSLATION
NEW MEDIATIONS IN THE DIGITAL AGE
LUCILE DESBLACHE
Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting
Series Editor
Margaret Rogers
School of Literature and Languages
University of Surrey
Guildford, UK
This series examines the crucial role which translation and interpreting in
their myriad forms play at all levels of communication in today’s world,
from the local to the global. Whilst this role is being increasingly recog-
nised in some quarters (for example, through European Union legisla-
tion), in others it remains controversial for economic, political and social
reasons. The rapidly changing landscape of translation and interpreting
practice is accompanied by equally challenging developments in their
academic study, often in an interdisciplinary framework and increasingly
reflecting commonalities between what were once considered to be sepa-
rate disciplines. The books in this series address specific issues in both
translation and interpreting with the aim not only of charting but also of
shaping the discipline with respect to contemporary practice and research.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14574
Lucile Desblache
Music and
Translation
New Mediations in the Digital Age
Lucile Desblache
Department of Media, Culture and Language
University of Roehampton
London, UK
Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting

ISBN 978-1-137-54964-8 ISBN 978-1-137-54965-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54965-5
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There’s music in the sighing of a reed;
There’s music in the gushing of a rill;
There’s music in all things, if men had ears;
The earth is but the music of the spheres.
Byron
To Robin,
who knows why.
Acknowledgements
At a time when academics, more than ever, are under pressure to multi-
task, it is challenging to undertake a full-length monograph. Margaret
Rogers, this series editor, has been understanding of these challenges and
supportive throughout the process. I thank her for her trust in my work,
her balanced advice and useful suggestions. I would also like to thank the
staff at Palgrave Macmillan for their patience, and particularly Cathy
Scott for her efficient input at the production stage.
Music translation is a small but growing area. I am grateful to col-
leagues in this area who have read the draft or part of it, shared comments
and looked enthusiastically on the project from its inception. I would like
to thank Karine Chevalier, Elena Di Giovanni, Johan Franzon, Klaus
Kaindl, Carol O’Sullivan, Adriana Şerban and Lorella Terzi for their
observations at various stages of the planning or writing of the book, and
for their continuing support. I am particularly grateful to Marta Mateo
for her detailed reading and suggestions, to Jonathan Evans for his
insightful comments, and to Helen Julia Minors, my Translating Music
network partner in crime. I am also grateful to all the people who engaged
with me through this network, agreeing to be interviewed, sharing
remarks, information or even just enthusiasm. Fiona McPherson, Judy
Palmer, Damien Kennedy and Luciano Messi have generously given me
access to performances, relevant people or data at the English National
ix
x Acknowledgements
Opera, at the Royal Opera House and at the Macerata Opera Festival,
allowing my work on opera to be informed in unique ways.
The University of Roehampton has given me two one-term sabbaticals
which made this book possible. I am also grateful to my Head of
Department, Lourdes Melcion for her support, and to my Deputy Head
of Department, Annabelle Mooney, for her unconditional belief in this
project and for taking the time to read part of its draft.
Finally, I would like to thank Robin Scobey for sharing ideas about
music and beyond, for assisting with projects such as Translating Music,
which informs this book directly, for discussing the style and structure of
the book, and for being there, always.
Part I (3.1.4), ‘Cultural translation and (un)translatability’, and Part 2
(6.1.2), ‘Music and accessibility’ reuses some of the ideas published in
Lucile Desblache, L. (2019). From minor to major: Accessing marginal
voices through music. New Ways for Translation? In Lewandowska-
Tomaszczyk, B. (Ed.), Contacts and contrasts: Cultures and literatures
(pp. 143–155). New York: Springer.
Similarly, in Part II (6.1.1), ‘Music spaces’, owes some of its content to
my entries ‘Music’ in Washbourne, K. & Van Wyke, B. (Eds.). (2018).
The Routledge handbook of literary translation (pp. 282–297). London:
Routledge, and ‘Translation of music’ in Chan, S. W. (Ed.). (2018). An
encyclopedia of practical translation and interpreting (pp. 309–336).
Beijing: The Chinese University Press.
Praise for Music and Translation: New
Mediations in the Digital Age
“Music and Translation takes the reader on a journey through the largely unex-
plored world of music and translation. This truly interdisciplinary and fascinat-
ing study surveys and investigates the intricate interactions between the two
fields, challenging limitative definitions of both. Hybridity is the inescapable
state of a musical piece and hybridity is the defining feature of translation today.
Moreover, translation shapes music and music has an impact on translation.
Both are positive forces in our global world in that they build and mediate iden-
tity, playing a crucial role in our understanding of the cultures we live in and
interact with today. Prof. Desblache demonstrates convincingly that the connec-
tions between Translation Studies and musicology merit much more in depth
research than they have received to date. Her book is a treasure trove of informa-
tion and research opportunities for anyone with an interest in music and/or
translation.”
—Aline Remael, Professor of Audiovisual Translation and Translation Studies,
University of Antwerp, Belgium
“Music and Translation makes its debut at an opportune time, when translation
is gaining traction and momentum in academia. Truly interdisciplinary in its
approach, this monograph constitutes one of the first sustained, rigorous treat-
ments of the topic, taking the reader on a fascinating journey into the intricacies
and intersections of music and translation. Reading Lucile is to discover new
ways of conceptualizing translation and to marvel at her arresting and systematic
display of ideas. Written in an accessible and elegant prose, the book, like its
xi
xii Praise for Music and Translation: New Mediations in the Digital Age
author, is innovative, inspiring, and ground-breaking in its exploration of music

as an instrument of translation, particularly in relation to the natural world.
Lucile has written a must-read primer for anyone interested in translation and
music. Read this book—and learn from one of the best in our discipline.”
—Jorge Diaz-Cintas, Professor of Translation Studies,
University College London, UK
“This book is highly original in bringing together two disciplines which are
rarely explored in dialogue. Desblache writes fluently and with authority across
both translation studies and music. The volume explores the global context of
music and translation and it also sets out the need to engage further in the trans-
lation on musical texts in order to promote wider access to art, across cultures/
borders. It lays out a theoretical framework for how music can be translated and
can translate. The case study examples are rich in content, spanning creative
activities, philosophical and psychological ways of engaging with music and
translation in dialogue, as well as exploring these issues within the context of the
nature world. The thrust of the book prompts inclusive and diverse human dia-
logue across diverse forms of creative and expressive exchange.”
—Helen Julia Minors, Head of the Department of Music and
Creative Music Technology, Kingston University, UK
Contents
1 Prelude 1
References 11
Part I Music and Translation in a Global Context 15
2 Music, Centres and Peripheries 17

2.1 Music and Borders 20
2.2 Music and Cosmopolitanism 30
2.3 Music, English and Anglo-Saxon Cultures 42
References 47
3 Music and Translation Today 57

3.1 Definitional Aspects 60
3.1.1 Music 61
3.1.2 Musical Texts 64
3.1.3 Transfers in a Musical Context: Translation,
Mediation, Adaptation and More 67
3.1.4 Cultural Translation and (Un)Translatability 71
3.2 Music Translation: Perception and Reception 78
3.2.1 Music Makers’ Views on Music Translation 78
xiii
xiv Contents
3.2.2 Music Reception and Translation 82

References 92
Part II Translating Music 101
4 What is Translated? Styles, Genres and More107

4.1 Musical Hermeneutics and Ekphrasis 108
4.2 Translating Beyond Words 114
4.2.1 Styles and Genres 123
4.2.2 Rhythms, Tempi and Beats 140
References156
5 What is Translated: Vocal Music, Voice and More167

5.1 Vocal Music and Its European Traditions 168
5.2 When Vocal Music is Not Translated 185
5.3 Voice 196
5.4 Lyrics and Other Words: Music Publishing and Recording 201
References210
6 How is Music Translated? Mapping the Landscape of

Music Translation219
6.1 Musical Content and Translation Strategies 221
6.2 Music Spaces 223
6.2.1 Live Performances 224
6.2.2 Radio 227
6.2.3 Digital Music on the Move 228
6.2.4 Translation Standards for Physical Formats of
Recorded Music 229
6.2.5 Video Games 230
6.2.6 Television and Non-Linear Internet Streaming 232
6.2.7 Cinema 234
6.3 Music and Accessibility 235
6.4 Approaches and Strategies in Vocal Music Translation 244
References257
Contents xv
Part III Music Translates 265
7 Music and Human Activities269

7.1 From Work Songs to Songs at Work and for Leisure 276
7.2 Music and Ideologies 285
References295
8 In and Beyond the Material301

8.1 Music and Emotion 303
8.2 Time and Space 308
8.3 Music and Other Art Forms: Performativity and
Intertextuality315
8.3.1 Performativity 317
8.3.2 Intertextuality 321
8.4 Music, Marginality and the Senses 326
8.4.1 Music Across the Arts 327
8.4.2 Music Across the Senses 330
References336
9 Music and the Natural World343

9.1 Music as Mediating Agent of the Non Human 350
9.1.1 Music and Animal Sounds 350
9.1.2 Music and Interspecies Dialogues 360
9.2 Connections and Translations 370
References375
10 Coda383
References386
Author Index387
Subject Index401
About the Author
Lucile Desblache is Professor of Translation and Transcultural Studies

at the University of Roehampton, London. She studied both musicology
and comparative literature. This is reflected in her research interests which
are twofold: the representation of the non human in contemporary cul-
tures on the one hand, and the translation of musical texts on the other.
She is the founding editor of JoSTrans, the Journal of Specialised Translation,
of which she was general editor 2004–2018 and the principal investigator
of the network Translating Music.
xvii
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Dance rhythms 37

Fig. 2.2 Maurice Ravel’s Boléro: rhythm ostinato 37
Fig. 4.1 Excerpt from Béla Bartók, 44 Duos for Violin, volume 2, ‘New
Year’s Song’ 152
Fig. 6.1 Music translation map (Kaindl & Desblache, 2013) 220
Fig. 6.2 Opening bars of Maurice Ravel’s ‘Kaddisch’ from Deux mélodies
hébraïques (1915) 246
Fig. 6.3 Opening bars of ‘Kalinka’, a Russian folk song by Ivan Larionov
(1860) with Russian transliteration 247
Fig. 6.4 Midsummer Night’s Dreams (August 2013, Macerata Opera
Festival. Production Francesco Micheli) 253
xix
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Textual support provided at live music events 89

Table 3.2 Translation provision at live music events 89
Table 4.1 Jacques Brel’s ‘Ne me quitte pas’: table of cover examples 146
Table 5.1 Table of national anthems 190
Table 7.1 ProZ.com poll (Wilson, 2013) 281
xxi
1
Prelude
Dancing to salsa, listening to reggaeton, singing a folk song and many more
musical activities allow both the expression of emotions beyond any lan-
guage or culture, and the sense of an understanding of other cultures.
Anyone listening to a samba will instantly be transported to Brazil: the
music will be meaningful, with or without words, even if those words are
sung in a foreign language, and in spite of some loss of comprehension con-
cerning the lyrics. The complex cocktail of dances from West Africa, Latin
America and Portugal that is at the root of samba, is immediately recognised
by most human ears as essentially Brazilian, even if the different cultural
influences and intersections are identifiable. While the phenomenon of
music is universal, its manifestations are varied and distinctive.
The idea of this book grew from the realisation that although music is
inspired and created through exchanges between different cultures, it has
rarely been considered through a transcultural approach, which is born of
a desire for renewal and exchanges between cultures. Music scholars in
the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries have broken away from a
traditional historical perspective and considered their discipline through
a broad spectrum of fields and methodologies: gender (McClary,
1991/2002), literary theory (Korsyn, 1991; Kramer, 2001; Straus, 1990),
© The Author(s) 2019 1

L. Desblache, Music and Translation, Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54965-5_1
2 L. Desblache
film and media (Chion, 1995), philosophy (Kramer, 2012), politics

(Street, 2011), history (Fulcher, 2011), semiotics (Gorlée, 2005; Nattiez,
1987/1990; Tarasti, Forsell, & Littlefield, 1996) and plural approaches
(Tagg, 2012). Recent developments in applied musicology also empha-
sise the role of habit and previously acquired musical references in the
shaping of musical listeners and performers, and are leading to ground-
breaking progress in the understanding of the musical mind. Adam
Ockelford’s (2013) zygonic theory, for instance, asserts that the principle
of music is to imitate through derivations and that human musical ability
is based on the capacity to identify these derivations. Yet few have explored
how transformations and translations shape musical meanings, develop-
ments and the perception of music across cultures. While some music
scholars have stressed that music is a major field of development with
regard to intercultural exchanges, historical knowledge and cosmopolitan
perspectives (Collins & Gooley, 2016), few articulate the vital impor-
tance of translation in making them happen.
Music, in spite of being translational in essence, at least in the wider
sense since it is based on transforming existing sounds, has long suffered
from being perceived as an autonomous art. Its ethereal, ineffable quali-
ties placed it as an ‘absolute’ form of art, disconnected from social expres-
sion and untranslatable in essence. This view has been reflected in many
titles of volumes focused on music, emphasising the universal abilities of
music, detached from its environments: some of the titles of the twenti-
eth century philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch, Music and the ineffable
(1961/2003) and Somewhere in the unfinished (1978), for instance, mir-
ror this stance.
Since the late twentieth century, popular music, however, has been pri-
marily considered in relation to its social and cultural contexts. As
Woodstock became associated with hippie culture, studies into the social
impact of music started to flourish. This is due essentially to the growing
influence of cultural studies as a framework for art forms, to the expan-
sion of ethnomusicology, and to the extraordinary developments of tech-
nologies which have brought musical landscapes where they are today.
Just as in the sixteenth century, when print revolutionised how music was
composed, performed, shared and disseminated, twentieth and t wenty-first
century technologies have been shaping what is written, produced,
1 Prelude 3
erformed, consumed and distributed. Nevertheless, the ivory tower syn-

p
drome associated with classical music continues to make many non
musicians wary of exploring its developments, influences and impacts: on
the whole, music is perceived as a discipline that can be accessed by people
with a special talent.
This phenomenon has similarities with translation. While traditional
musicology has chiefly explored and analysed Western classical music,
translation studies has primarily discussed texts considered as ‘worthy’,
which belonged essentially to the Western literary canon. Other texts,
including multimodal texts, which dominate today’s outputs, are cer-
tainly getting more attention from translation scholars today, but the
vocabulary and concepts necessary to discuss translation beyond canoni-
cal texts are still being forged. It is one of the purposes of this book to
explore them in relation to music.
Studies relating to the translation of audiovisual texts as multimodal
texts have been given more importance in the twenty-first century, but
they tend to focus primarily on visual and linguistic content, often under-
mining the importance of sound and music, which are also key to their
meaning. Some scholars (Gorlée, 2005; Julia Minors, 2013; Low, 2016;
Susam-Sarajeva, 2008) have started to explore the intersections and
connectivities of their disciplines with music, but most restrict them to
aspects of opera or song translation. Since the translation of musical texts
involves much more than the ‘straight’ translation of lyrics, as this book
will show, scholars who have ventured in this area have used a variety of
approaches to frame their analyses: semiotics (Gorlée), sociology
(Fernández, 2015; Susam-Saraeva, 2015) and multimodality (Kaindl,
2005, 2013) are the most recurrent. The fast development of audiovisual
translation studies in the last two decades has been and is still exciting, but
theoretical investigations in the area are still at their beginning. Audiovisual
translation also involves a relatively small number of scholars, who often
borrow frameworks from each other and from a limited number of
disciplines—mainly film, media and psychology—, and who undertake
primarily descriptive or empirical research. Curiously, even in practice-
oriented research, and in spite of the recent turn of translation studies
towards social science, very few reception studies exist in the field of music
translation. Yet it is estimated that the average urban person today is
4 L. Desblache
exposed to 4 hours 17 minutes of music daily, either through personal

choice or contacts in public places (Tagg, 2012, p. 36). Much of this
exposure not only involves different cultures and languages, but also the
shaping of social and cultural lives across borders.
This volume intends to open the door wider in examining how transla-
tion, in its many senses, is shaping music today, and how music has an
impact on translation. Chapter 3 will focus on this issue, but it might be
useful to clarify from the start the three overarching ideas that underlie
the notion of translation in this volume. First, translation refers to the
process of transferring a text from one language, be it verbal or not, into
another, interlingually, intralingually or intersemiotically, and to the
products that are derived from this process. Since Jakobson (1951/2012),
it has been the established understanding of translation, and the one that
will be referred to when opera surtitles, for instance, are discussed. A
second way of referring to translation here concerns aspects of musical
communication that are non verbal. In this case, it will refer to how a
musical form or element can be transmuted. Although it is not strictly
based on the notion of source and target texts and how they relate to each
other, nevertheless, the final element is significantly inspired by the first.
The travels of polka from a traditional Easter European dance to twenty-
first century pop-metal genre will thus be considered as a form of transla-
tion (see Sect. 4.2.1). Finally, and primarily in the final part, translation
will be considered more broadly as a transformational tool used in music
to convey meaning across boundaries: music can therefore be meaningful
to the deaf for instance, or facilitate the manifestation of emotion by
moving its listeners from one expressive place to another.
Sarah Maitland (2017), inspired by Paul Ricœur’s (2004/2006) views
of translation as a form of hospitality reminds us that each individual
understanding of the world is built on other people’s, and that this
understanding takes place intellectually and physically through different
channels of communication: linguistic, mathematic, emotional, and
artistic. Verbal and rational expressions can and often are complemented
by other forms of communication. For the postcolonial thinker Edouard
Glissant, a creative text requires some lack of transparency to ensure its
uniqueness and to guarantee that it will not be assimilated into a univer-
sal model. Although necessary, verbal language, according to Glissant,
1 Prelude 5
cannot be dissociated from power, and tends to favour dominant voices.

By contrast, non-verbal forms of expression or verbal forms of expression
that frequently defy logic, such as poetry, are not tied to one point of
view. They challenge a ‘universal’ understanding that leads to controlling
behaviours or practices, and encourage several voices to speak, rather
than one voice. For Glissant (1996), this type of communication does
not rely on rational exchanges and is based on what he names ‘opacity’, a
notion to which I will return in the coda of this book and which refers to
diverse, non-verbal ways of exchange between all beings. Transparent,
purely logical models of communication are appropriate in some con-
texts but they have their limitations, particularly as regards interpersonal,
intercultural and ‘interspecial’—between species—relationships.
Such a standpoint on communication implies improvisation, creolisa-
tion, fertilisation, appropriation and a process of creation based on dia-
logue, interpretation and translation. This of course requires a broad
understanding of translation, as will be discussed in Part I. At times when
translation studies, a young discipline, is still forging its academic iden-
tity and establishing its importance in the professional world, enlarging
the notion of translation can be seen as undesirable. Yet this broadening
is also essential to renew the conceptual frameworks that are at the basis
of translational practices. For instance, twenty years ago, the prevalent
idea of translation was that of the process of transferring a text from an
original language into another. For many, media accessibility was there-
fore not considered as part of translation studies, as it did not rely on a
principle of equivalence between the source and the target texts. In this
case, as in many others, a wider understanding of translation has allowed
translators to broaden their professional practice. Audiovisual translators
today do not only frequently work in media accessibility, but they also
contribute to its development through interdisciplinary research with
language engineers, psychologists and other professionals. Moreover, the
interest which many disciplines have taken in translation, from genetics
to cultural studies, cannot be ignored. The visibility of translation as a
multifarious concept in the twenty-first century has also contributed to
the visibility of the translation studies discipline.
Specific categorisation can and should be useful in certain contexts of
course. For instance, when Peter Low (2013), discussing the specifics of
6 L. Desblache
song translation, highlights the difference between translation (faithful

interlingual transfer of the lyrics), adaptation (interlingual transfer of the
lyrics with deviation from the original meaning) and replacement text (the
original lyrics are discarded and replaced with new ones), his strict categori-
sation is useful within the context of song translation practice. However, it
may not be when considering how music, be it vocal or purely instrumen-
tal, is transformed and transferred. This requires a broader approach.
Like translation, music, another art of transformation and communi-
cation, draws its creative dynamism from tensions between imitation and
innovative interpretation or mutation. It is the perfect medium for
‘opaque’ communication in Glissant’s sense. Twenty-First century trans-
lation scholars have been focusing on changing the perception of transla-
tors from that of slaves to original authors to that of creators giving new
meanings to texts. Transient musical systems offer emboldened and liber-
ating ways of adapting existing texts, imaginatively and subversively.
Musicians who compose, improvise or perform from texts which they
take beyond their original form, and audiences who are engaged cre-
atively with music, can be viewed as dissidents who mediate difference.
They can be inspirational not only musically but also in relation to trans-
lation, in contexts other than musical ones.
In my experience, translation scholars are interested in the intersec-
tions of music and translation, and acknowledge that they would benefit
from understanding how widely they do interact with each other. Most
translators, unless their field is highly discrete and technical, are con-
fronted with some form of musical content in the course of their profes-
sional life, be it the reference to a song title, musical metaphors in general
language, a song in a feature film, or music content in advertising. For the
growing number of audiovisual translators today, translating texts sup-
ported by or relating to music happens daily. They have to translate songs
or texts of which the meaning depends on music on a regular basis. Yet
most know little about music, and the impacts that it has on translation.
Music translation can be limited to the transfer of lyrics, but music can
influence the interpretation of a text much more broadly. The many
parallel paths and crossroads taken in music and translation regarding
their process, development and evolution can also open creative avenues
to ways in which translation studies scholars conceive their discipline.
1 Prelude 7
Equally, this book aims to encourage musicians to discover how and

why translation is an essential tool in considering, creating and perform-
ing music, and in bringing difference to its audiences beyond the famil-
iar, in an era that favours the standardisation and commodification of all
media products, including musical ones. It will show that music transla-
tion processes and products, which extend multimodally through inter-
lingual, intralingual and intersensorial modes of transfer, go much beyond
a search for lexical and other equivalences. As Susan Bassnett reflects in
the conclusion of her book Translation, music inspires and ‘reveals mul-
tiple layers of translation activity’ (Bassnett, 2014, p. 178). The myth of
Orpheus, for instance has been remediated by many composers from
Monteverdi to Milhaud and Offenbach to Birtwistle. Today, one of the
most famous of these pieces, Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, may be played in
one of the two main versions that Gluck wrote: in Italian, for an interna-
tional audience (1762) or in French for Parisian opera goers (1774); it
may also be heard in the arrangement which Hector Berlioz wrote in
1859. It might be sung in a third language, but is more likely to be sur-
titled interlingually and/or intralingually. It might be played on period
instruments or in contemporary style, and will be interpreted for a con-
temporary audience by a stage designer and producer. A programme,
sometimes bilingual, will be available for purchase, and the libretto, in a
bilingual or trilingual edition may also be on offer. Musicians may obtain
one of the scores for study: the Bärenreiter scores of the opera all contain
trilingual prefaces and the libretto, translated in at least one language for
singing purposes. Signing for the deaf may be offered on one of the per-
formances, and an audio introduction summarising the stage action may
be available. Such a rich palette of translation and interpretation is com-
mon in music. It can inspire models of creative practice, aesthetic forms
of expression, and lead the way to new forms of accessibility.
Taking the role of translation in music into account can also offer a
new conceptual framework. Most studies of music are conducted with
specific frameworks in mind. In particular, scholars who focus on popu-
lar music feel that existing research tools and terminologies were con-
structed for classical music, and are inappropriate beyond that field. They
are right in many respects of course. Yet as far as translation and adapta-
tion are concerned, it would be unhelpful to separate them. As we shall
8 L. Desblache
see, practices and innovations in this area have emerged from exchanges
across countries, languages, cultures and musical genres. The compart-
mentalisation that separates Western classical and other musics is not
always justified. And music has always contributed strongly to dissolving
barriers. For instance, surtitling of opera libretti for live performances
was one of the first manifestations of media accessibility. Opera houses
were also among the first institutions to provide audio description and
audio introductions. These ventures were of benefit to many, not only
outside the world of opera, but also beyond the classical music sphere and
beyond the music field.
The interdisciplinarity of this study is both exciting and intimidating.
As a scholar with a dual background in music and translation, I know
perhaps more than most how challenging it is to run a truly interdisci-
plinary project. It can end up too specialised to be fully understood by
one part of the readership, and too simple for the other. This is the reason
why most interdisciplinary projects are strongly rooted in one main field,
just borrowing ideas, knowledge or methodologies from another or oth-
ers. This book is slanted towards translation studies, but of strong interest
to readers in the music field and driven by a sense of ‘deep interdisciplin-
arity’ (Baer, 2017). It is hoped that the views of music given in relation to
translation here will also encourage musicians to be more open to ideas of
music and translation and, even, of music as translation.
While the book is primarily about music, it is written in ways that are
inclusive for readers who do not have specialist musical knowledge. Yet
since it is putting music at its centre, some musical terms are used, in
their British spelling or version. These terms are defined as they are used
in this book the first time they are encountered, and listed in the index.
Those who are unfamiliar with musical vocabulary can also consult the
Artopium music dictionary, which lists both British and American terms,
and the multilingual Cadenza Glossary, both freely accessible on the
internet. The Oxford dictionary of musical terms (Latham, 2002) will be
useful to those who want to delve further into terminology, and Philip
Tagg’s (2012) comprehensive volume on ‘musicology for non-musos’ is
essential for understanding music terms across different genres and styles.
As the title of the book implies, the overarching purpose of this vol-
ume is not only to consider how musical texts are translated, but also to
1 Prelude 9
investigate how music and translation relate to each other. Overall, three
main aims have been prioritised regarding the thinking of the music
translation in the twenty-first century:
• To expand the existing framework for understanding music and trans-

lation in relation to each other.
• To review and discuss the current state of research and practice in the
areas of intersection between music and translation.
• To investigate the creative influence of translation on music.
The book focuses on music of the late twentieth and twenty-first cen-
turies, but examples from the past are frequently discussed to contextual-
ise the contemporary period within an established tradition or a
contrasting current. This is the case particularly in Part I, which is more
definitional and conceptual. The ground covered aims to be wide cultur-
ally. Examples have been deliberately drawn from a range of styles and
ethnicities, but the main focus is European, with a particular emphasis on
the UK, a leading country in the music industry, and also, in the area of
media accessibility. This is partly due to my own knowledge of the musi-
cal scenes and partly to the limitation of how much can be included
within the scope of this project.
The book is structured in three parts. The first one sets the investiga-
tion within the global context that is ruling musical landscapes and mar-
kets in the twenty-first century. It also explores definitions of music and
translation, two challenging and changing concepts to delineate, stressing
their affinities with each other, and meanings in relation to each other.
Translation and its cognate notions such as adaptation, mediation or
transcreation are examined both in the context of audience reception and
cultural translation as a tool of transformation.
The second part considers which musical texts are translated and how
they are translated. The contrasting challenges of instrumental and vocal
music transfers or transformations are discussed, before an attempt is made
to map the landscape of music translation. For most people, music transla-
tion evokes the interlingual translation of song lyrics. While this is an
important aspect of music translation, and the one that affects professional
translators most directly, it is not the only one. Besides, the translation of
10 L. Desblache
lyrics in its several forms has been covered comprehensively by translation

scholars (Franzon, 2008; Low, 2016). For this reason, this part does not
aim to provide a guide to song translation. Rather, its purpose is to bring
forth an awareness of the extreme variety of translation modes and strate-
gies that shape instrumental and vocal music, as well as texts related to music.
The third part examines the translational power of music, which takes
three main forms. First, music emerges from variations on existing
sounds, and has to be interpreted creatively to come to life. Second,
music has the ability to reach humans universally—spurring on reactions
such as bodily rhythms and emotional responses—, while creating very
distinctive and culture-specific meanings: it can for instance, evoke
Russia, Spain, or medieval times within seconds, and this can be done
with or without the help of words. Finally, because it does not depend on
verbal language, music can mediate meanings across human senses, or
even beyond human borders: colours, bird songs and much more can
thus be re-invented through music and make sense to human ears. Any
music lover knows that Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending (1925) is
not the sound of a lark, but its human sound representation. Its value is
in the imaginative re-creation of the sound and in the open connections
it brings between the human and non-human worlds. In the twenty-first
century, ecological awareness means that humans understand life’s con-
nections more deeply, and music frequently takes the form of co-creation
between human and non-human beings or entities. This final part exam-
ines the key role of music as translation in an era of ‘co-constitutive’
(Haraway, 2008, p. 27) living, when collaboration between humans and
non humans is no longer only necessary to establish the prominence of
human cultures, but essential to the survival of life on planet Earth.
Translation accompanies important texts to transfer them into other lan-
guages, but it is also fundamental to the shaping of thoughts and knowledge.
Music, on the other hand, is meaningful beyond knowledge and its meanings
depend on humans’ abilities to transform existing sounds and recognise refer-
ences in such sounds. As human perceptions of the external world have wid-
ened, so has the palette of sound references available. Twenty-First century
technologies have revolutionised composition, improvisation and perfor-
mance in giving an extensive range of tools of transformation to facilitate
human musical creativity. They have also widened access to music beyond
1 Prelude 11
recognition. History has long shown that knowledge exchange and dissemi-
nation are driven by translation (Cronin, 2003; Venuti, 1995), and in the last
few decades, translation scholars have borrowed from many models to argue
that translation was much more than interlingual transfer. Yet music, based
on creative deviation, transgression and transformation, has not acted as one
of these models. The hope for this book is that it will be ear-opening for
translators and mind-expanding for musicians.
References
Baer, B. J. (2017). Deep interdisciplinarity, or confronting the fact of translation
across the humanities and social sciences. Abstract for conference “The chal-
lenge and promise of interdisciplinarity”, October 13–15, Shanghai Jiao
Tong University, Shanghai, China. Retrieved February 4, 2018, from https://
www.jiaotongbakercentre.org/activities/conferences/researching-translation-
interpreting-i/abstracts/
Bassnett, S. (2014). Translation. London: Routledge.
Chion, M. (1995). La musique au cinéma. Paris: Fayard.
Collins, S., & Gooley, D. (2016). Music and the new cosmopolitanism:
Problems and possibilities. The Musical Quarterly, 99(2), 139–165.
Cronin, M. (2003). Translation and globalization. London: Routledge.
Fernández, F. (2015). Scott Walker sings Jacques Brel: Translation, authorship
and the circulation of music. Translation Studies, 8(2), 1–15.
Franzon, J. (2008). Choices in song translation: Singability in print, subtitles
and sung performance. In Translation and music, Special issue of The
Translator, 14(2), 373–399.
Fulcher, J. (2011). Introduction. In J. F. Fulcher (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of
the new cultural history of music (pp. 3–14). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Glissant, É. (1996). Introduction à une poétique du divers. Paris: Gallimard.
Gorlée, D. L. (2005). Singing on the breath of God: Preface to life and growth
of translated hymnody. In D. L. Gorlée (Ed.), Song and significance: Virtues
and vices of vocal translation (pp. 17–101). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Jakobson, R. (1951/2012). On linguistic aspects of translation. In L. Venuti
(Ed.), The translation studies reader (3rd ed., pp. 126–132). London:
Routledge.
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Jankélévitch, V. (1961/1983). La musique et l’ineffable. Paris: Seuil. Translated

by Abbate, C. (2003). Music and the ineffable. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
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Béatrice Berlowitz. Paris: Gallimard.
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voice and image. In D. L. Gorlée (Ed.), Song and significance: Virtues and vices
of vocal translation (pp. 235–262). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
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Low, P. (2013). When songs cross language borders: Translations, adaptations
and “replacement texts”. The Translator, 19(2), 229–244.
Low, P. (2016). Translating song: Lyrics and texts. London: Routledge.
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Street, J. (2011). Music & politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Tagg, P. (2012). Music’s meanings: A modern musicology for non-musos. New York

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Part I
Music and Translation in a Global
Context
2
Music, Centres and Peripheries
On April 16th 2008, the Ethiopian pop/reggae singer Teddy Afro was
arrested and charged with causing the death of an 18-year-old man in a
hit-and-run accident which had taken place in November 2006 in Addis
Ababa. He proclaimed his innocence, but was sentenced to six years
imprisonment. He was released ‘for good behaviour’ in August 2009 but
remained under strict surveillance until Abiy Ahmed, who aims to end
political repression, became Prime Minister of Ethiopia in April 2018.
Following the success of his second album Jah Yasteseryal, issued in 2005
during controversial parliamentary elections, Teddy Afro’s songs were
banned on the state controlled radio FM Addis. In spite of frequent
repressive measures taken against him, he has become a national icon,
and even a global success since his fifth album, Ethiopia, topped the 2017
Billboard charts. Many aspects of Afro’s music are fascinating: the blend
of reggae, Ethiopian folk music and pop; the role it plays in giving visibil-
ity to positive aspects of Ethiopian history while exposing recent mem-
bers of the ruling elite; the recurrence of unifying themes in the lyrics,
meaningful in a country torn by multi-ethnic divides and a succession of
totalitarian governments, but also in a fractured and unpredictable world.

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54965-5_2
18 L. Desblache
His engagement as a singer-songwriter—he writes his own lyrics and

contributes substantially to the musical creation of his pieces—in genres
that are not associated with the usual intimacy of songwriting is also
unique. But what is perhaps most unique about his music, at least from
the point of view of global circulation, is that he has reached interna-
tional success while all his songs are in Amharic, with the occasional
insertion of another African language. While musical code-switching
between languages is common in vocal music which uses few lyrics, this
is surprising for music that conveys a strong, engaged political message
which has a global audience. And particularly surprising since this code-
switching takes place between lesser-used languages. Even music transla-
tion forums or platforms such as Musixmatch, Lyrics Translate and All
the Lyrics offer very few translations of his lyrics, an unusual phenome-
non at a time when fans provide lyrics on internet sites.
Two main reasons can be given for this. For many African listeners,
internet connections are still not pervasive; fear of censorship is equally
substantial. Messages such as ‘email me for a translation’, on forums pro-
tecting identity are quite frequent. For Ethiopian listeners, the blend of
Amharic and other ethnic African languages is also in itself a call for unity,
in a country where linguistic diversity is a mark of identity. Unlike other
African countries, which suffered the consequences of lengthy colonisa-
tion, Ethiopia resisted colonialism successfully and the cultural and linguis-
tic hegemony that comes as a consequence of it. Although Amharic is the
official language of the country, 86 languages are spoken, and this linguistic
diversity is part of an Ethiopian identity, which music, not exclusively
bound to verbal communication, can both value and transcend. English is
used for secondary education in some subjects, and its use is prevalent in
the country. Yet Teddy Afro makes a point of using Amharic, in his songs,
but also in his video interviews, even when they are for organisations which
have global reach, such as the BBC (Cosier, 2017). He also favours certain
themes common in African and Jamaican music, such as the theme of
redemption and reconciliation. His first hit, ‘Jah Yasteseryal’ which gave its
title to the eponymous album, can be translated as ‘God/The Divine heals’,
has been given the English title of ‘Redemption’, and a parallel can imme-
diately be made with Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’ which also blends
the political and the spiritual. Although ‘Jah Yasteseryal’ is critical of the
repressive Meles Zenami regime and of its unfulfilled promises, it makes

openings towards reconciliation, and points to the history of Ethiopia as
being inspirational. For Ethiopians, it became both an anti-government
anthem and a song of hope. For other audiences, Teddy Afro became
meaningful in other ways. He considers himself as an heir to Bob Marley,
but has re-appropriated reggae as an ‘Ethiopian product’, and kept it as a
genre which successfully resists Western misrepresentations of African cul-
tures, quite a rare feat in popular music. The languages used in his songs are
unknown to most non Ethiopians, but although their lyrics are rarely trans-
lated interlingually, they are mediated in a range of ways, visually and ver-
bally. In the video that followed the album issue, Teddy Afro sings ‘Jah
Yasteseryal’ over a number of historic clips of the last Emperor of Ethiopia,
Haile Salasse, and of violent moments of civil conflicts, which strongly
contextualise the song. Verbally, his album, and this song in particular, was
one of the first to generate new forms of what I would call ‘community
translation’. All YouTube clips of Teddy Afro’s songs engender a long string
of comments, primarily on the content of his lyrics. These are more fre-
quently in English than not, and have been among the first examples of
volunteer translation on social and media networks: audiences react to and
shape multilingual and multicultural products, giving a collective interpre-
tation of artistic and, in this case, politically and spiritually engaged mate-
rial. Comments range from a discussion on the meaning of a particular
word, to critiques of positions taken on history and perceptions of Ethiopia.
In this sense, Teddy Afro and his viewers genuinely ‘translate’ Africa with-
out grossly commercialising or falsifying its identities. His engagement
with human rights also strikes a chord in the West: his voice is pacifying,
reconciliatory, all encompassing, capable of engaging crowds and strongly
attached to his roots. Teddy Afro’s songs typify one of the main roles of
popular music in the twenty-first century: that of an agent of communica-
tion able to connect human beings through and beyond challenging times,
which has a global resonance in the twenty-first century global resonance.
Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so
much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of
common sense and self-interest forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged
by the standards of other centuries. (Arendt, 1979, p. vii)
20 L. Desblache
These words, so resonant in the post-2008 world, were written by Hannah

Arendt in the wake of the Second World War. Arendt was suspicious of
international organisations’ capacity to protect human rights and of the
will of nations to surrender their sovereignty to transnational institutions.
Although at the time of the development of transnational institutions,
she was criticised for not being fully aware of the political potential of
globalisation (Benhabib, 2001), the stringently more isolationist world
that is developing in the second decade of the twenty-first century does
justify her suspicion. Popular music, driven by engagement with the gen-
eral public and new media technologies, offers spectacular opportunities
to not only translate the lyrics of songs, but also mediate the opinions of
music lovers who seize opportunities to use their sense of initiative and
their desire to share what they value most, as their reactions to Teddy
Afro has illustrated.
2.1 Music and Borders

In the twenty-first century, borders of all descriptions are redrawn more
frequently and rapidly than ever. They can be both dissolvable and impen-
etrable, as the twenty-first century world movements of migration illustrate
potently. The number of independent states, 196 in 2019, has nearly dou-
bled in a few decades. In 1950, only 100 sovereign states were recognised
in the world. Yet supra-national organisations such as the European Union,
digital technologies and a strongly developed transport network facilitate
transnational relationships, products, practices and policies. By contrast,
they have also encouraged the reinforcement of both cultural and political
borders, as small ethnicities seize opportunities for self-expression while
prosperous countries close their borders to safeguard their territories.
Overall, more recognition is given to ethnicities, and with increasing
importance given to biopolitical production,1 this recognition depends
strongly on social and artistic outputs. Some cultural islands are thus con-
structed. For instance, non-territorial web extension domains have emerged
in the twenty-first century, to support the use and dissemination of lan-
guages and cultures not fully promoted by nation states. In 2005, the
approval of the .cat extension led the way to support Catalan language and
culture. Others followed, promoting cultures such as Breton and Basque

cultures. In spite of some attempts such as these to protect the local, impor-
tant events today happen on a global scale: natural catastrophes and the
man-induced ones may take place in a specific place, but have planetary
consequences. Similarly, beneficial events, particularly scientific develop-
ments (e.g. medical discoveries) and cultural outputs tend to have a global
outreach. Globalisation is no longer exclusively associated with the binary
opposition of vulnerable pluralities and standardised powers. It is consid-
ered as generated by the perpetual movement of tensions or conflicts
between universal values and particular beliefs, as well as local identities,
national interests and global systems.
Such paradoxical relationships have been particularly noticeable in
music since the nineteenth century, when Western societies evolved from
rural to industrial, and to increasingly global realities. This in turn had an
effect on how non-Western music was perceived and listened to.
Historically, migrant countries such as the USA have tended to build a
musical culture of unification, favouring universal values. For instance,
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (1924) was considered by the composer as ‘a
musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot. […] It is a
combination that includes the wail, the whine, and the exultant note of
the old ‘mammy’ songs of the South. It is black and white. It is all colours
and all souls unified in the great melting pot of the world’ (Gershwin,
1927/1988, pp. 47–49). Modern North American music, born of rebel-
lious expression (spirituals, gospels, jazz, blues…), thus absorbed and
transcoded different styles from Africa and Europe, as well as some indig-
enous pieces, in a unifying spirit, taking music beyond borders and across
identities. European influences were particularly strong, and in order to
emancipate itself from these influences, North American musicians medi-
ated musical genres and styles in order to embrace a global order.
By contrast, politically settled countries or countries with unstable bor-
ders seeking to bolster a national identity, from Arab countries to Russia,
have tended to express their ethnic or national character through music of
distinctive local flavour. Even politically, culturally and economically
dominant countries such as France and Britain felt the need to protect a
regional musical heritage that was in danger of disappearing, as the cen-
tralising effects of the industrial revolution movement were accentuated.
22 L. Desblache
Early twentieth century musicologists such as Cecil Sharp (1916) or

Joseph Canteloube (1951) transcribed, arranged and promoted thousands
of folk songs with the intention of preserving regional and rural music,
which they considered threatened. Such folk music, the equivalent of pre-
industrial popular music, was the expression of a rural, local life, which
became a thing of the past at the beginning of the twentieth century and
irrelevant to industrial life styles. This passion for collecting songs which
used to accompany daily life but had become socially obsolete happened
all over Europe. It was born of a nostalgic urge to preserve what had quite
rapidly become ‘music for remembering’ (Susam-Saraeva, 2015, p. 63) in
order to preserve an emotional link to ways of living that had been disap-
pearing within two generations.
Many twentieth century composers of international stature, including
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Leoš Janaček and Béla Bartók collected thousands
of songs from their native regions. They may be considered as pioneering
ethnomusicologists, and played an important role in establishing the
International Council for Traditional Music, in formal consultative relations
with UNESCO. Searching for ethnic or national musical roots and trans-
forming existing local material into pieces that would appeal to both national
and international audiences was tremendously liberating, artistically and
politically. Bartók’s view on the aesthetic value of this creative translation of
what he called ‘peasant music’ may be perceived as simplistic today, but gives
a sense of the attitudes before the First World War:
At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a turning point in the his-
tory of modern music.
The excess of the Romanticists began to be unbearable for many. There
were composers who felt: ‘this road does not lead us anywhere; there is no
other solution but a complete break with the 19th century’.
Invaluable help was given to this change (or let us rather call it rejuvena-
tion) by a kind of peasant music unknown till then. (Bartók, 1931,
pp. 340–341)
Music also developed as a channel of expression against colonial and

political expression at that time. Dvořák and Janaček’s music, for instance,
gave socio-political visibility to Slavonic identity against the repression of
the Habsburg Empire which dominated for three centuries until 1918.
While his Hungarian neighbour Béla Bartók tended to quote folk music
directly and insert some of its fragments into his writing, Janaček aimed
to integrate Slavonic music into his compositions in more blended ways.
Janaček may have been somewhat more biased than his Hungarian coun-
terpart with respect to the global importance of folk music. Perhaps
emboldened by the success of his friend Antonin Dvořák’s Slavonic
Dances, he felt that Slavonic music would have a major influence on
twentieth century music, as Tiina Vainiomäki (2012, pp. 35–36) has dis-
cussed. Yet ethnic music, for both composers, was deemed essential to the
building of musical and political identity. In many respects, they were
translating their identity into music for the world to hear. Today, the
fragile construction of the European Union, with its 28 members in 2019
as the United Kingdom prepares its Brexit, gives a good example of how
countries, steeped in established aesthetic traditions, are both aiming to
take part in a global culture while preserving their national, ethnic or
regional authenticity. The wave of populism and nationalism which has
been sweeping the West since 2008 encourages national forms of cultural
expression, and parallels with the changes and disillusions taking place in
the early twentieth century can easily be drawn. Many see the lure of an
attractive global life-style as out of reach, and the facilities provided by
digital technologies in taking part in a world culture entrapping. This has
helped to keep the ideal of a nation state alive into the twenty-first century.
Some of the challenges faced in the twentieth century are of course
gone today. For Bartók (1912, 1919), most musicians had been keen to
draw inspiration from local or national sources and give them a global
resonance, but they were hindered by three factors. First, until the audio-
recording of music became widely available, the most accurate way to
transcribe music was through Western notation, which was imperfect for
music that did not use classical systems. Phonographs were mass pro-
duced from the end of the nineteenth century but they were not very
portable and of low fidelity. Most musicians used notation to transcribe
folklore and this was not always reliable. Rhythms may have been based
on unknown irregular patterns for which musical notation was unsuit-
able. Melodic intervals may have used third or fourth tones rather than
the standard half-tone that could be noted down. The second hindrance
was political, as powerful countries or empires promoted a high musical
24 L. Desblache
culture that mirrored their dominance, at the expense of marginal musics

that could not be disseminated. The final challenge was lack of intercul-
tural communication due to conflicts, and particularly to the First
World War.
Music today makes it possible to have it both ways: global and local,
cosmopolitan and national, universal and specific. As music’s social and
cultural role in allowing self-discovery and identity building became evi-
dent, interest in the music of others also became more prominent.
However, as Timothy Rice (2014, p. 14) has noted, it tended to be driven
by ideals of universality promoted during the Enlightenment. This estab-
lished a custom, in music as in other artistic fields, of considering the
culturally specific in relation to human universals. Still felt today, this
binary perception is being termed in translation studies as a tendency to
consider the periphery in relation to the centre. As the postcolonial his-
tories of the twentieth century have shown, abstract notions of the uni-
versal, usually articulated by dominant agents of society, tend to
overshadow more marginal perspectives.
A good example from popular music is Paul Simon’s Graceland (1986).
The white American singer may have intended to give exposure to black
South African musicians, but was primarily keen to borrow from inter-
esting music and collaborate with indigenous musicians in order to make
a fresh album. Yet some felt he had appropriated their music into the
mainstream music circuit rather than given it a voice. Besides, the album
was issued at the height of the apartheid regime, when most artists were
applying a cultural boycott against the South African regime. Simon’s
position was therefore controversial and heavily criticised by those suffer-
ing from what was then a white-run apartheid state. Some also high-
lighted the exploitative dimension of the production and sales of an
album that primarily benefited Western agents (see Meintjes, 1990 and
Lipsitz, 1994/1997, pp. 57–60 for a reading of these controversies).
Since Graceland, what has been key to discovering musics has not just
been to listen to the voices of the Other, but to listen to them in order to
identify both their ‘authenticity’ and features that would unveil shared
cultural concepts expressed through music. As we shall see in Part II,
these principles will have vast consequences regarding if, how and why
musical texts, from vocal to instrumental music, from popular to c lassical
styles, are being translated in the sense of lyrics translation, or transcre-

ated in a broader sense relating to genre, style or other features of music.
The principle of transcreation will be discussed in the definitional Sect.
3.1.3 below. It is customary in the twenty-first century to refer to content
adaptation in advertising and marketing in the professional translation
world, but used increasingly by audiovisual translation scholars in all
subfields of the discipline: film translation, localisation, consumer-ori-
ented texts and media accessibility (Di Giovanni, 2008; Katan, 2014;
Mangiron & O’Hagan, 2006; Neves, 2012). It is helpful in music, as an
umbrella term referring to creation from established reference points
which leads to a text influenced by a previous text or previous texts,
rather than to the direct transfer of a text. The ‘thinking outside the box’
associated with transcreation refers primarily to the poetic and artistic
transformations of a text, and to the geopolitical and institutional trans-
formations that it may also undergo in translation.
For instance, protests songs based on Anglo-Saxon folk-songs emerged
in Japan as a new form of singer songwriting in the late 1960s. They were
inspired by a desire to shake the conventional values of Japan, to break its
isolationist culture, but were also driven by a need to experiment artisti-
cally, both with poetry and music. Individual singer-songwriters used the
songs of political activists such as Joan Baez, keeping the spirit of protest
of the originals, while inscribing them in a different artistic continuum
and revisiting, mostly subversively, existing Japanese song forms, such as
‘enka’, a song type popular in Japan in the early twentieth century, in
order to create a new musical culture meaningful to Japanese people (see
Mitsui, 2013, pp. 81–96).
In addition to this capacity to build and mediate identity, there is a
second attribute of music which has a vital impact on cultural communi-
cation: its precursory informative power and its ability to travel, extremely
valued commodities of the digital age. For philosophers such as Jacques
Attali (1977/1985) and Michel Serres (2011, pp. 84, 85 and 87), music
acts as harbinger of social, political and economic movements. One
salient example of this ability to travel across time and anticipate the
future is the contemporary emergence of music genres across continents
and all borders. As slavery and indentured labour displaced people from
their countries, and estranged them from their ethnicities and cultures on
26 L. Desblache
a massive scale in the eighteenth century, the most spectacular musical

cross-fertilisation of modern times started. Various hybridisations and
fusions of African and Western music established the foundations of pop-
ular music in the world today. The articulation of these transformative
movements in music is complex and contradictory, as Ian Biddle and
Vanessa Knights, among others, have noted (Biddle & Knights, 2007,
p. 9). Besides, the emergence of small countries in producing successful
artistic content has not led to a change in power relations as regards the
music trade. While music from Africa, Asia and Latin America has been
at the core of popular music creation in the last few decades, the US,
Europe and a few Asian countries, such as Japan and Singapore, domi-
nate how musical markets are run, and pocket most of the profits.
Local, national and global relationships in various cultural fields have
also been widely explored by social scientists and cultural studies scholars
(Anderson, 1991; Appadurai, 1996, 2013; Baker, 2010; Edensor, 2002;
Gebesmair & Smudits, 2002; Nederveen Pieterse, 2015; Tsing, 2004).
Focusing on the musical landscape of the end of the twentieth century, in
particular on world music, Martin Stokes (2012a) emphasised the
impasse that the unhealthy opposition between the global and local in
music production and dissemination would lead to as long as the global
and local would not interact, both commercially and artistically.
The most recent of UNESCO’s seven cultural conventions, the
Convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural
expressions, ‘the first international instrument of its kind to recognize the
specific nature of cultural goods and services’ (UNESCO, 2015), attempts
to tackle these challenges globally. One of this convention’s objectives
aims ‘to foster interculturality in order to develop cultural interaction in
the spirit of building bridges among peoples’ (UNESCO, 2005).
Nevertheless, progress is slow, as the mechanism to implement the insti-
tution’s articles is challenging to control. The USA hegemony in matters
regarding media slows them further, and UNESCO has little power to
control developments.2
These unresolved tensions between the local, the national and the
global have recently been discussed in a large number of studies of rela-
tionships between identity, ethnicity, nationhood and musical expres-
sion. Researchers of several disciplines, in particular sociologists, historians
and ethnomusicologists, have aimed to show how music, and especially

popular music, contributes to the construction of a national or ethnic
identity. The best recent examples are perhaps those considering Britain
(Morra, 2013), Croatia (Baker, 2010), France (Cordier, 2014; Lebrun,
2009), Ireland (Fitzgerald & O’Flynn, 2014) and the USA (Donaldson,
2014). It would be unfair to state that these volumes and most of the
recent ones on music and identity are not concerned with issues of shifts,
transnationalism and transformation. Ethnomusicologists emphasise vis-
ibly and widely how musicians borrow from and across different cultures.
As Lipsitz (2011) underlines, they are committed to multilingualism and
cosmopolitanism, which they view as essential to connect people beyond
hierarchies and borders. Many ethnomusicologists are keen to consider
how different influences have been absorbed and ‘transcreated’, in the
sense mentioned above, in deliberate attempts or unconscious moves to
construct musical identities in specific countries. In addition, in the
twenty-first century, cultural studies, music, history and ethnomusicol-
ogy encourage transdisciplinary and transcultural perspectives (Clayton,
Herbert, & Middleton, 2012; Fulcher, 2011). While until the later
decades of the twentieth century, musicology was still largely preoccupied
with formal analysis, historiography and biography, instruments of con-
solidation of the canon, new musicology of the twenty-first century
stresses the importance of meaning, interpretation, and identity expres-
sion and formation through music. The significant interest in popular
music and film music which emerged at the end of the twentieth century
is indicative of a desire to go beyond and transform this canon. At the
same time, musicology opened itself to interdisciplinarity, in particular to
linguistics (semiotics), psychology, gender and postcolonial studies.
Yet musical transnationalism, transculturalism and translation in the
narrow (translation involving song lyrics or writings about music) or
wide (transcreation or mediation of musical styles and genres) senses of
the word, remain largely unexplored, in spite of a few pioneering studies
(Kraidy, 2005; Lipsitz, 1994/1997; Marc, 2015; Stokes, 2004, 2007,
2012a, 2012b; Susam-Saraeva, 2015; Thiebergien, 2012; Toynbee &
Dueck, 2011). At international and institutional levels, the reluctance to
accept the permeability of borders, understandable since it is linked to
the protection and loss of national identities, is strong. For instance, in
28 L. Desblache
spite of its attempts to protect and enhance cultural diversity, the

UNESCO convention mentioned above does not use any of these terms.
Rather, it defines ‘interculturality’ as a notion which ‘refers to the exis-
tence and equitable interaction of diverse cultures and the possibility of
generating shared cultural expressions through dialogue and mutual
respect’ (UNESCO, 2005). However, as Marwan Kraidy (2005, p. 14)
notes, this implies tight borders between cultures that are intended to be
linked, whereas the prefix ‘trans’ suggests that these cultures can be mixed
across spaces and borders. Music’s dependency on variations, fusions and
improvisations guarantee such an inherent mix. By 1984, Roger Wallis
and Krister Malm had already identified what they named ‘transcultura-
tion’ in popular music, a two-way process by which local and national
musicians incorporate global features of music while contributing to
international music development. Nevertheless, music is reliant on circu-
lation and consumption generated in large markets. ‘Glocal’ musical sto-
ries such as those told through rap, although inspired by marginalised
actors and shaped by African influences, appear mostly in culturally
dominant languages and countries such as Britain, France, Japan, Korea
and the USA. Commercial pressures strongly shape musical outputs, as
Jonah Hahn (2014) illustrated with regards to hip-hop, showing how
successful rappers such as A Tribe Called Quest shifted the message of
their songs from a socio-political commentary to focus on sexuality or
violence in order to attract more white listeners.
These restrictions are also visible in popular music studies. In spite of a
few key volumes going beyond these realms (Mitchell, 2001), most books
about rap focus on English-speaking rappers. Such studies tend to consider
contemporary times, avoiding fresh reassessments of musical history. While
twentieth century postcolonial thinkers have evidenced that a linear history
gives voice to the victors of human history (Glissant, 1981/1989) and that
transcultural perspectives are needed to consider the achievements of non-
dominant societies, it is mostly in analyses of the contemporary period that
relativism is used to discuss cultural processes, products and practices.
Musicology has been slow to open to interdisciplinary methodologies and
perspectives. Rice (2014) reminds us this was primarily achieved with the
development of ethnomusicology in the late twentieth century. Yet if eth-
nomusicologists were keen to investigate unknown or threatened cultures,
they did not prioritise communication across cultures. Neither did they
prioritise the study of transcultural influences in the musical cultures which
they investigated, let alone how investigators interpreted them. To a large
degree, this is still the case today, but ethnomusicologists acknowledge the
fact that they rarely encounter music that has not been mediated in some
way (Ibid., p. 104), and more studies investigating multiple cultural influ-
ences such as Metis music, or multilingual or bilingual musical practices
and products, are starting to appear more regularly.
Outside the musical field, many scholars who have limited musical
knowledge and skills hesitate to extend their analysis to music. They often
feel intimidated by what they consider a specialist discipline. This is not
a new phenomenon and music can still be perceived as a non-permeable
field, which can be accessed only by specialists. At the end of the twenti-
eth century, Martin Stokes (1994, p. 1), acknowledging its reputation as
an isolated discipline, named musicology as ‘almost extra-social’.
If non-musicians find it difficult to engage with the study of music,
musicologists have also engaged sparsely in interdisciplinary perspectives
before the twenty-first century and have been reluctant to use methods
from outside their discipline. In some respects, musicology has followed a
similar path regarding interdisciplinary influences as the emergent disci-
pline of translation studies. The former was primarily influenced by history
and aesthetics, while the latter was theoretically bound to linguistics and
later, to comparative literature until the 1960s. They both opened up to
cultural studies in the last decades of the twentieth century and to social
sciences in the twenty-first century, as literary and philosophical disciplines
became less influential. Geography for instance, a discipline that has influ-
enced both established and emergent fields from philosophy and ecology to
anthropology, linguistics and animal studies in the twenty-first century, has
also largely been ignored both by music and by translation studies scholars.
Yet the large body of theoretical work on transnationalism undertaken by
geographers is of high relevance to music and translation as some geogra-
phers have recognised (Connell & Gibson, 2004; Collins, 2009; Sidaway,
2012). This spurning of geography as a model of enquiry is surprising con-
sidering that both music and translation studies have given much space to
the geographies of translation and music practice, and to the mapping of
frontiers through translation and music.
30 L. Desblache
2.2 Music and Cosmopolitanism

Today, all musics, popular or classical, ethnic or transnational, vocal
or instrumental, evolve within a global order to some degree. Given
this global context, the methodology of research into music has
tended to be framed by ethnomusicological, anthropological or cul-
tural studies. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Martin Stokes
(2004), one of the few musicologists to take ideas about translation
into the area of music, discussed the emergent theoretical trends in
music in relation to globalisation, and opposed two main frames of
reference. First, a perspective rooted in Marxian and postcolonial cri-
tique highlighting dialectics of hegemony and oppression as a conse-
quence of late capitalism. In this perspective, the local is a product of
difference to be consumed by the global. Global and local are thus in
opposition, in a conflict which leads globalisation to become a
destructive force (Bauman, 1998/2013). The second perspective con-
siders notions of the local and global as unpredictable and in constant
flux. Based on theories of globalisation such as Appadurai’s (1996,
2013), this approach maps a world in which local outputs and prac-
tices, even if part of a global context, allow opportunities for both
resistance and individual or collective forms of expression (Slobin,
1992). The two outlooks are opposed but agree that the market,
driven by consumers’ choices, is a consistent organising force in the
construction of the musical landscape. An increasingly global music
industry—only three of the six music majors alive at the beginning of
the twenty-first century still exist in 2019: Warner, Universal and
Sony—is fuelled by what grassroots consumers listen to, but keeps
peripheral countries at bay economically. Not only do the nations of
the top music companies correspond to the most central in the inter-
national music trade, but recent studies (see for instance Moon,
Barnett, & Lim, 2010) show that sharing a common language is key
to the development of what remains a highly imbalanced music trade.
Essentially, the music industry is driven by four pairs, each sharing
geographical and cultural proximity, as well as a language in most
cases: the most powerful one, the USA- Canada, is followed by
Singapore-Japan, the UK-Ireland and Germany-Austria.
Yet by essence, music depends on variations—it always uses existing

elements—and hybridity—it absorbs various forms and influences. It is
hence also dependent on plurality, be it in its classical or popular forms:
instrumental adaptations, improvisations or compositions inspired by
previous works, tunes, rhythms, sound qualities, styles, and cover songs3
are its staple diet. They all testify to the transmutability of music-making
and writing, and to music’s capacity to dissolve original references and
transform them creatively. In this sense, music transcends the boundaries
between global and local, and depends on hybridities more naturally than
other art forms perhaps.
Hybridity is the inescapable state of a musical piece and part of the
process that recreates it through composition and interpretation. Yes,
notions of authenticity in music do exist, as will be discussed in Chap. 3
(see Sects. 3.1.3 and 3.1.4). They can relate to performing (for instance
with period instruments intended to match the time of composition), to
composing (identifying the composer), to traditions, to genres, to regions,
countries or ethnicities. They vary according to different music tradi-
tions. For example, most classical performers play in an original key and
draw a sense of authenticity from this key. In the case of some works, a
piece would lose its identity in transposition: Chopin’s Étude op. 10 n°5 in
G flat major, known as the Black Key Étude because the right hand plays
exclusively on black keys of the piano. The unusual key of G flat major is,
in this case, crucial to its ‘authenticity’. Yet an art form such as music is
by essence intangible, because it is embodied in sound. In the twenty-first
century, it has also been increasingly dematerialised since musical objects
such as CDs disappear as a consequence of digitisation and streaming.
The notion of authenticity, in relation to music is therefore very fluid, as
David Stubbs (2009/2011, pp. 112–114) has noted. Unlike the visual
arts, which depend on the notion of an original piece, such as a painting,
the power of an original in music is limited to that of memorabilia and
subjective perceptions such as a master recording, an original LP or an
idea of what a piece should sound like.
In many respects, it is the mediation of authenticity that makes music
attractive, not authenticity itself. For instance, the singer Cesária Evora
may have been a genuine Cap-Verdean, but it is the mediation and
hybridisation of Euro-African forms of morna and koladera, epitomised
32 L. Desblache
in albums such as Mar Azul (1991), that seduced global audiences. Music
occurs through what Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2015, p. 79) described as a
‘continuum of hybridities’. It results from many types of fusions, which
include the incorporation of canonised, even stereotypical forms and
styles of music, through to unconventional and offbeat ones.
It is clear that as regards both the mediation of musical languages and
communication in the international music trade, a wider use of transla-
tion would lead to a more open world. One of the few translation studies
scholars who has focused on a sociology of translation and globalisation,
Esperança Bielsa, although not discussing music, has highlighted the lack
of not only translation visibility, but reference to any translation frame-
work in the global communication field (Bielsa, 2005, 2010, 2014,
2016). Bielsa (2014, pp. 392–394) has pointed out that the key role of
translation in facilitating the worldwide flow of information is rarely
acknowledged in globalisation, while cosmopolitanism is more commit-
ted to outlining the importance of an open exchange between cultures.
Interestingly, both Stokes, for music, and Bielsa, for translation, in
their thoughts of how their respective discipline interacts with the global
order and globalisation frameworks, come to the conclusion that thought
about cosmopolitanism allows more constructive models. For Stokes,
although the notion of cosmopolitanism can be challenging to tackle in
some respects, overall,
it invites us to think about how people in specific places and at specific

times have embraced the music of others, and how, in doing so, they have
enabled music styles and musical ideas, musicians and musical instruments
to circulate (globally) in particular ways. […] Most importantly, it restores
human agencies and creativities to the scene of analysis, and allows us to
think of music as a process in the making of ‘worlds’, rather than a passive
reaction to global ‘systems’ (Stokes, 2007, p. 6).
As suggested earlier, in the music industry, translation tends to be silenced

by global companies who prefer to trade within the same language and cul-
ture. Developing business on familiar grounds is more attractive and gener-
ally perceived as safer (Moon et al., 2010). Hence, when business dealings
are not taking place within similar cultures and languages, translated or
localised products are generally domesticated as much as possible, so that

they can pass for originals. Commercially, these multinational companies
also impose what is being listened to on main media channels such as popu-
lar radio stations and television channels, which primarily play the work of
musicians contracted by them. In 2018, six companies controlled 90% of
the North American media: GE, Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, and Time
Warner, compared to 1983, when roughly 50 companies owned the same
media. With the growth of digital giants, more mergers are on the way
(Littleton & Spangler, 2018). With three music majors active worldwide,
playlists on public and commercial channels are easily controlled. Playola,
the open form of pay for play legally taking place in the 1960s, 70s and 80s,
may be officially prohibited in most countries now, but it insidiously infil-
trates all media, including internet radios and streaming services (Peoples,
2015). By contrast, major companies today do pay close attention to webo-
metrics and social media data, which gives some openings to music pro-
duced and selected by individuals. Streaming platforms such as Spotify and
YouTube allow the general public to voice their preferences, while a handful
of decision makers controls and limits most of what is played on mainstream
platforms.
From a creative perspective, the scene is different. The systematic use
of electronic music technologies, with its palette of available genres and
rhythms has largely determined the permeation of many isomorphic fea-
tures in popular music. This has resulted in popular music that is largely
based on the use of recurrent rhythmic, melodic and textural4 elements.
In spite of the commonality of this contemporary musical language, dif-
ference is valued. The wave of flashmobs which has taken place in the
early twenty-first century is a good example of how people like to be
surprised with artistic events, particularly musical ones (see for instance
YouTube, 2014). At the end of the twentieth century, Edouard Glissant
(1990, 1996, 1997) articulated a view of this gap between commercial
and creative developments, using a different terminology: the effects of
mondialisation, driven by top-down economic pressures and realities can
be counteracted by those of mondialité, which favours diversity through
creolisation, a fertile instrument for interconnectivities between and
across peripheral cultures. Stokes (2004, 2007, 2012a, 2012b) puts a
similar emphasis on imagination and human agency in the building of
34 L. Desblache
connectivities, and argues that translation plays an essential role in creating

the new aesthetic cosmopolitanism which permeates the twenty-first cen-
tury. It is based on exchanges with and discoveries of the Other, which can
take place across race, social strata, gender or species divides. Twenty-First
century developments in environmental and eco-music, aiming to express
the variety of relationships between humans and the rest of the natural
world, illustrate potently this need to discover, relate to and m ediate differ-
ence. These developments happen across various genres, from classical
music [e.g. various Sámi compositions among which Nils-Aslak Valkeapää’s
Bird symphony (1993), or Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s con-
certo for birds and orchestra Cantus Arcticus (1972)], to songs for children
about animals and the natural world (see children’s site listings such as
Bussongs or Momes.net), narrative pop or folk songs about the natural
world (see listings of songs in sites such as Songfacts or L’ écologie en chan-
sons), or cross-genre music such as that of Björk (Human behaviour, 1993;
Jóga, in Homogenic, 1997 and Biophilia, 2011).
Bielsa, inspired by Rada Ivekovic (2005, pp. 1–2) pursues the idea that a
dialogue between cultures, based on the notion of borders, is both unrealis-
tic and limiting. She sees translation as the best potential tool for ‘an exchange
between different forms of being or existing [… and] resistance to the hege-
monic lines of imposition of meaning’ (Bielsa, 2014, p. 403). Translation,
for Bielsa, offers a model, however imperfect and transitory, which can tran-
scend the ethnocentrism that leads to cultural appropriation, and which can
fight the effects of domination in art. It ‘allows one to empirically investigate
how texts, ideas and traditions are communicated across linguistic and cul-
tural borders in a highly interconnected world’ (Ibid.). Placing translation at
the centre of cosmopolitanism thus gives it three important roles. First,
translation emerges when the need for transformation or the new is felt,
hence its core of gain rather than loss. Second, it emphasises the material
importance of the transfer process, against the naïve and often prevalent
view that any information can be instantly and automatically circulated.
Any form of cultural or language transfer requires thinking, skill and creativ-
ity, and must be acknowledged for the realistic perspective of the contempo-
rary world that it offers. Third, translation provides models for approaching
transculturality based on views of multiculturalism and plurality that focuses
on relationships between things and people.
In the arts, intercultural research is still emerging, and tends primarily

to survey and compare different global practices (Burnard, Mackinley, &
Powell, 2016). The rise of ethno-musicology and popular music studies
have brought to the fore intercultural awareness as key to the understand-
ing of music (Nettl, 1983/2005; Tagg, 2012). Yet the aspects of translation
articulated by Bielsa are relevant to the development of art forms and in
particular, of musical texts. Music relies on translation in its widest sense:
it requires what Anthony Pym has called a ‘start text’ (Pym, 2014, p. 1),
a set of references which may relate to musical or dance forms, style,
melody, rhythm and song lyrics in the case of vocal music, which are
transformed or kept intact. The balance between referential elements that
remain untouched and are recognised by listeners, and those that are
mediated, is what gives each particular musical piece its spirit and indi-
viduality. When thinking of translation in music, the notion of a start
text is more suitable than that of a source text, as the latter implies a
unilateral movement from a first text to the translation. In music, there
may be to-ing and fro-ing between an original and its translation. Besides,
as in many translation environments, a musical translation generally
depends on several texts from its translation: words, sung or spoken,
instrumental accompaniment, visuals, dance, and sometimes more.
The sexually-charged hip-hop song ‘Baby Got Back’ (Sir Mix-a-Lot,
1992) can be taken as an example of the number of ways in which most
successful popular music is translated. Its lyrics were adapted intralin-
gually and also parodied in several media programmes, including in an
episode of the Simpsons Tree House of Horror series (2014), where the
song title was changed to ‘Baby likes fat’, and where the lyrics convey
food rather than sex addiction. Although the song did not lead to success-
ful covers in languages other than English, interlingually, it was translated
globally on forums and sites of lyrics translation. Musically, it was adapted
to different styles such as country (Nichols, 2017), folk-rock acoustic
(Coulton, 2006), or classical (Coleman, 2014). It was also adapted and/
or parodied to be used in different formats: a video game (Fat Princess,
2009), advertising (Burger King, 2009), series (Friends, 2002), films
(Shark tale, 2004) and, surprisingly, opera, with untouched lyrics set in
Gilbert and Sullivan’s inimitable style (Hightower, 2007). It was even
overdubbed into a short film made of clips from nearly three hundred
36 L. Desblache
films edited into a version of the song where the original lyrics are spliced
together. Finally, the song was sampled,5 most famously by Nicki Minaj
(2014), who borrowed the original song’s beats and lyrics and gave it a
female perspective. As this example shows, translation strategies are many
and essential to popular music. They involve ‘straight’ interlingual trans-
lations, but mostly, borrow existing references creatively, musically, visu-
ally and poetically.
Generally, the more ‘referential’ a piece of music is, the easier it is to
listen to, as known elements penetrate listeners’ memories, hence com-
mercial pressures to favour familiarity in popular music. Nevertheless,
the lure of the new, and the desire for transformation, variation and adap-
tation are key to musical expression. Moreover, at a time when music
travels mainly in digital form, establishing the difference between trans-
mission and circulation is essential: incorporating the local into global
products, in world music for instance, and/or producing transmissible
texts globally that are meaningful in different local contexts, a process
which relies on mediation and various forms of translation, is entirely
different from ensuring their dissemination. Finally, music is particularly
suited to communicating meaning, albeit not primarily referential mean-
ing, across emotional, linguistic, and cultural borders, and to providing
an understanding of different cultures. Yet how this transfer takes place is
rarely discussed or investigated.
One striking example can be taken to illustrate this three-fold role of
translation in music. Maurice Ravel’s Boléro (1928), a seventeen-minute
piece originally intended as a ballet, became the composer’s most famous
composition. Music scholars are no longer unanimous on this, but in
traditional musicology, the main parameters of musical language are the
following: form (the overall structure a musical piece belongs to, such as
a sonata, a ballad…), melody (the musical tune), harmony (the use of
chords or simultaneous pitches), rhythm (the time pattern given to note),
timbre/orchestration (the tone colour of sound, linked to different instru-
ments and voices), tempo (the speed of the music and its emotional qual-
ity, e.g. adagio lacrimoso: tearfully slow), dynamics (different levels of
loudness/softness of the music), articulation (the ways different notes are
played, e.g. legato or staccato) and texture (different sound sources heard
simultaneously).
Maurice Ravel’s composition is based on a rhythmic cell ostinato of two

bars repeated 179 times and a single insistent theme in two sections, reiter-
ated through different orchestration and dynamics. Ravel stated in an inter-
view that his Boléro was more an experiment than a fully-fledged opus
(Calvocoressi, 1931, pp. 476–478), and ironically referred to it as his master-
piece, albeit one which contained no music, since its theme was so short and
repetitive. Few like or dare to admit that translation is at the core of original-
ity. Yet the Boléro is a convincing example of a piece where creativity is pro-
duced by what can be considered translation. It takes place at different levels,
simultaneously at the level of the musical form, tempo, timbre and texture,
and allows transformations and intercultural exchange. Initially, Ravel had
entitled his piece Fandango, a dance rhythmically related to the bolero but as
the excerpts below show, the bolero, which is a slower dance than the fan-
dango, is more similar to Ravel’s piece (Figs. 2.1 and 2.2).
Traditional Spanish fandangos and boleros are intended for guitar, cas-
tanets and hand-clapping. They are also often sung. By contrast, in Ravel’s
piece, the rhythm ostinato is played by snare drums. A full orchestra is
gradually introduced, with individual instruments playing the tune in
Fig. 2.1 Dance rhythms
Fig. 2.2 Maurice Ravel’s Boléro: rhythm ostinato

38 L. Desblache
turn and eventually together, starting from the pianissimo of the piccolo
flute to the loudest possible dynamics of all instruments. Ravel provided
a slower tempo (♩= 72) for his Boléro than those expected for either dance.
This piece clearly shows how music’s parameters can be used to mediate
cultures without the use of verbal language. Ravel’s Boléro introduces lis-
teners to Spain, but to a Spain that is part of a wider world, heard through
instruments, from the flute piccolo to the soprano saxophones, that are
not associated with Spain. Here, as in many pieces based on variations on
existing themes, the role of translation moves beyond that of textual
transfer to a view of translation as an experience of the foreign within a
cosmopolitan world. Spain is introduced to all listeners through a piece
that is no longer exclusively Spanish.
Although international travelling is a norm for many in the twenty-
first century, and in spite of multimedia communication taking place
beyond borders, exchanges are fleeting, fragmented and cultural encoun-
ters perhaps more superficial than they were in Ravel’s day or even in the
era following the Second World War. For instance, in the 1960s, in the
area of pop music, British charts included European titles. By contrast, in
twenty-first century successful music items, foreignness is now more
insidiously integrated into an Anglo-American model, as an exotic acces-
sory. There are some exceptions of course. To give one example, Malian
musician Rokia Taoré, even at the height of her success, still sings in
Bambara, French and English (Beautiful Africa, 2013) and keeps African
music and languages at the centre of her songs. Overall though, foreign-
ness and difference tend to be diluted into the familiar textures, struc-
tures and content that permeate contemporary popular music. More
than ever, twenty-first century music relies on fusion, hybridity, and vari-
ous forms of transformation and mediation to introduce audiences to
foreign realms. These are essential tools to communicate meaningful
voices of the foreign. Some have highlighted the static or standardised
aspects of music which inhibits creative trends and imaginative engage-
ments. Classical music is thus often criticised for the ways in which it
preserves the canon and remains elitist. With regards to popular culture,
the seminal and controversial essays of Theodor Adorno on the uniformi-
sation of popular music and those of Roger Scruton have voiced most
potently the manipulative powers of the music industry (Adorno,
1941/2002; 1967/2001; Horkheimer & Adorno, 1947/2002; Scruton,

1997, 2009). Some would argue that Adorno’s writings do not take into
consideration the power of contemporary audiences to shape the devel-
opment of the music industry. Yet others, such as Scruton, would respond
that the power of audiences has been limited, and not enhanced by music
technologies; that, in addition to the mediocre and banal content of
much popular music, musical ‘habitus’6 is now driven by two features:
individual listening on personal devices and the lack of music making,
both of which prevent social relationships through music.
A substantial increase in live music events and music tourism since the
beginning of the twenty-first century shows that listeners are perhaps not
so completely manipulated as Adorno and Scruton state, and that they
are aware that ‘what is great in music must be actively sought out’ (Stubbs,
2009/2011, p. 131). Between 2000 and 2013, there was a 60% growth
in live music revenue globally (Mulligan, 2014) and studies project fur-
ther increases into the third decade of the century (Statista, 2016).
Moreover, internet dissemination of music favours the presence of indi-
vidual voices. Yet as we have seen, the music industry has the upper hand
in deciding what is to be listened to or viewed in media and, to a large
extent, in large venues with respect to live music. This is not the case in
music festivals though, which are driven by public demand and offer a
very diverse landscape, with opportunities to sample the music of many
bands and performers, hundreds in the case of larger festivals. However,
in the mainstream circuit, pieces based on past successes are more fre-
quently favoured than original compositions, hence the extraordinary
commercial success of cover songs. The manipulation of the familiar and
the exotic is a reality and can certainly result in a diluted ‘authenticity’
and bland form of foreignness, put at the service of hegemonic discourses
and economic interest, as Steven Feld (2000) has shown in a discussion
on world music. Sampling, a form of artistic appropriation in pop music
in use since the late twentieth century (see endnote 5), based on the
re-use of existing musical fragments in a new piece, shows that pop music
can move from aggressive appropriation to creative transmutation.
Acculturation is a common phenomenon in popular music and the
source of ‘othering’: it can relegate marginalised artists or performers to
the status of an exotic accessory (e.g. the stylised latino-arabic charm of
40 L. Desblache
Shakira), essentialise an artist into a perpetual foreigner (e.g. Jimi Hendrix

as Black rock star), or associate a performer to a vulnerable life-style (Amy
Winehouse to substance abuse and mental instability, for instance). Many
artists, such as Benjamin Clementine, winner of the Mercury Prize 2015,
and whose long periods of homelessness have been highlighted by jour-
nalists, are concerned that an anecdotal interest in a musician’s life and
vulnerabilities can overshadow his or her music (Lewis, 2014).
Musicians are also critical of typecasting musical labels that can mis-
represent them. David Byrne (1999), for instance, sees world music as a
miscellaneous bag referring, like world cinema, to anything that does not
fit standard Western models of popular culture. The term ‘neo-folk’ can
also be used to refer to ethnic music, which suggests that it is not quite
folk music, and is used as a marketing label. Many record companies,
particularly at the end of the twentieth century, felt that ‘othering’ musi-
cians who did not fit the standard canon was the best strategy to promote
them. These musicians, though, often felt ostracised, not only for their
race or ethnic origin, but for not singing in a main European language.
Blind indigenous Australian singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, for
example, is uncomfortable about his categorisation as world musician
even in his own country. He sings in Yolŋu languages, which are Australian
languages and therefore not foreign as such, and as he explains in an
interview (Delaney, 2015), does not believe that he should be labelled as
an ethnic artist for using them.
While some music scholars, particularly in popular music studies, have
considered the emergence of an aesthetic cosmopolitanism, they tend to
focus on the fact that the Anglo-American ‘pop-rock’ model has pene-
trated national and local musics with a global ‘sonic vocabulary’ (Regev,
2013, p. 161). Motti Regev illustrates his arguments geographically and
stylistically, with convincing and contrasting case studies, and defines this
aesthetic cosmopolitanism as ‘a process of intensified aesthetic proximity;
[…] a process in which the expressive forms and cultural practices used
by nations at large […] growingly comes to share large proportions of
aesthetic common ground’ (Ibid., p. 3). This aesthetic cosmopolitanism,
in popular music, certainly sees the replication of musical styles and idi-
oms across countries and on the loss of linguistic diversity.
Since the ubiquitous use of electronic music in the 1970s, there has
been an undeniable trend towards more standardisation. This has
been encouraged by a system of writing, mixing, selection and dis-
semination of music which gives little recognition to individual paths
(Axel, 2007; Byrne, 2012) and by technology which favours the use
of a standardised musical language as part of musical composition.
Some would disagree with this view of a singular world musical cul-
ture, stressing how hybridity and fusion, as well as contemporary
multimedia tools can defy standardisation. In 2018, the annual
Grammy awards, for instance, listed eighty music categories, and
those do not represent all those recognised by music makers and lis-
teners. Thanks to streaming and platforms such as YouTube, new
hybrid genres such as reggaeton have become global and regularly top
the charts. The prominence of African musicians on the music scene
at international levels also implies that many instruments, languages
and styles are represented in mainstream recorded music, in spite of
the hegemony of English: the Malians Rokia Traoré, Oumou Sangaré
and Toumani Diabaté, Senegalese Youssou N’dour for instance, and
more recently, the Congolese Ferre Gola and Fabregas, South African
KidX, Ugandan Joseph Mayanja and many more have achieved inter-
national recognition. Their success is largely due to the mixture of
‘standard’ music styles with those of their roots.
Some music scholars such as Regev are interested in the permeation of
standardised music in the pop-rock global scene, or how different art
forms fertilise each other (Burnard et al., 2016), but researchers tend to
investigate how musical movements ‘connect centres and peripheries,
and only rarely peripheries with one another’ (Stokes, 2007, p. 12).
Pondering on the global reality of translation beyond linguistic transfer,
Stokes also points to the impact of colonisation as an aggressive form of
cultural influence driven by the power of metropolises. Such violent rela-
tionships led to the mass versioning and musical appropriations that have
silenced marginal voices, but that have also allowed new forms of expres-
sion. For issues relating to the translatability of many aspects of music
beyond the transfer of song lyrics in vocal music need to be explored:
musical genres, styles, and technical/artistic developments. Stokes asks:
42 L. Desblache
If hybridization and musical translation are the new creative principles,

how are musical intelligibility and meaning to be maintained, by whom,
and for whom? How is diversity and cultural in-betweenness to be cele-
brated, without eroding core identities? Who are to be the gatekeepers, the
explainers, the interpreters, the go-betweens, the intellectuals (Ibid., p. 1)?
These key questions will be explored in Part II. Before doing so, one
essential aspect of the music industry needs to be considered: the domi-
nance of Anglo-Saxon models in the production and dissemination of
musical products and its impact on their translation.
2.3 Music, English and Anglo-Saxon Cultures

As everyone knows, English as a language and the USA as a country
dominate the global music scene. Nevertheless, in the last few years, from
K-pop to J-pop, Cantopop or Latin pop, there has been a growing inter-
est in hybrid genres and songs in languages other than English. Latin
American music’s growth in the world has also been exponential since
2017. This was reflected in the success of relatively unknown artists such
as Luis Fonsi, who surprisingly topped the charts, as well as in the growth
of hybrid genres such as reggaeton and bilingual collaborations, especially
popular in Spanish and English (‘Despacito’ with Julian Bieber; ‘Mi
Gente’ with Beyoncé), and Spanish and Portuguese [Maluma’s (2017)
‘Corazón’]. However, statistics speak for themselves. The ten most popu-
lar artists globally all sing in English in 2017, and in 2018, the US is still
the largest market for recorded music worldwide, with a revenue nearly
twice as large as that of Japan, the second largest (Global Music Report,
2018). Endless figures could be given to further illustrate this ascendancy.
Yet the majority of music listeners are not native English speakers. In the
EU alone, only 25% of non-native English speakers are sufficiently profi-
cient in English to understand or read the news in English (Special
Eurobarometer 386, 2012, p. 6), and it is estimated that 75% of the world’s
population do not speak English (GCHQ, 2015, p. 8). In spite of this,
many enjoy listening to popular music in English and I would argue that
there are two reasons for this. First, most popular songs contain relatively
few words and these are repeated as part of the song structure. The second
reason relates to the morphology of the English language which contains a
large proportion of monosyllabic words, particularly in basic vocabulary
(Oxford Dictionaries, 2016). Titles of famous pop songs such as ‘Let It Be’,
‘Hey Jude’ (The Beatles (respectively 1970 and 1968)); ‘So Long, Marianne’
(Leonard Cohen (1968)); ‘Life on Mars?’ (David Bowie (1971)); ‘When
Doves Cry’ (Prince (1984)) or ‘Take me Home’ (the tile of several songs by
Cher to The Spice Girls) aptly illustrate this point. Comparing these titles
with a few famous Spanish (‘El Porompompero’ (Manolo Escobar (1962));
‘Ni Rosas ni Jugetes’ (Paulina Rubio (2009)); (‘La Macarena’ by Los del
Río (1993))) or French songs (‘Les copains d’abord’ (Georges
Brassens (1964)); ‘L’Amour existe encore’ (Céline Dion (1991))) illustrates
the point further: Romance languages’ tendency to lengthier expression
means that lyrics do not aim for concision as they do in English. This will
be discussed further in Part II, in Chap. 4 (Sect. 4.1) and Chap. 5 (Sect. 5.2).
Nevertheless, evidence shows that audiences also like to hear songs in
their own language. In Germany for instance, less than half of music lis-
teners are interested in English language rock and pop music (Statista,
2015). This means that native German songs but also songs in translation
are favoured. Other instances of the preference of audiences for their own
language are available. In the last decade, global productions of musicals,
overwhelmingly created in English, have been increasingly performed in
target languages in non-English speaking countries. Even in the USA, a
recent survey showed that only 64% of the population preferred to hear
songs in English, while the rest gave preference to other languages
(Spanish, Italian, French, German and Portuguese) (Statista, 2014).
Popular songs, from rap to reggae, are also sung to most audiences in
English, a foreign language to most listeners. There is no doubt that the
decades following the Second World War imposed English as the favourite
language of music. The global emergence of the American music industry,
the arrival of beat music and other musical genres favouring rhythm over
text, and the preference given to monosyllabic, easily accessible words over
complex lyrics ensured its popularity. This also shows in Europe, with the
European Song Contest offering an ever-increasing repertoire in English,
sung by a majority of non-English-speaking artists. There are some exam-
ples of musical success across language barriers: the craze for K-pop in the
44 L. Desblache
twenty-first century, or the success of artists such as the Irish singer Enya,
who frequently sings in her native Gaelic, but also in languages inaccessi-
ble to most listeners, such as Japanese, or even fictional languages (Enya,
2005). But these depart from the norm.
Moreover, the success of English as the global music language has not
prevented different artists from performing successfully in their respec-
tive languages. Rock en español started as early as the 1950s in Spain while
in France, rock alternatif in the late seventies and rock métis in the eighties
and nineties were nationally very successful, with groups such as ‘Noir
Désir’ (see Lebrun, 2009). In Belgium, Canada and France, the tradition
of the ‘chanson à texte’ which peaked in the sixties with singers such as
Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens, is still strong and alive today, with
artists such as Camille, Flora Fischbach or Zaz.
In spite of some national trends, popular music products and events
have been primarily created in English since the 1950s. Nevertheless,
they are not all watched in English. Music is also frequently part of a
media product (television programme, fiction film, documentary,
video game…) which is adapted and translated into national formats
for export, and may (or not, as we shall see) include translation and
adaptation of the sound track. Digitalisation and piracy have caused
a strong decrease in profit for the global music industry since the
beginning of the twenty-first century. While worldwide recorded
music revenues were estimated at more than 25 billion US dollars in
1999, they dropped to around 15 billion in the first years of the sec-
ond decade of the twenty-first century in spite of a large increase in
digital income. Boosted by streaming, figures started to grow again in
2017 (Statista, 2017) and live music revenues have also increased
steadily in the twenty-first century. These trends have important
transnational consequences as the music industry is looking to com-
pensate for the loss of its physical sales, aiming to reduce costs and
increase digital revenues. As music becomes cheaper and more
instantly available to consumers, paratextual information and transla-
tions, such as texts about the music itself or the lyrics of songs, are
generally no longer offered as support and are often provided by fans,
on companion sites which frequently rely on volunteers for transla-
tion or even on translation software.
Songs included in blockbuster films are, of course, all adapted to very

high standards. Children commonly sing songs from The Lion King,
Frozen and others in their native tongue. This applies to top musicals
such as The Phantom of the Opera, translated and performed in a dozen
languages or more. Some songs have also appeared in translation over a
long period of time. Every new year, millions of people sing their version
of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and in some countries, the meaning of the initial lyr-
ics has even been adapted or even abandoned: Korea used the tune for its
national anthem between 1919 and 1947, and it was the direct inspira-
tion for the popular Bengali song ‘Purano shei diner kotha’ (Memories of
the good old days) (Brocklehurst, 2013). Many religious hymns (‘Adeste
fideles’, ‘O come all ye faithful’), folk songs (‘The little drummer boy’,
inspired by a Czech carol which is popular in translation throughout
Europe) and political anthems (‘The Internationale’), with a global or
near global outreach, became well-known through translation. Yet the
most famous example of a song sung in translation is perhaps ‘Happy
Birthday’, in spite of the fact that it in some countries such as Germany,
the original English words—only five altogether!—tend to be favoured.
Yet the lyrics of many musical texts appear only in their original language:
national anthems, most songs in films, on the radio, on the internet, on
streaming services, on television and during live concerts tend to be left
untranslated, as will be discussed in Part II (Sect. 4.3.2). At the time of a
new (post-)industrial revolution (Marsh, 2012), when consumers dictate
production, this is perhaps surprising.
This Anglo-Saxon influence is not only visible in vocal music. As
mentioned in Sect. 2.1, the USA, as a country of migrants, prioritised
a culture of unification when nation building in the 18th and 19th
centuries. This could lead to brutal assimilation but also gave way to
spectacular examples of evolving musical counter-cultures which
eventually became mainstream, from jazz to blues and hip-hop. At the
dawn of the First World War, the music world in many ways was quite
static: classical music, driven by its respect for the canon, was practis-
ing translation in its strictest sense and not encouraging cross-fertili-
sations; popular music was at a crossroad: the demise of rural societies
and the mingling of different cultures meant that lifestyles were
46 L. Desblache
changing. America, a very multicultural and multilingual society until

the First World War (Gentzler, 2008, p. 27), saw marginalised voices
emerge and express specific identity issues that all could empathise
with. Blues, spirituals, jazz, all germane to contemporary music, were
vehicles for these voices which were not only to be heard in the con-
text of their own communities but by the world. As Isabelle Marc
points out (2015, pp. 4, 12), musical transfers are pluri-directional
and rhizomatic in the influence that they exert. Global Anglo-Saxon
music has therefore been permeated by patterns (call and response, for
instance, which is at the core of most Anglo-Saxon pop music today),
and rhythms (dances from beguine to salsa and samba to rumba are
based on traditional African rhythms) that have been constantly rein-
vented. Technology, which changed how music sounds and travels,
did the rest, making dissemination and diversification possible.
Notes
1. Biopolitical production, in this context, refers to products and actions
that offer alternatives or resistance to normalised or oppressive models of
creation, performance and fabrication.
2. It is interesting to remark that out of the 154 countries present when this
convention was adopted in 2005, two voted against it: the USA and Israel.
3. A cover song, sometimes just named cover, is a new interpretation of an
existing song. It can entail new treatment of the music or different lyrics
but its transformation relies primarily on a different performance style by
the singer(s) who appropriate it.
4. Texture in music refers to the combination of tempo, dynamics, melody,
harmony and timbre which gives it its individuality.
5. Sampling in music refers to the process of taking parts of existing recorded
music, ‘samples’, and reusing them as part of a new recording.
6. The concept of ‘habitus’, introduced by Pierre Bourdieu (1981/1990),
designates the acquired habits, skills and preferences through which indi-
viduals perceive and engage with their social environment. It tends to be
shared by people from similar social backgrounds. In relation to music,
some individuals would never attend opera for instance, which they would
judge as highbrow and elitist.
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269F9DA24F8
3
Music and Translation Today
Music and translation interact constantly: they do in the most literal

sense of the word, as musical texts involving linguistic expression require
to be translated, and in figurative ways, when different aspects of music
are transferred or transformed within musical idioms or across different
fields and languages. This is not a contemporary phenomenon. For
instance, the lyrics of Schubert’s lied ‘An Silvia’1 are a translation by
Eduard von Bauernfeld of ‘Who is Silvia’, a song from Act 4, Scene 2 of
William Shakespeare’s play, The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Remarkably,
von Bauernfeld’s translation is a near-perfect equivalent of the English
prosody, and the song, made of stanzas of seven-syllable verses, can be
sung both in German and English with very few musical adjustments.
Musically, and more figuratively, it is also a translation. The original song
is a serenade, intended to be sung by a small group of musicians paid by
Silvia’s admirer. Schubert’s piece, by contrast, is written for a single voice.
It fits a strophic form, which evokes the genre of a folk song. The piano
accompaniment superimposes lute-sounding staccato chords reminiscent
of Shakespeare’s days to a whimsical bass line in counterpoint to the
legato of the voice. Shakespeare was revered by the German Romantics,
and using a simple song form to set a canonical text was in itself an ironic

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54965-5_3
58 L. Desblache
statement. Combined with the jolty, fun-like bass line, it seems to say
that Shakespeare’s text is just there to be enjoyed, as is romantic love.
The example above shows how close musicology and translation stud-
ies should be interconnected. Yet they have not done so widely. There are
two main reasons for this. First, they are practice-oriented disciplines
which tend to devote their theoretical explorations to their own field.
Hence, in music, a large part of theory relates to the musical language
itself, mainly notation, counterpoint, harmony, a/tonality, modality,
meter and beat. Similarly, although translation intersects naturally with
several disciplines, and while translation studies is still considered by
some as an intrinsically interdisciplinary field, a large proportion of theo-
retical works have been concerned with strategies and methods of trans-
fer, from explicitation to omission, and from foreignisation to
domestication. This explains why the search for linguistic equivalence has
taken such a large place in translation studies discussions. These discrete
areas of knowledge, whether in music or in translation, have somewhat
contributed to isolating these disciplines from each other.
Second, both disciplines have been endorsed by Western cultures rea-
sonably recently. Musicology, promoted by the Austrian scholar Guido
Adler, has been recognised in Europe since the end of the nineteenth
century. While translation theorists can be traced back to Antiquity,
translation studies’ journey towards recognition was a long one. George
Steiner (1975/1998, pp. 248–310) outlines four periods for the disci-
pline in the West: the first, primarily empirical, starts in Antiquity and
finishes with Friedrich Schleiermacher’s famous 1813 lecture Über die
verschiedenen Methoden des Überetzens (On the different methods of
translating) (Schleiermacher, 1816b/2012, pp. 43–63); the second period
is marked by the influence of hermeneutics and the development of phi-
losophy of translation, and ends in 1846 with Valéry Larbaud’s Sous
l’invocation de Saint Jérôme (Larbaud, 1946/1997); a third era is driven by
the post-Second World War developments in language automation and
processing; yet it is only with the fourth and current period starting in the
1960s that translation studies became established as an academic
discipline.
Both musicology and translation studies initially developed a two-fold
theory, one derived from the practice and analysis of their respective
skills, the other based on the history of their development. Translation

studies in particular, although considered as intrinsically interdisciplin-
ary, have been keen to develop its own terminology, methods and theo-
ries. It has a strong history of involvement with other fields (primarily
with linguistics, comparative literature, philosophy and computer sci-
ence), but has been steadily building its own boundaries since the middle
of the twentieth century. Unsurprisingly, other disciplines, perhaps more
‘safely’ established, from anthropology to history, have often been using
the notion of translation in a very broad context, metaphorically, trans-
gressively or subversively. Equally unsurprisingly, some new disciplines,
such as adaptation studies, are eager to free themselves from translation
studies (Raw, 2015). What is perhaps more unexpected is the reluctance
and, at times, resistance from a large number of translation studies schol-
ars towards the concept of translation as Michel Serres (1974) under-
stood it, as a process of communication between different fields and
domains. For some scholars though, including Anthony Pym (2014,
p. 154), translation in its wider sense has many virtues:
[A broad understanding of translation] introduces a human dimension and

sees translation from the perspective of the (figurative) translator; it con-
cerns translation as a cultural process rather than a textual product; its
focus on hybridity undoes many of the binary oppositions marking previ-
ous translation theory; it relates translation to the demographical move-
ments that are changing the shape of our cultures; it can generally operate
within all the critiques ensuing from the uncertainty paradigm.2
A reluctance to view translation as an abstract process is understandable.

After all, for most professional translators, translation is essentially about
delivering a concrete finished product. Yet the two perceptions of transla-
tion are not mutually exclusive. Translation, like music, can be a meta-
phor and a product. In an era when fragmentation and instability are key
words, music and translation create meaning in a world of uncertainty in
similar ways. They not only enhance but rely on diversity, and give it vis-
ibility, while making communication possible across languages and cul-
tures. They both allow virtual travelling with dematerialised texts, now
primarily available in digital form. Metaphors for music and translation
60 L. Desblache
may be different (mirror, copy, clothing, bridge… for translation3; birds,

wings, freedom… for music), but they also draw on common images
which stress their continuous process (journey, river…). In what Edwin
Gentzler (2017) has dubbed ‘the age of post-translation studies’, the con-
cept of translation needs to be enlarged to include not only principles of
transfer between different languages but also transformation between
entities and content that have commonalities. This goes beyond the prin-
ciple of intersemiotic translation introduced by Jakobson (1951/2012),
which is still based on a form of equivalence between source and target
texts. It is in this spirit that John Cage, shortly before his death, envisaged
analogies for his time in relation to music:
We live in a time I think not of mainstream, but of many streams, or even,

if you insist, upon a river of time, that we have come to the delta, maybe
even beyond a delta to an ocean which is going back to the skies. (Cage
1992 in Bernstein & Hatch, 2001, p. 1)
3.1 Definitional Aspects

Both music and translation are notions which vary in meaning according
to their use in time and space as well as the situation in which they are
relevant. Their definition is useful within a specific context, but limiting
as a universal endeavour. It grows as the concept itself develops. Neither
music nor translation have the same meaning for most Europeans now as
they did two hundred years ago. For Madame de Staël for instance, trans-
lation was primarily a remedy against the intellectual impoverishment
created by an excessive focus on national literatures (Staël, 1816/1871,
pp. 294–297). Few would recognise this feature as a priority of translation
today. Music and translation also acquire particular significance when
used in relation to each other. This is why an introduction to the contem-
porary global context relevant to this book has preceded any attempt at
definitions and conceptual overview. The next section, however, will con-
sider definitional and conceptual aspects of translation in relation to music.
3.1.1 Music
Most human beings have an idea of what music means to them. Many
have also attempted to produce a universal definition of music, with
mixed success at capturing its multifarious functions across time and cul-
tures. Like most universals, such a definition tends to represent a domi-
nant view of the concept of music. To most Western people, music is
understood as a combination of organised sounds, culturally constructed
and meant to be listened to. Yet in most human societies, there is no
generic word corresponding to the Western concept of music, as Bruno
Nettl (1983/2005, pp. 26–37) illustrated in his comparative analysis of
the term. In most African ethnic groups, for instance, there are terms for
specific acts like singing, playing instruments, and more broadly, per-
forming (dance, games, music), generally for particular social events, but
there is no concept referring to music in isolation from other forms of
expression such as dance (Stone, 1998, p. 7). Even within Western cul-
tures, there is often no word to encompass all aspects of musical products
and processes. In Bulgaria, muzika refers to instrumental music (Rice,
2014, p. 6). The Western notion of music also varies, whether it refers to
acts of composition, performance, listeners’ experience, genre (pop song,
symphony…) or style (classical, baroque, jazz, blues…). Besides, in the
West, music more frequently relates to a product rather than a process,
hence the recent invention of the term ‘musicking’ (Small, 1998/2011)
to fill this conceptual gap and refer to process, product, and experience.
Moreover, music collocates with many other terms, taking a different
meaning when used in tandem: period music, electronic music, live
music, contrapuntal music, world music to take but a few examples, refer
to various aspects of music practices, listening, styles or genres. These col-
locations, used as loan words or translated as calques (musiques du monde,
Weltmusik, músicas del mundo…), render the notion of music more spe-
cific, but not necessarily less universalist. World music, for instance, was
promoted in the 1970s by the music industry. It expresses the idea that
primarily non-Western music is either linked to the listener’s culture or
perceived as separate from it. It denotes the notion of ‘another’ music,
with listeners positioned from the centre (with Western music as main-
62 L. Desblache
stream) to the peripheries. It is about negotiating, assimilating or appro-

priating difference, and refers to universalist, or at least, dominant
views of music.
Historically, attempts to pin down the universals of music have not
been very successful, as the notion evolves with time as well as in space
and within cultures. For instance, in Diderot & D’Alembert’s Encyclopedia,
music is defined as ‘the science of sounds, as they are capable of pleasantly
affecting the ear, or the art of arranging and managing sounds in such a
way that from their consonance, from their order, and from their relative
durations, pleasant sensations are produced’ (Diderot & Le
Rond D’Alembert, 1765/2011). This notion of pleasantness might not
be so relevant in the twenty-first century. For many, from Jacques Attali
(1977/1985, p. 4) to Jean-Jaques Nattiez (1987/1990, pp. 47–48), music
today is defined by audible vibrations socially recognised as such.
Furthermore, music has until recently been considered as an exclusively
human activity, but this concept has been questioned in the twenty-first
century. Are whale songs considered music because they are pleasing to
human ears, for their own intrinsic musical qualities (Fischer & Cory,
2015), or for the musical interactions that they allow with humans as
another species? The wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson, for instance,
follows John Cage’s idea that music surrounds us, and that we only have
to learn to listen in order to hear and make music (Youngs, 2013). To
what degree are ‘soundscapes’—the term coined by Raymond Murray
Schafer (1993) and further defined by Bernie Krause (2012/2013) to
refer to the interwoven sonic environment of geophonies (sound gener-
ated by non-biological phenomenon such as wind), biophonies (sound
generated by non-human beings) and anthropophonies (sound generated
by humans)—musical? These views have led to enlarged perceptions of
music, and to different denominations, such as ‘sound art’, which uses
sound as a primary medium but in an interdisciplinary context.
A definition of music is not only dependent on the content of the
music as discussed above, but on activities and processes. How much
does the concept of music depend on listening rather than performing or
writing? After all, as the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy has argued, sense,
including musical sense, is not based on signifying, but on listening
(Nancy, 2002/2007, p. 30). But as translators well know, and in particu-
lar those working in media accessibility, and as we shall discuss in Part II

(Sect. 5.1.2), listening can be meaningful across the senses and involves
much more than the ability to hear.
While some definitions of music acknowledge its ability to mean dif-
ferent things to various people in different cultures, and while ethnomu-
sicologists have been wary of identifying universal features of music, most
contemporary Western definitions of music still prefer to emphasise its
common cross-cultural features rather than its capacity for cultural speci-
ficity. This is anchored in a long Western tradition based on the notion of
music as a self-contained discipline, ruled by a universal perspective,
which was only shaken in the late twentieth century. Popular music then
started to be perceived as an artistic tool for discoveries across emotions
and cultures. Classical musicians were slower to embrace this view, but
gradually opened up the notion that music was born of a network of
relationships, thoughts and disciplines. Some studies stressing transcul-
turalism in music performance and composition are now starting to
appear (Spener, 2016; Susam-Saraeva, 2015; Taviano, 2013). However,
most studies still tend to focus on how ethnic identities find a global
language through music rather than on music performance and creative
outputs across different cultures. For instance, it is hip-hop’s ability to
communicate globally rather than its many cultural variations that is pri-
marily valued today. Moreover, most canonical works of reference regard-
ing popular/musical cultures and identity focus on national identities
(Edensor, 2002) or on global assimilation (Berger & Carroll 2003). Some
argue that, since the 1980s, ethnomusicologists have played a strong role
in shaking the listening and music-making habits of Western society
(Nettl, 1983/2005). Yet the discipline of ethnomusicology, which inves-
tigates music in its cultural contexts, still tends to be defined as ‘the study
of musical practices and knowledge, understood as process of sociocul-
tural differentiation and as forms of expression shared by humanity’
(Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie: présentation).4 In other words,
while music is considered for its dual capacity to be culture-specific and
universally meaningful, its ability for ‘transcultural mediation’ (Ehrhardt,
2008, p. 505) is still often ignored.
In spite of this reluctance, the technologies of the last hundred years,
both in music (with unprecedented possibilities to reproduce and trans-
64 L. Desblache
mit music globally and instantly) and more generally (with instant global
interactions defining human economies and cultures), have meant that
most contemporary exchanges imply transnational, interlinguistic, inter-
disciplinary and transcultural interactions. This is the case in music as in
other spheres. In a globally connected community, cultural isolation is
becoming rare and translation in all its forms plays a large role in break-
ing down walls:
Ever since Edward Said’s seminal literary study of the way in which cultures
represent, distort, or construct each other, his Orientalism (1978), histori-
ans and musicologists have become interested not only in the construction
of cultural boundaries but also more recently with points of interpenetra-
tion and mutual discovery. (Fulcher, 2011, p. 9)
3.1.2 Musical Texts
Evidently then, music has been conceptualised much more transnation-

ally since the closing decades of the twentieth century, even though mat-
ters regarding its translation and mediation were still largely neglected.
One of the reasons that this has been the case in music is that, unlike in
literature, in cinema and in the visual arts, there has not really been a
theory of musical texts. In popular music, the growing practice of cover
songs, encouraged by the music industry, meant that successful songs,
interpreted, remediated and remixed by different artists, has led to iden-
tifying a musical piece as a living, mutable object in progress. But until
the end of the twentieth century, music was largely theorised through
classical music. And there, a rift between creative artists and musicolo-
gists widened. While avant-garde creative musicians, in the wake of John
Cage, were increasingly critiquing the definition of a composition and
questioning the notions of musical structures and entities, musicologists
and classical performers remained largely conservative. As Ronald Broude
points out, most ‘ignored the “age of theory” that has transformed […]
textual scholarship in the last three decades, preferring philosophies and
procedures that were favored in the verbal disciplines thirty and forty
years ago’ (Broude, 2012, p. 7). This means that for a large proportion of
musicologists, especially those dealing with the editing and archiving of

musical scores, texts were considered as stable, finished products reflect-
ing a composer’s intentions and not to be re-interpreted.
Such attitudes had important consequences on what was considered a
musical text and on the translation of such texts. In their original intro-
ductory work to musicology, David Beard and Kenneth Gloag (2016)
introduce a number of key concepts important to the discipline in the
twenty-first century, many of which are relevant to translation, such as
authenticity, canon, cover versions and intertextuality. Yet interestingly,
the concept of musical text is not included in their volume. No major
contemporary work on musicology seems to give space to this notion,
which appears to be taken for granted. The nature of a text, however, is
crucial to the way this text evolves, travels and is disseminated. Thus,
texts that are consigned to scores are more likely to be preserved in their
original form than those transmitted orally. Or if they are transformed, it
is with very conscious and specific purposes in mind: to create a singable5
version of an opera, to make structural cuts in a piece in order to fit the
timing of a performance… An oral text that has been recorded also pro-
vides a point of reference, but its unique, performative meaning is also
recorded, unlike in a score, in which ways of recording interpretation are
limited to certain aspects of music such as notes, dynamics or tempi. For
instance, the opening of a live show by Jimi Hendrix with a cover of the
title song of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album
issued three days before, was undoubtedly a statement: a tribute to the
Liverpool band, but also an interpretation through which he transformed
and appropriated the song.6
Musical texts generally comprise musical elements, such as notes,
chords annotations, music transcription, and performed music and non-
musical elements (verbal and visual content as well as performative con-
tent linked to the way a piece is played, sung and/or produced). These
latter elements are crucial to pop music, opera, musical theatre, film
music and incidental music, but they can also play important roles in
instrumental music. Some performers of all musical genres, from David
Bowie to Nigel Kennedy, have been and are noted for their fashion state-
ments nearly as much as their music. But even discreet input can make an
impact. For example, Marin Alsop was the focus of much attention dur-
66 L. Desblache
ing the broadcast of The Last Night of the Proms 2013, since she was the
first woman to conduct this prestigious event. Even on radio, comments
on her gestures and her distinctive clothes—she frequently wears tailored
suits lined with red at the cuffs—were prominent. With regards to trans-
lation, the distinction between music that is explicitly tied to linguistic
expression (broadly, vocal music) and music which is not (instrumental
music) is important, since they will require different approaches to trans-
lation. As with all texts, different functions also drive musical writing and
performance: singing a song at a football match, a hymn for a church
service, or playing the piano for a ballet class will not only mean specific
genres, structures and content, but also different ways of composing, per-
forming and listening to music.
Overall, musical texts may be divided in four categories which can
apply to all music genres and styles. Categorising is always limitative, and
needs to be considered flexibly, but the five areas below, which can over-
lap, allow the inclusion of all texts relating to music:
• scores (primarily print music but also records of different notations of

music, be it vocal or instrumental, before or after print technology);
• writings on music (music biographies, music treaties, works of criti-
cism, documentaries, music journalism…);
• live human-made sound performances, with or without technology,
encompassing sound and/or visuals;
• live sounds from the human and non-human environment considered
as aesthetic sounds by humans;
• recordings of the two categories above, whether they are sound only or
include visuals.
These categories are not mutually exclusive. For instance, a live perfor-
mance may also be recorded, although not with the primary intention of
a recorded performance; a musical score may include an introduction
which belongs to the ‘writing on music’ section, while music treaties may
also include musical scores. Furthermore, this categorisation overlooks a
distinction that is essential in the context of translation: that between
instrumental and vocal music. As will be discussed in Part II, this distinc-
tion determines whether translation is understood in its common mean-
ing of primarily linguistic transfer; in a wider sense of ‘the direct or

indirect emulation of foreign styles or genres’ (Marc, 2015, p. 10); or in
an even more abstract dimension referring to the translation of time,
space or emotions. Even in the case of vocal music, the meaning of a song
will not be restricted to verbal language and may be translated into more
than one mode.
3.1.3 T
ransfers in a Musical Context: Translation,
Mediation, Adaptation and More
Searches for contemporary definitions of translation have been as inter-

esting and troublesome, if not more, as those for music. Susan Knutson
even refers to ‘the terminological chaos making its way through transla-
tion and adaptation studies’ (Knutson, 2013, p. 112). In the last hundred
years, expanding global networks, developments in technology, fast trans-
national communication and the development of social networks have
metamorphosed not only the expectations of translation, but its patterns
of production and delivery. The realities of internationalisation require
cultural products to be made available to a large, multilingual public
without redesigning them (Esselink, 2000, p. 25). Yet expectations of
localisation imply domesticating contents so that target audiences are not
only familiar with them but can shape them. In the last twenty years,
video game companies, for instance, have aimed to strike a balance
between producing global products and localising them to appeal to play-
ers from different countries and cultures. They have been keen to listen to
the feedback from these players. Whether in business-related, institu-
tional, scientific or artistic areas, translation is no longer limited to printed
words but to a wide variety of texts and contexts which can range from
string files (files with a specific code type intended for computer pro-
grammes) to cultural products such as videos, from live events to recorded
sessions. Its nature largely depends not only on the type of texts that are
dealt with and on the intended audience or target context, but on the
type of transfer and transaction that is intended. To most people though,
translation involves some linguistic transfer, even if it also involves cul-
tural transformation, political mediation or other content transposi-
tion—from one genre into another for instance.
68 L. Desblache
As for music, as was mentioned earlier, a definition of translation is

generally dependent on an adjective which accompanies it. It determines
which area or category it refers to, and whether it is considered as subject
field, product or process: postcolonial translation, technical translation or
intersemiotic translation for instance. The ‘mother’ concept of translation
as umbrella term tends to be conceptualised metaphorically as the image
of a mutant world, or ‘as an aid to creativity’ (Boase-Beier, 2007,
pp. 47–56), a vague but useful notion in the context of music, which
requires both movement and inventiveness.
Some common features are nevertheless considered key to translation.
The traditional three-fold model based on an original text, a process of
transfer between a messenger and a receiver, and a target product is wide
enough to include the three verbal and non-verbal categories established
by Roman Jakobson (1951) as interlingual, intralingual and intersemi-
otic translation. However, such forms of translation are loosely based on
notions of linguistic, cultural and/or narrative equivalence between two
or more texts, even if this notion of equivalence has had less importance
in late twentieth and twenty-first century-models of translation (Pym,
2014). Such forms are not always suitable in the context of music, where
transforming texts can require broader views and take place beyond
words. In music, although borrowing from an initial text and transform-
ing it with some reference to this text is crucial to transfer processes, there
is often no intention of equivalence taking place, except in the context of
lyrics translation which involves intralingual and interlingual translation.
As Frederic Chaume (2018) has shown, audiovisual translation, of
which music translation is part, uses several concepts to refer to the pro-
cesses and products of translation. The most recurrent are localisation,
adaptation, transadaptation, mediation and transcreation. While adapta-
tion and transadaptation denote most types of transfers across cultures
and media that are not strongly tied to faithfulness to an original text,
localisation and transcreation are normally used in a specific context,
referring respectively to the adaptation of media and software products
for target users, and to the meaningful transfer of consumer-oriented
texts to different local audiences. Mediation is primarily understood in a
very specific context outside the audiovisual sphere: cultural mediation is
now a profession aiming to familiarise people with no knowledge of a
culture with this culture, while legal mediation aims to resolve disputes
between two parties. Yet in media translation, mediation refers much
more broadly to the act of conveying a message, producing it and trans-
mitting it through a creative process by means of media. We can therefore
talk about a mediated culture, a culture whose meanings are transformed
through media. In this book, the terms of transcreation and mediation
have often been chosen as the most relevant terms to refer to creative
forms of transfer in musical texts that are based on the transformation of
existing elements but do not depend on words, or at least not exclusively,
and do not require strict equivalence with an original text.
Notions which relate to translation, can also refer to specific scopes
and practices. Adaptation, for instance, can be understood as a transla-
tion strategy (Vinay & Darbelnet, 1995, p. 39) or as transfer across a
range of different media, from literature to film for instance. In audiovi-
sual translation studies and adaptation studies, several definitional essays
have compared and contrasted some of these related notions, in particu-
lar those of translation and adaptation (Gambier, 1992; Perteghella,
2008; Raw, 2013) in an attempt to enlarge the notion of translation, and
make it relevant to contemporary professional contexts. Quoting Susan
Bassnett, who defines translation as ‘an act of both intercultural and
intertemporal communication’ (Bassnett, 2002, p. 9), Linda Hutcheon
states that translation in this sense can come close to defining adaptation,
which she considers to be ‘an extended, deliberate, announced revisita-
tion of a particular work of art’ (Hutcheon, 2006, p. 170).
In his seminal work on The aesthetics of music, Roger Scruton (1997)
discusses how key aspects of human experience such as space, time and
agency take different meanings in music and in the ‘real’ world. This is
the case for translation too. Terms such as canon, hermeneutics, hybrid-
ity, interpretation and reception, which translation studies scholars see as
fundamental to translation, are also essential building blocks of music,
although they may be interpreted differently.
Fewer generic umbrella terms relating to translation are used in the
context of music. For instance, adaptation, appropriation—‘where any
link between source and target text is voluntarily eluded’ (Vandal-Sirois
& Bastin, 2012, p. 32)—and transformation, all essential to music, are
not included in Beard & Gloag’s Musicology: the key concepts. Others,
70 L. Desblache
more specific, such as ‘cover version’, are introduced, but they relate to
particular musical styles (popular music) and genres (vocal music). One
concept key to both disciplines, and controversial in both, is that of
authenticity. Unsurprisingly, it is interpreted quite differently by each. In
music, it relates primarily to the faithful recording of an original text, an
Urtext, a ‘historicising edition […] that reproduces as closely as available
evidence permits a text that existed at some specific moment in the past,
often the moment at which the composer decided his composition was
finished and laid down his pen’ (Broude, 2012, p. 1). Yet musical authen-
ticity also, and perhaps even more frequently, relates to performance: to
historically informed ways of using and playing instruments in early
music for instance; to the genuineness of emotional expression, particu-
larly for singer-songwriters; to the successful connection of performers
with an audience in pop music; to effective ways of mediating ethnic or
local identity; to a historically respected interpretation of a piece, or to
the attainment of an ideal; and to an audience’s expectations of how a
piece should be played. More deviously, and often linked to the features
above, authenticity can refer to the deliberate moulding of what genuine-
ness is, for ideological or economic reasons.
Authenticity in music may of course also be understood with no com-
mercial intent. Yet editors, performers and listeners all know that being
true to the intentions of the composers and to the original conditions of
performance is only possible to a degree, and is not always desirable. And
where does authenticity in composition start and end? Does the inclusion
of a large number of Russian folk songs in Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka
make it less authentic because of the inclusion of existing songs? Or does
the mix of these into a single work act as a proof of authenticity? Does the
presence of a French folk song7 make the piece less authentically Russian?
Is the first edition of this ballet, composed for a larger orchestra, more
authentic than the now more popular 1947 version? The answer to these
questions is no of course. Moreover, the immaterial nature of music in
performance means that there is no such thing as an original, finished
musical product, as discussed in Sect. 3.2.2. Musical authenticity is there-
fore blatantly relative: every listener of Mozart pieces played on period
instruments knows that no performance can be ‘authentic’ if it takes
place in the twenty-first century. It is an intention, but is accepted as
unattainable, illusory, perhaps even as false by most. For instance, audi-

ences going to performances at the Globe Theatre in London thus assent
that it is a replica sixteenth century theatre.
Traditionally, translation has been primarily shaped by the notion of
faithfulness to an author and an original text. It has been driven by the
need to provide another version of this original which offers an equiva-
lent message, to be understood by a reader in another language.
Authenticity either keeps the translator tied to the original text, or, as we
shall see in the next Sect. 3.1.4, emerges from what cannot or will not be
translated. Even in the contemporary context of media, adaptation can
be considered as derivative, as Cynthia Tsui notes (2012, p. 55). The orig-
inal text and author can still be seen exactly as that, ‘original’, and cast
their shadow over the translator whose work is perceived to be imitative
and mechanical. One of the liberating features of popular music is that
each piece, be it a new composition or a new interpretation of a ‘start text’
(Pym, 2014, p. 1), is an original piece. Isabelle Marc thus notes, with
respect to cover songs, that ‘the primary text, here the song and the musi-
cal style, does have a diachronic primacy, but not an ontological one’
(Marc, 2015, p. 12). In other words, the fact that an original song pre-
cedes a cover does not make it a better song. As translation studies schol-
ars expand their fields of investigation beyond intra/interlinguistic
translation and into multi-modal texts, their approach to translation also
widens regarding strategies and methods, processes, products, skopoi and
target audiences. The fluidity of translation as a notion is particularly
necessary in relation to music, and relates to two notions which differ but
do not conflict with each other: transfer, which allows existing content to
move; and transformation, which brings forth linguistic, cultural, senso-
rial, aesthetic and/or social changes. These notions of transfer and trans-
formation will re-emerge in Chap. 9, which considers translation in the
emergent area of interspecies communication.
3.1.4 Cultural Translation and (Un)Translatability
The theoretical frameworks explored by translation studies scholars have

recently widened with respect to both this global context and the disci-
72 L. Desblache
plines with which translation interacts. A popular lay approach to trans-

lation views it as the transfer process between two codes, embodied in
source and target texts, and/or the final transferred product following this
process. However, these reassuringly stable entities have proved to be
uncertain throughout human history: a source text may not have been an
original text but a translation itself; it may have been a temporary docu-
ment, waiting to be updated; or an incomplete document, damaged, for
instance, and needing to be reconstructed to the best of the translator’s
ability. Similarly, target texts can prove elusive: for instance, how can a
local dialect be translated? According to which criteria? If an image of
resistance to a main culture, such as Breton in France, is attached to the
dialect, should comments be made on its ideological meaning? Should an
attempt be made to use another dialect? Translation studies literature
constantly discusses such issues (see for instance Bermann & Wood,
2005; Tymoczko, 2010, 2014).
Equally, the expansion of audiovisual translation studies has implied
wider use of theories of intersemioticity and multimodality (Aguiar &
Queiroz, 2009; Gambier, 2006; Gorlée, 1994, 1997, 2005; O’Sullivan &
Jeffcote, 2013; Pérez-González, 2014a, 2014b; Remael, 2001; Ventola,
Cassily, & Kaltenbacher, 2004). In spite of interest in considering multi-
modality in relation to translation, music, which permeates most audio-
visual products of the twenty-first century, is often ignored in transfer
considerations, to the profit of visual components. The authors cited
above, all established in the field of audiovisual translation, for instance,
make little or no mention of music. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, the
field of translation studies is still broadly split in two: those who see trans-
lation as a process of transfer leading to a product which is meaningful in
another language or culture; and those who want to broaden the notion
of translation as aesthetic or socio-political processes or strategies of
exchange which do not necessarily start and end with a product. Homi
Bhabha’s (1994/2004) specific concept of cultural translation is thus pri-
marily associated with that of marginalised people’s resistance as a form
of translation practice. By contrast with a practice-based perspective of
translation, for which everything can be translated in some way, this
approach relies on a conscious and partial untranslatability, a necessary
stronghold against dominant practices and ideologies in order to build a
counter-culture. Some level of untranslatability is vital to any art form of

course. The French Martinican writer Patrick Chamoiseau, following
Glissant, called it ‘opacity’, a notion discussed in Chap. 1 which, in trans-
lation terms, relates to the concept of untranslatability used in translation
studies as resistance to universalisation and aggressive globalisation
(Apter, 2013).
In music, this irreducible dimension is particularly essential: compre-
hension is meant to happen beyond and outside the world of logic. Yet in
considering (un)translatability, it is important no longer to conceive
translation merely as ‘a rhetorical form aimed at accessing some unified
original essence’ (Gentzler, 2008, p. 183). Seen in this way, cultural trans-
lation is strongly dependent on translatability. Wolfgang Iser, for instance,
one of the first scholars to bring forth the importance of reception in the
construction of meaning, establishes translatability as a key-concept for
encounters between cultures and their interactions. For Iser, ‘translatability
implies translation of otherness without subsuming it under precon-
ceived notions’ (1994, p. 5). Pre-empting ideas expressed by Kraidy and
Bielsa in relation to global contexts (see Chap. 2), Iser sees translatability
as a practice allowing a focus on the space between cultures and charac-
terised by ‘recursive looping’ (ibid., p. 11), to-ing and fro-ing between
the known and the unknown, the familiar and the foreign. Such a model,
which uses translation as a tool to read, explore and understand the world
diversely, has not been considered in musical contexts. Yet it is useful in
considering the musical mutations, variations, interpretations or transla-
tions of different modes of expression, different languages, semantic,
pragmatic or aesthetic, and favours different representations of meaning.
In the twenty-first century, this notion of translatability has permeated
several fields. As Emily Apter (2006, p. 227) points out, everything is
increasingly perceived as translatable, and this very translatability has
become a shared value. Although in some respects, this gives translation
a universal meaning in contemporary contexts, it no longer situates it as
a separate concept, but rather, positions it in relation to other areas.
Although they have not named it as a translation process, some music
scholars have articulated this dichotomy between the foreign/unknown
and the familiar/known. One of those scholars is Regev (2013), who
discusses the processes of transfer that led to the standardisation of popu-
74 L. Desblache
lar music. Yet analysing how networks were formed to produce new dis-
courses and vocabularies of music, he uses Bruno Latour’s actor-network
theory (Latour, 2005). Considering the influences, interconnectivities
and interactions of ‘pop-rock’ music, Regev describes without naming it
as such the intercultural process of translation that leads to a reconfigura-
tion of world culture. The dissemination of an ‘isomorphic’—to use
Regev’s terminology—language of popular music can be compared to the
permeation of musical notation in medieval Europe. It allows music to
travel and to be mediated across styles, genres, as well as geographical,
linguistic and cultural borders. Desires to both find a common language
in a world of Convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006/2008) and to escape
from it, are fulfilled through the use of common aspects of musical lan-
guage (structure and beat for instance) and recognisable local or ethnic
components (specific modal input, dance rhythms, instruments…). Of
course, a common musical language can be both the bearer of promise for
local and specific expression as well as the perils of music cloned and
stripped of creativity. Vocabularies, be they musical or not, need to be
driven by inventiveness. Isabelle Marc (2015, p. 9), in her discussion of
cover songs across borders and languages, is optimistic that the dangers of
cultural isomorphism can be avoided ‘because target audiences and
scenes, consciously or not, play an essential role in their reception and
appropriation, resignifying them into their own target contexts’. This is
largely true. The act of consuming is often a very creative process, more
akin to construction, shaping and collage than to imitation. How con-
sumers read, shop, deal with their employers, and play, may be less mate-
rialistic than critics such as Schwarz (1992) and Bellei (1998) imagine, as
Gentzler has argued (2008, p. 106). Yet in all artistic forms, a commercial
drive to maximise audiences can lead to mediocre results with a tendency
to replicate rather than create. From copyright-free music for background
use to uninspired cover songs by pop stars, examples are many.
A superb example of how translation drove artistic creativity and was
strongly expressed musically is the Tropicalismo movement which opposed
Brazil’s military dictatorship in the late 1960s. It emerged after Brazilian
musicians, including Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, who became
iconic figures of the movement, produced a concept album entitled
Tropicália (1968). Their aim was to create new meanings, often from
existing or hybridised texts, with the help of musical genres strongly asso-
ciated with Brazilian identity. Inspired by the cannibalistic movement of
Oswald de Andrade (1928) and the interpretation that Haroldo and
Augusto de Campos (1986) and Gentzler (2008, pp. 77–107) gave of it
in the context of translation, these artists subverted Western references
meaningfully into Brazilian, while giving the songs a global resonance.
The Brazilian cannibalistic movement aimed at deliberately ‘devouring’
existing texts and ideas, particularly canonical ones belonging to domi-
nant cultures, in order to produce creations meaningful to both members
of hegemonic and marginalised societies. These acts of ‘consumption’ of
existing cultural products and their opposition to ‘universal’ Western
ideas can be compared to the strategy of untranslatability as an act of
resistance discussed earlier. However, the aim of these cannibalistic artists
was primarily to select ‘the best of another culture, adapting and consum-
ing it, and then making it one’s own […] through a process of
transculturalization’ (Gentzler, 2008, p. 106). This is a brave and creative
process of translation if ever there was one. Caetano Veloso and Gilberto
Gil’s ironic criticism of the establishment and of the military power in
place by way of imaginative mimicry and adaptations reached ordinary
Brazilian audiences—they ran a weekly show on national television—
and, eventually, a worldwide public. There was a price to this success. It
led to their imprisonment, house arrest and exile to Britain until 1972,
but no one ever stated that translation was a safe activity.
The song opening the album, Miserere Nóbis, sung by Gilberto Gil
(Lyrics by Gilberto Gil and José Carlos Capinam) is a good example of
cultural translation at a broad range of levels. The album sleeve is unmis-
takably an allusion to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
issued a year earlier, as is the psychedelic samba that follows the opening
bars. The song opens with a few chords of organ evoking church music.
This short introduction is interrupted by the sound of a bicycle bell lead-
ing to the chorus, part Latin invocation (Miserere nobis, ora pro nobis),
part Brazilian complaint (this is how it will always be). It may be a cri-
tique of the Brazilian Catholic church’s complicity with the military
regime, although Christopher Dunn (2001, pp. 113, 114) remarks that
the Church also counted opposition leaders to the military regime in its
midst. The use of ‘we’ and ‘us’ recurs as a cohesive device throughout the
76 L. Desblache
song referring, in turn, to the oppressed and the poor, to the well-off who
are complicit in injustice and violence in Brazil, and perhaps to all listen-
ers. The repetitive chorus-verse structure accentuates the theme of fatality
which is associated with Brazil through the samba rhythm, musical
expression of Brazilian identity and historical reminder of its associations
with slavery. The song ends with a short coda spelling the words ‘Brazil’,
‘rifle’ and ‘cannon’ (they rhyme partially in Brazilian), which have to be
decoded by the listener letter by letter. A strategy for defying censor-
ship perhaps.8
Most Tropicália songs are built on such interactive symbolism, which
plays with established references, thus promoting Brazilian identity
construction in a global, transnational context. Their performers, com-
posers and poets sang the need to rethink the culturally fragmented, eco-
nomically fragile and politically censored Brazil to the world. Doing so,
they brought to life the practice of a two-way translation strategy which
is implemented with both global and local audiences in mind, and
ensured the creation of texts that do not have fixed ‘universal’ meanings
but whose meanings are constructed by audiences.
In many respects, the cannibalistic translation approach used by
Tropicália musicians is what all musicians aspire to: to transcreate a text
in ways that give a new life to the chosen original, and is given new mean-
ings by different audiences. Gentzler (2008, p. 90) notes that Haroldo de
Campos seems to have invented the term transcreation in 1981. While,
as we may recall, in the twenty-first century, it is primarily used in the
translation industry to refer to the extreme domestication and adaptation
of existing advertising and marketing products, de Campos related it to
poetry, to acknowledge that creation cannot take place without translation.
At a time when reproduction technologies have revolutionised musical
practices and invention, musical content is less dependent on exact repro-
duction or description than other forms of art. These technologies allow
points of reference from which to (trans)create. Even the most innovative
composers acknowledge the fact that to compose is to transcreate existing
work, as the quote from Benjamin Britten below testifies:
I can only work because of the tradition I am conscious of behind me. […]
I am given strength by this tradition. […M]any people have pointed out
the similarities between the Verdi Requiem and bits of my own War
Requiem, and they may be there. If I have not absorbed that, that’s too bad.
But that’s because I’m not a good enough composer, it’s not because I’m
wrong. (Britten in Palmer, 1984, pp. 95–96)
Most performing musicians take a similar view and consider that a con-
cert is a creative interpretation which cannot be reproduced. Pianist
Hélène Grimaud (2006), for instance, states in many of her interviews
and in her autobiography, Wild harmonies that it lies Somewhere in an
unfinished sphere.9
In a broader cultural and scientific context, translation is only freeing
itself of perceptions based on hierarchical relationships between valued
originals and their inferior translations in the twenty-first century. The
metaphors of betrayal (traduttore, traditore, belles infidèles) which are asso-
ciated with it, at core of how it has been perceived for centuries, men-
tioned at the beginning of Chap. 2, illustrate this point. By contrast,
music is driven by various forms of transfer and translation and has always
been. These multiple forms of transfer happen at many levels and take
many guises as we shall discuss in Part II. Today more than ever, music
conjures ideas of creative hybridity driven by its relevance to audiences. It
is determined by a view of translation as an agent of change which strives
to mediate human commonalities (translating emotions beyond any
social or cultural divide for instance) and unique forms of expressions,
socially, ethnically, culturally or individually. Translation is the essential
instrument of expression of what Patrick Chamoiseau calls the ‘diversal’
(1997, p. 315), the multiple web of differences and relationships which
constitute human experience. This portmanteau neologism is particularly
relevant to music, which, for some, uses a partially universal language,
but is essentially culture-specific in the multiple ways in which it evokes
identity and marginal belongings. This is why the translation of music
includes all approaches, ranging from the most covert translations, which
universalise the original text musically (and linguistically when relevant)
to the most overt ones, which provide lyrics or information relating to a
performance for instance, but leave musicians and audiences to decipher
the original composition on their own terms. By shaping its practices and
products to the social habitus of its listeners and thanks to its capacity to
78 L. Desblache
travel across borders and barriers, music is (trans)created in the ‘spaces in

between’ identified by Iser (1994): between creators and audiences,
between musical genres and styles, between cultures and languages. More
than in any other art form, music transformations and translations allow
the construction of the evolving and diverse cultures that enrich
human lives.
3.2 M
usic Translation: Perception
and Reception
3.2.1 Music Makers’ Views on Music Translation
In 2013, as part of a project on music and translation (Translating

Music10), music and translation scholars, translation professionals and
musicians were asked what it meant to them to translate music. For most,
translating music is about transferring a musical message which also con-
tains a linguistic text, in verse or prose, or a text about music. In the
context of classical music in particular, translation is an essential tool
available to bring a song ‘from there and then to here and now’, to use the
expression of musicologist Katy Hamilton (2013, 18’40”). This involves
providing the translation of lyrics, if they are in a language unknown to
an audience, either as print, or as a singable translation. In classical music,
this movement ‘from there and then’ can be a barrier which prevents
access to it, and one of the more obvious challenges is that the texts are
not only sung in foreign languages but also that they are not contempo-
rary. In the context of art songs, the choice of singing in translation or in
an original language lies with the performers, who tend to follow social
trends and expectations in this respect. For instance, before the First
World War in Britain, lieder tended to be performed in German, but
during the war, lieder singing in German was prohibited, and this led to
many English translations of songs for performance and to new musical
habits (Tunbridge, 2018).
Classical musicians and singers generally have very definite views on
this issue. Although most agree that the provision of some form of
translation for music which has words is desirable, they are divided on
whether it is acceptable to sing in translation. Their main objection is a

musical one, as singing in translation changes the prosody, the nature of
the linguistic text. Argentinian opera singer Virginia Tola thus explains
that her work demands multilingualism, as she not only sings in several
languages, but also communicates with musicians from all over the world,
from conductors to répétiteurs. She also emphasises that for a singer,
linguistic expression is part of the musical language in a composition, and
should be treated as such. The words have extra layers of significance,
beyond their purely linguistic meaning in vocal music. They are also
musical. She concedes that in some countries, audiences’ expectations
and traditions mean that opera and musical theatre are sung in transla-
tion, but believes that such a practice takes place at the expense of musical
language and overall musical meaning. She does not think it an effective
strategy to popularise opera, especially in an era where surtitles can pro-
vide audiences with the meaning of the libretto (Tola, 2013). Jane
Manning, an English singer who has specialised in contemporary music
since the 1960s, tends to prove Tola right. Manning is more nuanced in
her answers regarding words in vocal music. Although she is in no doubt
that the music must be served first, she believes that if singable transla-
tions can contribute to making performances accessible, they should
exist, in spite of the inevitable loss that they entail:
I don’t think that [languages that have parlando rhythm such as Czech]
work in translation as well. You have to be a mighty good translator to get
the right word on a similar word with the similar properties on the same
note as in the original. That, I think is the major difficulty with not singing
in the original language although, of course, there is the question of acces-
sibility. But you lose quite a lot if you lose the character and the special
colours, timbres and rhythms of the language. (Manning, 2013,
2’44”–3’16”)
For Manning, the performer is driven by the responsibility to make music

meaningful from the score to the composer and to the audience, and this
includes communicating words if they exist in the piece. Her preference
generally lies with performing in the original language(s) which is more
meaningful, especially if a translation of the words is available to accom-
80 L. Desblache
pany the performance. In other words, for a large number of singers,

translation is welcome if it does not compromise the intended overall
musical meaning of the piece.
This goes against what Lawrence Venuti (1995/2002) and other trans-
lation scholars such as Peter France (2005, p. 259) have identified as ‘the
dominant rhetoric of translation in Britain, France, and many other cul-
tures […, which] has been to give the illusion of listening to the voice of
the author as he or she would have spoken had they been born in our
time and place’. And it explains why opera, operetta and musical theatre
performed in translation tend to be adapted away from the source culture
not just linguistically, but more generally. It has been part of an effort
made to bring new audiences to opera and make it relevant to them. For
instance, it is no coincidence that Jonathan Miller’s iconic production of
Verdi’s Rigoletto for the English National Opera in 1982 was set in 1950s
New York rather than in sixteenth century Mantua.
Another example is the 1985 free translation into English of Ludovic
Halévy and Hector-Jonathan Crémieux’s libretto of Jacques Offenbach’s
Orphée aux Enfers. Snoo Wilson, with the collaboration of David
Pountney, transferred Orpheus’s story and its original Franco-Greek par-
ody to 1980s Britain. The original score’s musical intertextuality which
was evident to nineteenth century Paris audiences—such as ironic allu-
sions to Gluck in the now famous cancan dance for example—may have
been lost in the Pountney revival, but the spirit of parody is reinforced
with a political translation of the libretto. Gerald Scarfe’s satirical sets
were also transparently sarcastic to the British public of the time. Most
notably, the production portrayed the character of the Public Opinion as
the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. These are extreme instances
of domestication, akin to appropriation. These approaches to domestica-
tion differ from those used in mainstream cinema, when US film remakes
often deliberately reduce the original input of cultural references as they
are created with the intention of global outreach (see Bray, 2010). These
musical productions wish to make a piece relevant to another specific
culture, in this case, 1980s Britain, rather than reach the world.
Yet translating words into the native tongue of the audience does not
always mean appropriation. Translation in music is often used by
composers to give visibility to a marginalised culture. Karol Szymanowski
thus chose an existing Polish translation of the traditional thirteenth cen-

tury Latin Stabat Mater in order to go from ‘there and then to here and
now’. Replacing Latin with Polish in the liturgy, he moved the latter from
cultural periphery to the centre. This Polish text also contributed to
achieving the direct emotional effect that made this sacred piece one of
the most striking of the Polish twentieth century repertoire.
Not all music makers limit their understanding of the translation of
music to lyrics of course, particularly if they deal with instrumental
music. For instance, composer and jazz pianist Meredith White (2013,
0’30”–1’30”, 4’19”–5’30”) discusses how she transcreates music inspired
by 1970s pop songs, removing original words of songs and mediating
pop style into jazz. She explains that her relationship to ‘start’ and target
texts is unconventional as she considers that she translates from what she
calls a target into a source text. As a New Zealander, she feels that jazz is
more of a target than a source text, while the source material are the New
Zealand pop songs of the 1970s that she grew up with. Her mixed musi-
cal background also makes her compositions naturally hybrid: a classical
musician with an interest in pop music composition and jazz improvisa-
tion, she can only create across times and styles. She sees translation as
inherent in her work on three levels: first, translation is fundamental to
the notion of groove, the rhythmic framework from which jazz pieces
evolve; second, she enjoys playing with intertextual references which peo-
ple will perceive across generations. This is why she chooses to work from
pop songs whose titles and melodies are well known—such as her instru-
mental trio based on Cole Porter’s ‘It’s alright with me’, immortalised by
Ella Fitzgerald—which she hopes her listeners will recognise. Finally,
since she is a classically trained musician who came to jazz later in life,
there is an element of her compositions and improvisations that will
always remain a translation into the jazz idiom, because it is not her
‘native’ musical language. Beyond and across these three strands, transla-
tion for her is a form of transgressive and liberated intertextuality, a cul-
tural interaction that the stylistic, melodic, rhythmic and textural
languages of music allow. In cases like these, which involve no words, or
just the faint memory of words, as the titles of some songs are alluded to
through fragments of an original melody, rhythms and musical mood,
equivalence between texts is not only impossible, it is not desirable.
82 L. Desblache
Translation is a language in itself, a form of transgression, and an open

door to musical imagination and creation.
3.2.2 Music Reception and Translation
In the twenty-first century, artistic production is increasingly driven by

audiences’ responses. While public broadcasters and artistic institutions
encourage participatory cultures, global companies have ways to influ-
ence this response, as was discussed in Sect. 3.2.2. While they focus on
promoting the musical products which they control, commercially they
are also open to unexpected positive responses which drive new interests
and sales. Nevertheless, the twenty-first century digital revolutions are
driven not only by emerging technologies, from artificial intelligence to
nanotechnology, but also by faster and more efficient interactions between
the many agents who make it happen: composers, arrangers, DJs, sound
engineers, video editors, performers, listeners and viewers, distribution
companies, promoters, media platforms or live venue organisers…
Audiences have become ‘prosumers’ (Jenkins, 2006/2008; Toffler,
1980) and nowhere is this more evident than in music. They do not only
shape music to be viewed and heard, but determine how it travels, if and
how it is adapted and, as far as lyrics are concerned, translated. A good
example of this process is the case of stage musicals. Musicals appeared
with the twentieth century in the United States. Descendants of European
operettas, they incorporated non classical musical styles such as jazz, were
popularised through film and remained a primarily Anglo-Saxon genre
throughout the century. Their capacity to prioritise a good story and to
incorporate new musical styles and dancing allowed them to become
popular on the world’s stages and to take over older genres such as oper-
etta and zarzuela. They pre-empted the twenty-first century surge in
interest of the public in live events, and as Mateo (2014, 2016) has
shown, they were introduced in Europe sung in the language of the per-
forming country, subsuming old genres such as zarzuelas in Spain and
operettas in France. In Spain, the spectacular success of Man of La Mancha
in 1997 in the Teatro Lope de Vega in Madrid confirmed a trend for the
production of musicals sung in translation. A wave of musicals in transla-
tion starts with shows such as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, which was
performed in German (1985 at the Operettenhaus, Hamburg), French
(1989 at the Théâtre de Paris), in Spanish (1991 Teatro Silvia Pivia,
Mexico; 2003, Teatro Coliseum, Madrid). Curiously, this trend for sing-
able translations happens at a time when opera largely abandons it to
adopt surtitling, a sign of the rift between high and popular musi-
cal cultures.
Audiences of the twenty-first century have largely been brought up
with dubbed media, to perfectly localised feature films, shorts and anima-
tion productions that adapted seamlessly to various target audiences.
They expect similar smoothness from sung as well as well as spoken film
materials. Large corporations such as Disney and Pixar make it their busi-
ness to provide this if the demand for commercially viable products is
there. The two main traditions of media translation in Europe, subtitling
in Scandinavia and smaller countries, such as Greece or Portugal, and
dubbing in larger countries, such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain,
are still visible. But increasingly, mainstream media products tend to be
dubbed, and even streaming media companies such as Netflix switched
to dubbing, which most audiences seem to prefer. A study on attitudes to
subtitling in Finland (Tuominen, 2013), a country which prioritises sub-
titling over dubbing in media translation, showed that viewers could
handle subtitles because they had a long habit of viewing programmes
with them, and that they liked hearing the source text, primarily English
when viewing these programmes. However, the study also states ‘that the
audience’s view of subtitles is negative and dismissive’. This makes subti-
tles seem like a necessary evil which is not trusted to be an accurate reflec-
tion of the programme’s contents.
A large survey commissioned by the European commission of a popu-
lation of nearly 5000 students, the majority of whom were studying lan-
guages, concluded that, following their studies, 56% of students preferred
to watch a film in a language they didn’t know with subtitling against
44% who preferred dubbing (Media Consulting Group, 2011, p. 19).
Since the majority of students in this survey were Modern Languages
students, a positive bias towards subtitles can be expected in this study.
By contrast, the commercial world always dubs successful films, regardless
of the country’s audiovisual traditions, as the general public tends to pre-
84 L. Desblache
fer dubbing as a mode of translation. In music, more so than in any other

form of audiovisual product, commercial success dictates not only the
mode of translation, but also whether the product is translated at all.
The case of the Broadway musical Newsies (Menken & Feldman,
2012/2015) is a good illustration of how music is shaped by fans, and
how this involves translation. The musical, inspired by a 1992 film, is set
in New York, which is central to the original story as its plot is based on
the newsboys’ strike of 1899. The film, in turn, was inspired by David
Nasaw’s historical account of the events, Children of the city. At work and
at play (1985).The New York-centred action would not a priori attract
adaptations into other languages in view of its culture-specific topic. Yet
in the context of economic difficulties met by young people worldwide in
the early twenty-first century, the theme of corporate greed fought against
by vulnerable young people found an enthusiastic global audience.
Newsies became the most requested title of any Disney film musical not
yet adapted to the stage with the global theatrical licensing agency MTI.
Acting on the evidence of this interest, Disney adapted it for the stage: a
pilot production opened at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millbrun New
Jersey, in September 2011 and a Broadway show followed in 2012 which
became the recipient of 23 major theatrical nominations (MTI, 2016).
For Ken Cerniglia (2015), Dramaturg and Literary Manager for the
Disney Theatrical Group, in the twenty-first century, decisions regarding
global stage adaptation are largely made by audiences. Companies such as
Disney are very attentive to fan communities. They analyse their interest
and engagement with musical/theatrical products in depth, quantita-
tively and qualitatively, on social networks and video-sharing websites. In
this case, Fansies, as fans of Newsies were called, drove a new production,
internationally. Following the American success of the stage musical, and
in the wake of a renewed interest in the genre and in live events world-
wide, the show was adapted beyond English-speaking countries. In some
cases, such as for the Italian version, the adaptation was unusually target-
culture oriented for a Disney production, particularly in view of a show
that was so historically based in New York.
Global contemporary music is not only shaped by audiences’ musical
tastes and consumption habits. It is also translated by them through
social networks, as we shall discuss in Part II. In popular music, fan com-
munities and individuals play a large role in providing lyrics in transla-

tion. In fact, from Musixmatch to Lyrics Translate, online multilingual
sites hosting volunteers’ translations are increasingly the only option to
find lyrics in translation. Yet as Luis Pérez González and Şebnem Susam-
Saraeva in an edited volume (2012), and Şebnem Susam-Saraeva (2015,
pp. 133–156) in her book on transcultural intimacy have emphasised,
this provision fulfils many roles beyond its obvious informative one. Fan
translators do not just produce texts, they intervene in them (producing
transliterations for instance, adding notes and interpretive comments)
and interact with other members taking part in forums, thus building
communities of musical, cultural or political affinities. To some extent,
they also change perceptions and practices of translation, stretch its
boundaries, explore diverse strategies of transfer, establish it as part of a
continuing process of searching meanings that may be different accord-
ing to context, defying censorship at times, and engage fully in the pro-
cess of discovering and sharing these meanings across cultures and
languages.
In the case of lyrics and vocal music, where translation might play a
particularly important role, little research exists on audiences’ prefer-
ences. Some studies suggest that in pop music, teenagers pay little atten-
tion to lyrics (Prinsky & Rosenbaum, 1987) and that in any case, it is
difficult to untangle the listeners’ priorities. For Mark Pedelty and Linda
Keefe (2010, p. 2),
[m]eaning is hard to pin down in song, even when focusing on lyrics.

People react as much or more to the ‘feel’ of a given song as to the manifest
meanings of the words. […] Lyrical meaning is intimately linked to, and
conditioned by, semiotic cues in the music and performance, such as vocal
inflection, rhythm, and musical tone.
Even when focusing on lyrics in their native tongue, listeners experience

difficulties in understanding them, as recent studies show (Lachno,
2014). As every music listener knows, understanding lyrics in a foreign
language is challenging. The translation of libretti has generally been pro-
vided in opera since its creation, and has been made accessible to all
members of its audience through surtitling since the 1980s. As men-
86 L. Desblache
tioned above, most of the reception studies that have been carried out on
translation in music involving lyrics have been undertaken by opera com-
panies, keen to ensure that introducing surtitling, initially controversial
with producers and even conductors, pleased audiences. These surveys,
conducted for marketing purposes, were rarely published, but confirmed
that the public was overwhelmingly positive regarding surtitles. In 2005,
the English National Opera, which performs every show in English, in a
very large theatre with challenging acoustics, conducted an audience sur-
vey to assess the comprehensibility of words and attitudes towards surti-
tling in English for shows sung in English. They found that since only a
quarter of the public could distinguish the words that were being sung, it
was justified to surtitle all performances, even those based on an original
libretto in English (Phillips, 2016).
I conducted a small survey in London in 2006 with a range of people
from keen opera goers to very occasional ones (Desblache, 2007). Among
the 45 people who responded, only three participants were not in favour
of surtitles for operatic shows, and one of these three was inconsistent in
her answers given. Surprisingly, very few reception studies exist in this
area. The few that exist (Lindenberger, 2010, pp. 219–262; Montemorra
Marvin, 2013; O’Neill & Edelman, 2016) stay within the area of classical
music and do not have the subject of translation and comprehension at
the centre of their research. Since cultural products are increasingly linked
to audience requests, it can be assumed that music lovers, or popular
music lovers at least, do not have the comprehension of lyrics high on
their agenda. In most musical events other than opera, particularly in live
music events, no provision is made at all. This was confirmed by a survey
made by the author in 2016 with respect to live music which is
detailed below.
Recorded music is still currently the primary source of musical con-
sumption, although streamed music is set to overtake it, but live music
attendance has increased worldwide in the twenty-first century in spec-
tacular ways. Between 2012 and 2016, live music spending increased by
66% (Eventbrite, 2016). This trend is global, but the UK, which has one
of the most dynamic music industries in the world, is a vibrant example
of it. In 2017, the total audience for live music was 29.1 million, one
third of whom were music tourists (UK Music, 2017). Festivals are the
big winners of this rise in interest in live music. They offer diversity (doz-
ens or hundreds of bands can be sampled in a couple of days), a shareable
and personalised experience and good value for money. In spite of the
multicultural context of live music, of the fact that ‘99.9 per cent of pop
and rock music is vocal’ (Byers, 2009, no page), and that most audiences
in the world listen to a language which is not their native tongue, acces-
sibility and translation are not prioritised at live music events. Globally,
popular music listeners and viewers are expected to do their own research
prior to a concert or access their phone for information, original lyrics
and their potential translation. The majority of translations available on
websites are provided by volunteers. The landscape has changed dramati-
cally in the last decade with the availability of applications such as Shazam
or Musixmatch and the proliferation of fan sites or forums and of artists’
sites dedicated to their listeners. While some artists, such as Alicia Keys,
demand a ban on mobile phone use during their shows, in most popular
music concerts, participants interact with their smart phone to take pic-
tures or segments of film, share information, images or emotions on
social networks as they take part in the experience (Bennett, 2012, 2014).
No large-scale reception study exists to consider why translation is
lacking so blatantly in popular music, at live events, as part of recorded
products and on streaming platforms. In 2016, I conducted a small-scale
survey comprising 15 questions to find out what music listeners’ transla-
tion preferences might be in the context of a live music event. Details of
the study are offered below, but the most interesting results show that in
nearly half of the events attended by participants, no translation or even
information about the performance was available for attendees, and that
only 50% of live music event attendees wished for the provision of song
translation.
The survey questioned 72 respondents, primarily (72%) under 35,
since they were more likely to attend a wide range of popular music live
events.11 56% of respondents were students, primarily female, as the
survey took place in a faculty of humanities, more populated by women.
Apart from students, other respondents belonged to a mixed choir, took
part in an academic conference on accessibility for live events, and an
online survey advertised through personal contacts. The choice of an aca-
demic conference on the accessibility of live events as one of the venues
88 L. Desblache
(22% of respondents) was deliberate, as participants already had experi-

ence of some translation provision, albeit not generally interlingual or
intralingual translation. Similarly, members of a choir (around 8% of
respondents) could be assumed to have thought about language and
music, hence providing potentially valuable opinions. The native tongue
and country of residence of respondents were varied with 12 languages
and 15 countries of residence mentioned, but respondents were primarily
resident in Europe. A total of 93% of respondents, apart from students,
lived in the country of their native tongue. All respondents had attended
at least one live music event in the past year, with some attending 100 or
more, and with the majority (74%) attending between one and five
events. The largest trend regarding music venues was for small events,
with 58% attending events at small venues such as gigs or pubs, while
49% attended music festivals and 43% concerts. The majority of respon-
dents (74%) attended events where they were familiar with some of the
music performed. Most attended popular music events, with 74% famil-
iar with some of the music played, although some mentioned classical
concerts and opera. Surprisingly, only 44% of respondents listened to
songs in English or mostly in English. This means that the majority of
songs listened to were in a variety of languages. In addition, 49% of non-
English native respondents answered that songs which were not in their
native tongue were in English, but stated that songs had also been per-
formed in other languages. Italian was mentioned by 8 respondents,
German by 6, Spanish by 5, Latin by 5, French by 4. Other languages
mentioned were: Dutch, Icelandic, Irish, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish,
Russian, Swedish and Wolof. Although this study is small and most
respondents were university educated, the linguistic and cultural land-
scape of song performance was more mixed than expected.
As regards textual support, including translation, available for the con-
certs attended answers from participants are given in Tables 3.1 and 3.2.
The last group of questions concerned audience preferences regarding
translation provision. Overall, just over half of respondents did not wish
for lyrics to be translated while listening to songs in a live context, were
undecided (27%), or whish for lyrics in specific situations only (24%):
large venues, rare languages, and any musical genre where a story is told,
such as musical theatre or opera. Nearly half (49%) were in favour of
Table 3.1 Textual support provided at live music events

Programme with information on
performance and performers (extra Print leaflets and No
None purchase) web information answer
46% 36% 12% 6%
Table 3.2 Translation provision at live music events

Print of inter and
or intralingual
translation of Surtitles (Inter Sign Audio No
lyrics or intralingual) Language description None answer
13% 6.5% 1.5% (at 1.5% (at 76% 1.5%
some one event)
events)
song translation at all live events. Respondents who answered ‘no’ did not
have a particular reason linked to their native tongue (for instance,
English native speakers not needing translation of songs mostly in
English). In spite of these answers, respondents overwhelmingly said that
they would prefer the most comprehensive translation provision: only
8% of respondents chose ‘no answer’ when asked whether they would
prefer interlingual, intralingual translation or both, while 44% asked for
both translations.
The last question concerned the format of the translation provision for
live events: 60% mentioned a preference for surtitling, while 24% pre-
ferred print for the flexibility it gave them to look at the information at
any time during or after the concert. The relatively high level of ‘no
answer’ (13%) and the range of other possibilities mentioned by the
respondents (performers’ live explanation, importance of a well-informed
website, need to be flexible and use of blend of formats adapted to situa-
tions…) seem to show that audiences welcome experiments in this area.
Some unexpected answers include the low level of phone applications for
translation, in spite of the fact that phones are generally used during live
shows, and that a large proportion of respondents were under 35.
This survey is based on a limited number of participants, and in this
sense, can be considered a pilot to a future full-scale study. It also only
targeted opinions on translation at live music events. Nevertheless, it
90 L. Desblache
involved a large number of nationalities, and deliberately included people

with special needs and with wide ranging tastes and habits in music, pri-
marily in popular music.
Many translation scholars have discussed how Bourdieu’s sociology
can be a useful tool to analyse translation and the impact of its human
and non-human agents on society. It is perhaps the concept of ‘habitus’,
mentioned in Sect. 3.2.2, that is most useful in considering how expecta-
tions and innovations of the public are shaping the translation of vocal
music in the twenty-first century. Yet habitus is not only about deter-
mined responses. It is also about adapting to cultural standards and inno-
vating in response to them. Perhaps no other area in translation than song
translation demonstrates this so clearly. As they grow up, many children
are exposed to very specific forms of song translation. And on the occa-
sions that they are, they often do not know that they are translations:
hymns, songs heard in mainstream films, or traditional songs may all
have been translations, but sound like originals and are intended to give
this impression. Could any child listening to Baloo’s ‘Bare Necessities’
song in Spanish or German even guess that Baloo was not Spanish or
German? Many children today grow up singing tunes from Disney ani-
mation films in their own language. Foreign words, when they exist, are
reduce to an exotic accessory. Film music is frequently used to obliterate
any trace of foreignness. Carol O’Sullivan (2013, p. 208), discussing how
the original soundtrack of Anglophone trailers for foreign films is usually
edited to erase original content, points to the fact that music, often with
English lyrics, acts as a neutraliser and screen to the presence of a foreign
language. In popular music, though, young people grow up with English,
even if English is not their native tongue. They have no expectations of
translation provision, but a desire to share and understand, along with
the music, the meaning of the words.
Having stretched the limits of translation and the definition of its
related terms, we can now consider in the next part what, within this
wide spectrum of transfer, is translated in music and how these transfers
take place. As we shall see in Part II, new forms of translation have been
developed from a range of applications, platforms and social networks.
Translation may not be taking the form of a printed sheet, but it is there
when needed.
Notes
1. The original name is Silvia, even though it was later often recast as Sylvia.
2. The uncertainty paradigm is derived from the belief that is impossible to
be sure of the meanings to translate.
3. For a non-exhaustive list of metaphors about translation and translators,
see Susan Bassnett (1993, pp. 146–155) and James St. André (2010).
For a deeper investigation of the relationships between metaphor and
translation, see Rainer Guldin (2015).
4. ‘L’étude des pratiques et des savoirs musicaux, conçus autant comme
processus de différenciation socio-culturelle que comme formes
d’expression communes à l’Homme’ (Centre de Recherche en
Ethnomusicologie: présentation).
5. Singable or singing translations refer to lyrics that have been translated
for singing purposes.
6. The Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album was released on June 1,
1967 and Jimi Hendrix opened his live concert with a cover of it on June
4, 1967 at the Saville Theatre in London.
7. Emile Spencer’s popular song, ‘La jambe en bois’, which Stravinsky
heard as he was composing Petrushka, alluded to Sarah Bernhardt’s
wooden leg as its title suggests.
8. A useful blog on Brazilian song translation proposes translations and
discussions of Brazilian songs. Topics are archives by date, category and
composer/performer. (Brazil 70 Translation Project).
See also Heloísa Pezza Cintrão (2009).
9. This is a reference to Vladimir Jankélévitch’s (1978) book mentioned
earlier, Quelque part dans l’inachevé/Somewhere in the unfinished, untrans-
lated into English.
10. ‘Translating Music’ is an AHRC-funded international network project
led by Lucile Desblache (University of Roehampton, principal investiga-
tor), Helen Julia Minors (Kingston University) and Elena Di Giovanni
(University of Macerata, Italy). It was funded in 2012–2013 and aims to
contribute to new developments in the translation of musical texts. See
the Translating Music website for more detail.
11. Although live popular music events are increasingly attended by people
in their 30s and 40s, the overwhelming majority of attendees are under
fifty, both in the US (Nielsen Music, 2017, p. 18) and in Europe
(Webster et al., 2018, p. 56).
92 L. Desblache
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Part II
Translating Music
For rock musician David Byrne (2012), the idea that musical creation is
the exclusive product of individual inspiration is a romantic delusion.
Rather, as he argues in the first chapter of his book, How music works,
musical creation is a process of adaptation which allows previous pieces
to take new guises and express new meanings. Music depends on the
recycling and reinterpretation of existing material for innovation and,
like translation, is equally important as process and as product. The his-
tory of music is in fact the story of how different strands of music travel,
are continually shared and adapted across different spaces and cultures.
In Greek mythology, muses, daughters of Mnemosyne, goddess of mem-
ory, were not individually identified until Hesiod acknowledged them as
nine sisters with specific skills. They were the guardians of music and
poetry, through which collective memory was transmitted and evolved.
Music is born of memory. It is the art of local variations on existing roots.
Any musical piece is born of at least one existing element: a melody, a
rhythm or a chord, for instance. The art of a musician is to draw diversity
from this initial source, to interpret sounds from the past creatively.
Musical talent thrives from both remembering and innovating. This
102 Translating Music
‘intertextual’ quality will be discussed below in relation to the composer

Charles Ives and to interart exchanges (Chap. 8).
Music is not just successful in interpreting the past, it also helps human
memory. In ancient oral and aural societies, music was combined with
other forms of expression, primarily dance and poetry, to both ensure the
transmission of past texts and give them relevant meanings to the present.
Music allowed both remembering and mediating past canonical texts
into the present. In his book about Homer, Adam Nicolson (2014, p. 75)
argues and demonstrates that it is the musical patterns of the Iliad and
the Odyssey and the tradition of singing them in many different cultures
that brought the epic poems to us. Rhymes, rhythms, chants and instru-
mental accompaniments facilitate the memorising of the poetry and
strengthen its core, while giving it a unique identity with each performance.
Most non-musical art forms in human societies depend and have
always depended on music: dance, poetry, drama or various social cere-
monies. Music has the ability to evolve quickly, and has been an ideal
instrument to respond to the development of youth cultures, global
trends and technological advances. It is also about listening. In the televi-
sion series that he recorded for the BBC, Human Universe (2014,
pp. 23’40”–23’57”), the scientist Brian Cox interviewed one of the Afar
people, living in a desolate part of the Djibouti desert, who reminded
him that ‘your eyes have your age, but your ears have your father’s age.
Your eyes can see the present. But your ears hear the past’. Music is the
art which translates the past into the present most easily. While culturally,
the twenty-first century is the era of the moving image, this has not
stopped music becoming prominent as a performing and creative art.
Tim Blanning (2008) gives two reasons why. First, music is more interac-
tive, as a larger proportion of people sing or play an instrument than take
part in media as makers, actors or presenters. For instance, in 2014 in the
UK, 69% of children played a musical instrument (ABRSM, 2014).
Second, the development of visual media, far from inhibiting the devel-
opment of music, has enhanced it and, today, most images depend on the
music that accompanies them for their interpretation. While multimodal
texts all rely to some degree on co-construction, musical texts have
increasingly become indispensable in giving meaning to visual messages.
Translating Music 103
As mentioned in Chap. 3, the notion of music composed and per-

formed discretely is a modern Western concept. It emerged in the eigh-
teenth century as a consequence of the rise of professionalism with
virtuoso players and specialist composers listened to in reverence by an
audience. The commercialisation of culture beyond national borders and
the re-discovery of earlier canonical writers meant that poets such as
Alexander Pope were financially more successful as translators than as
original writers. The expansion of printing contributed to this success.
With regards to music, as opera became more popular with the general
public in Europe and America, libretti and their translations became
expected. As far as scores are concerned, the German printer Immanuel
Breitkopf—the music publisher Breitkopf is still successful today—
invented the moveable type process in 1754–1755 which allowed the
faster and larger production, and transnational dissemination of musical
scores (Lenneberg, 2003, p. 94; Blanning, 2008, p. 21). The role of musi-
cal performance as a remembering tool, what Thomas Christensen calls
‘gestures of memory’ (1999, p. 294), became less vital and music’s rela-
tion to translation and adaptation changed. Music became more driven
by borrowings and variations, and artists tended to ‘work backward’
(Byrne, 2012, p. 16) or sideways rather than simply in support of a tradi-
tion. The rise of musical pastiche, so characteristic of popular music
today, and vital to creative innovation, had begun. As it became more
dependent on written texts, music started an ever closer dance with trans-
lation. For, as Clive Scott recalls, translation stands ‘at the crossroads
between plagiarism, citation, pastiche, parody, imitation, adaptation’
(2006, pp. 115–116).
As print continued to develop in the nineteenth century, music relied
on a larger range of written texts relating to composition, performance
and technologies, from song lyrics to playing instructions, from informa-
tion about musical instruments to documents about music, from music
treatises to opera programmes. The diversity of musical texts has expanded
to match the many ways in which music accompanies contemporary
lives. This diversity depends on how it is mediated visually, adapted musi-
cally, translated in the case of lyrics, and disseminated across global and
diverse audiences. This is particularly visible in the ways millennials’
engagement with music, and particularly with songs, is based on imita-
104 Translating Music
tion and parody. At its most basic level, this engagement is visible with
the popularity of Karaoke, introduced in the 1970s, dipping in popular-
ity in the 1990s but staunchly present again from the second decade of
the twenty-first century in new forms, from karaoke boxes booked by
small groups of friends in order to sing along in large venues. On the
internet, the need to engage with existing music emerged though the
spectacular popularity of literal music versions which are pastiches of suc-
cessful songs which replace the original lyrics with a description of the
action taking place in the video. This became a way for a younger genera-
tion to critique the established songs liked by their elders, but also to
engage with them visually. It is also a genre that allows teenagers to place
themselves in and against an established cultural landscape.
Music can move across borders, shapeshifting as it evolves through
transcriptions, pastiches, parodies and various forms of adaptations, but
written texts linked to music need to be translated into the languages of
the countries that it involves. Twenty-First century music involving words
dominates musical spheres, partly because of the rise of popular music,
largely vocal, but also because of the growth of industries, technologies
and media related to music. And these words, in most situations, must be
semantically, pragmatically and culturally translated. Chapters 4, 5 and 6
explore what texts are translated and how their translations occur, whether
or not they contain extra-musical meaning.
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Translating Music 105
Christensen, T. (1999). Four-hand piano transcription and geographies of nine-

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London: Continuum.
4
What is Translated? Styles, Genres
and More
By contrast with texts about music and save for vocal music which
includes lyrics, music primarily relies on non-referential meaning, which
is emotional and aesthetic. Music which includes words derives part of its
meaning from verbal content. This verbal content is often translated, so
that the music is either sung in another language or a text is provided
separately to help listeners understand the lyrics. This is not always the
case though, as will be discussed in the next pages.
The transformations and transfers of music that involves no lyrics are
essentially expressed through genres, musical language, styles and a wide
array of non-verbal signs that shape or accompany music’s various forms.
Many musicians and music lovers consider that music in general, and
instrumental music in particular, needs no translation and that a musical
message is directly mediated to each listener. Some composers, such as
Igor Stravinsky or Elliott Carter, consider music is an autonomous art
form which cannot express anything extra-musical. Formalists1 accept
that it can inspire and be inspired by extra-musical feelings, beings, events
or phenomena. They consider, however, that any extra-musical content,
such as emotion, is created by the listener and not part of music itself:

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54965-5_4
108 L. Desblache
I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express
anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological
mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. […] If, as is nearly always the case,
music appears to express something, this is only an illusion and not a real-
ity. (Stravinsky, 1936, p. 83)
Even the adepts of music as a self-referential art accept that it is an ideal

medium for collective experiences. In most cultures, music is inseparable
from social rites and events, and is performed for special occasions. In
European and North American societies, though, less emphasis was
placed on this social role from the age of enlightenment onwards. The rise
of individualism in the modern period led to perceptions of human expe-
rience as a process that occurred inside each individual. This culminated
with Romantic expressions of extreme subjectivism mixed with ethnic,
national or spiritual standpoints made against oppressive norms and
rules. Chopin’s music is perhaps the best example of this emotional fusion
of ideas. Today however, the consensus is that meaning is no longer found
within ourselves or through a divine intermediary: something is mean-
ingful if shared. Thanks to contemporary technologies, each person may
listen to music individually and indulge his or her preferences, but these
are validated through common subjective experiences. The widespread
use of social networks during concerts and festivals, the interaction of
music lovers through various technologies and fora, testifies to this desire
for sharing and belonging to a community. And this collective use requires
a range of mediations and translations, which the sections below will
introduce.
4.1 Musical Hermeneutics and Ekphrasis

While all musicians create their piece or performance from the building
blocks of an existing one, most think that, apart from lyrics in vocal
pieces, audiences need no translation to appreciate music. From Goethe
and Victor Hugo to Sibelius, many have voiced their belief that music
starts where verbal communication stops. This belief is ingrained in col-
lective and personal memories. Yet most accept that music needs (re-)
4 What is Translated? Styles, Genres and More 109
interpretations and ephemeral subjective experiences to become mean-

ingful, and that, in addition to performers, listeners and viewers are also
interpreters of music, making sense of what they hear. Both music makers
and listeners may also recount their musical experiences in interviews,
reviews and other texts. These are essentially non-musical in nature, as
they are based on language, and the body of texts that are accounted for
by what Lawrence Kramer (2011, p. 247) names ‘musical hermeneutics’.
Music is subject to mediation, interpretation, and is often introduced by
a verbal text or linked to it in some respect.
Many texts fall into this category: programme notes, music criticism
and history, audio-descriptions of performances, introductions to con-
certs, companion websites to recorded music or music festivals, musical
sites offering fan translation and more. These texts refer to specific musi-
cal pieces but they are expressed through verbal language and as such, are
translated as any specialised writing would be, as a language with specific
terminology and phraseology, as well as cultural meaning to contend
with and transfer. With the rise of popular music and the rise in the con-
sumption of different music styles, these texts about music often lead to
translation problems. Philip Tagg (2012, pp. 11, 19) emphasises that
musical concepts, vocabularies and discourses were constructed primarily
with classical music in mind. As mentioned in the first pages of Part I,
popular music, before the twentieth century, was largely ignored by most
musicologists who concentrated on consolidating the canon with works
such as biographies of major composers, analyses of highbrow genres and
forms. The high speed at which music has evolved in the last hundred
years means that terminological gaps often appear. It also means that
musicians with classical training and popular musicians do not always
understand each other. Ideas relating to rhythm, for instance, are
expressed very differently in classical music, jazz, blues, rock or pop
music. How can the concept of a groove, which associates the notions of
rhythmic patterns to bodily movements, be translated adequately for a
classical musician unfamiliar with its meaning? In some respects, the con-
cept is more easily conveyed to a non-musician, often more aware of links
between dance and rhythm. And even musicians familiar with popular
and classical music can struggle to acquire musical ‘bilingual’ skills. They
110 L. Desblache
are rarely at ease with the two genres. Many, from musicologists (Tagg,
2012, pp. 11, 12) to performers (White, 2013) have discussed this issue.
Musical hermeneutics also occurs when composers and performers
attempt to mediate words or other non-verbal languages. In twenty-first
century popular culture, when visual content dominates communication
and pop music is more than ever inseparable from dance, it can be argued
that the process of musical ekphrasis2 (Bruhn, 2000) is gaining ground.
What is normally understood by translation is that it allows the transfer
of meaning(s) of an existing piece for a particular purpose. Musical
hermeneutics broadly fits this description, and two analogies with trans-
lation ‘proper’, that is, with the linguistic transfer of a text from one lan-
guage into another, can be made:
• In a verbal translation, the translator transfers a text from a language

that a reader or viewer is unfamiliar with into a language that he or she
understands. The target language is usually the translator’s best lan-
guage. The person who interprets a musical text verbally for an audi-
ence is primarily a writer, performing a transfer of the text from foreign
language into native or dominant language. Thus, the composer
Hector Berlioz, in his autobiography (1870/1991), his volume of
musical critiques (1852/1878) and his instrumentation treatise (1844)
aims to share, in turn, his personal experiences and aesthetic prefer-
ences; the landscape of musical life in France and in London; and
finally, composition expertise in orchestration and instrumentation.
• In the process of musical ekphrasis, the performer and/or composer
mediates a piece created in a ‘foreign’ artistic language into musical
language, usually referring to the other art form that they borrow
from. The best known example of this cross-form transfer is probably
Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1874), a suite inspired
by a number of paintings and imagined musically. Musical ekphrasis,
although rarely acknowledged as such, is common in popular music
where street art is often interpreted through song and contemporary
art leads to new musical interpretations: ‘Guernica’ and ‘Going Down’
(inspired by Jackson Pollock’s painting N° 5) by The Stone Roses rock
band (1989), and Steve Taylor and his group Chagall Guevara’s
‘Escher’s world’ (1991) are instances of this.
Ekphrasis can of course take place in the other direction, if the media-
tion of music is attempted through another art form, such as in some of
Kandinsky’s paintings where borders between the visual and the musical
are blurred (for instance, ‘Improvisation 35’, 1914; ‘Fugue’, 1914).
Ekphrasis is often considered to be dependent on verbal representation,
be it creative as in a poem, or more factual, as in a review. One of the
poets who mediated music most spectacularly into words is W. H. Auden.
His use of musical forms and genres in poetry was effective and diverse:
from barcarolles to foxtrots, blues or calypsos, he used not only estab-
lished musical structures, but also mood associations to broaden the
meaning of his texts beyond words (Auden, 1995). The most famous of
these is of course ‘Funeral blues’, immortalised in Mike Newell’s film
Four Weddings and a Funeral, but the most musical perhaps is ‘Refugee
blues’, based on the AAB musical form and on nostalgic imageries typical
of the genre, as James Held (1992) has discussed.
Can the transfer of messages across different art forms be called inter-
pretation, mediation, or even translation in the widest sense? The exam-
ples above may be defined by some as cross-art pollination or adaptation;
others will refer to Roman Jakobson’s (1951/2012) notion of ‘intersemi-
otic translation’. Peter Dayan (2011), in his study of music’s interrelation
with other arts, calls it ‘interart aesthetics’ and proposes five laws that
govern the possibility of mediation across the arts: first, that the work of
art be considered as an object, not a conduit for a message or concept;
second, that equivalence between works of different media be incalcula-
ble; third, that the art form possess a timeless and international value
beyond its original tradition; fourth, that all works considered be unique
and original; and fifth is the law of interart analogy by which arts in dif-
ferent media are unified by an aesthetic purpose (Ibid., pp. 2–3; see also
Part III (Sect. 8.3)). These laws are useful to identify whether translation
across different artistic media occurs, or only occurs partially in spite of
strong connections between two works. A connection or an association
does not necessarily lead to a translation. For instance, Rose Tremain’s
novel, Gustave Sonata (2016) builds strong bridges between literature and
music, as its title implies. The book is structured in three movements,
echoing a sonata; it revolves around recurrent leitmotivs, and its pace
changes as if according to different tempi. Music is also thematically present
112 L. Desblache
throughout the book as part of the narrative and as an unreachable, elu-

sive ideal which reflects the challenges of communication between Anton
(a pianist) and Gustave, the two main protagonists. The unapproachabil-
ity of classical music, reserved to an elite, also appears as a trope of social
and ethnic divides in war-time Switzerland, where neutrality is more a
myth than a reality. The presence of music highlights deliberately missing
parts of dialogue which the reader has to supply in order to interpret the
story. Music plays an inspiring part in allowing a message to be deci-
phered beyond the (semantic) lines, and thus acquires an inferential role
in the novel. In spite of the overwhelming presence of music in the novel,
Gustave Sonata is not ‘interartistic’, to use Dayan’s terminology. It con-
veys a strong narrative message, albeit associated with music, and uses
music aesthetically, but remains essentially a literary piece, therefore
breaking two of the laws identified by Dayan. Across the arts therefore,
translation is not always possible and may not be desirable.
The arts do not have exclusively aesthetic aims either. They contribute
to the historical, social and political construction of identities and eth-
nicities. Since the rise of professionalism and virtuoso players in the eigh-
teenth century, music, at least in its high culture forms, has been perceived
as inaccessible by many. While the emergence of popular music in the
1950s largely broke this vision, it is still frequently considered as reach-
able only by those who are trained and gifted. Favouring musical
interactions with other forms of arts also allows breaking down the barri-
ers that have kept music isolated from other artistic forms.
While such interartistic processes of mediation are part of creativity,
music itself evolves through a constant process of transcultural variations
and exchanges. Successful composers—from Handel, who carved as uni-
versal a musical language as possible, from an amalgam of European
styles, to Stevie Wonder’s gospel anthems, made of fusions of African
beats and Latin rhythms—have always been those who could synthesise
existing trends and make them meaningful to large contemporary audi-
ences. This is more visible today than it was in the past. The twenty-first
century is an era of cultural convergence, driven by ever freer knowledge
exchange platforms and by a fast-paced global music industry. Cultures
are being dislocated and relocated as part of political geographies and art-
ists respond by adapting existing material into pieces which they make
their own and reterritorialise ethnically, nationally, aesthetically

and socially.
Musicians, in the Enlightenment as well as in the Romantic and Post-
Romantic eras, favoured the growth of instrumental music as what they
considered to be a universal language. They aimed to unify humankind
beyond the verbal while allowing individual expression as part of a larger
humanist project. As these ideals started to be deconstructed, an increase
in the popularity of vocal music took place after the First World War.
Whereas vocal music preceding the industrial revolution was largely
attached to rural life, new urban sounds emerged with the growth of pop
music from the 1950s.
Today, as mentioned in Part I, most popular music is vocal. This is due
to a number of factors. First, in industrialised countries, most established
vocal genres disappeared or evolved: local folk songs linked to specific
activities from herding to spinning died out or became museum pieces of
historical significance; fewer people attended religious services, which
had been guardians of spiritual music for centuries; with the rise of music
technologies, fewer people made music or sang regularly as part of social
occasions. With this shared musical core gone, a schism between high
culture, composed for an elite, and easy musical entertainment grew.
Opera (and its sub-genres, comic-opera and operetta) have had an elitist
reputation for the last hundred years. Yet until the 1920s, it was popular
in many countries, in particular in Italy, France and Germany. Performance
models changed though: large (and long) shows were no longer the exclu-
sive model, and economically, large orchestras and companies became
increasingly difficult to subsidise. As Theodor Adorno (1941, 1967)
argued in statements that are still controversial today, the music industry
seized opportunities to commodify musical products for mass culture.
English also emerged as not only a lingua franca, such as Latin or
French had been in the past regarding the transmission of knowledge and
science, but also as a cultural tool. It quickly became the main language
of cinema and the dominant language of culture. English also has a large
proportion of monosyllabic words—the most common hundred words
in the English language are nearly all monosyllabic—as mentioned in
Part I (Sect. 2.3) (see also Yekibayeva & Satysheva, 2016). This clearly
makes English a desirable global language for song, and often makes
114 L. Desblache
translation redundant when lyrics are limited to a few simple words. This
is not the case for most songs however and they are often translated. The
case of vocal music will be discussed in Chap. 5, but in the first instance,
we shall be exploring translation beyond words.
4.2 Translating Beyond Words

Once the premise that music translation goes beyond the transfer of lyrics
and words relating to music is accepted, the breadth of ways in which
music can and is translated is astounding: a composer can mediate a waltz
for the twenty-first century, a musicologist transcribe a medieval score
into the tonal system, an audio describer set the visual context for a radio
concert, a performer improvise on an established piece, a pianist adapt a
salsa rhythm for a dance class, a team of engineers work on which tech-
nologies would be most effective for deaf people to perceive music
through colours and vibrations, a conductor edit pieces for a concert
aimed at children, a music lover with synaesthesia explains how sounds
translate into colours, and a choir master arrange a song for a four part
chorus. All of these and more relate to the notion of translation. As it
moves across cultures and is thought out for different audiences, music is
translated.
This section explores what these transfers imply. I will focus primarily
on the changes that take place when music moves across cultures. This is
because transcultural transfers are of prime concern to anyone with an
interest in translation in all its senses, and because transfers across the
senses are discussed in other sections (Part II (Sect. 6.3) and Part III (Sect.
8.4.2)). Purely musical transfers such as compositional arrangements and
transcriptions will be touched upon but belong more exclusively to the
field of musicology, as they require a technical knowledge of music that is
not expected from readers of this book.
Despite the hybridities and border crossings that characterise music,
transcultural perspectives in musicology are rare. As discussed in Part I, an
interest in studying intercultural musical practice is nevertheless emerging
(Burnard, Mackinley, & Powell, 2016; Fulcher, 2011; Tagg, 2012). Since
the Second World War, music has increasingly been perceived as a
universal phenomenon, but not one that uses a universal language. Its
manifestations are now seen as reflections of the cultures it associates
with. Yet the processes of mediation that lead to new musics are rarely
explored. In translation, adaptation or transcultural studies, the focus is
on vocal music, and the socio-political aspect of music is emphasised,
rather than music itself. As Alan Turley affirmed, ‘the sociology of music
has been an area largely left to European sociologists’ (2001, p. 633)
rather than musicians or musicologists. Moreover, among these, few have
probed the Dangerous crossroads (Lipsitz, 1994/1997) of transcultural
realities. For instance, the journal Transcultural Studies, which has been
publishing biannually since 2010 includes no article about music at the
time of this writing. Similarly, Music & Politics tackles very few transna-
tional issues in its articles. Special issues of journals which tackle relevant
topics, such as Music and Migration (Baily & Collyer, 2006) tend to focus
on social features of ethnic music rather than on why and how music
travels and changes. A handful of scholars have investigated transcultural
issues in music beyond the translation of lyrics in vocal music. They can
be grouped in three categories which are equally important, but these
strands of research have not fully intersected.
The first category is sociologically slanted and comprises an increasing
body of work on music, identity, migration and transnational issues.
Such work primarily highlights the impact of contemporary musical
movements across the globe on the construction of geographies and iden-
tities (Mazierska & Gregory, 2015; Meinhof, 2018; Meinhof & Kiwan,
2011) or the political meaning of music across cultures (Baker, 2010;
Susam-Saraeva, 2015). The lives and musical activities of musicians who
live transnationally, either as migrants or as members of a diaspora, have
also been the subject of investigations. In their pioneering study of musi-
cians’ transcultural activities and creative outputs, Nadia Kiwan and
Ulrike Hanna Meinhof (2011) analyse case studies to explore the conse-
quences of contemporary musicians’ transnational living for social and
cultural relationships between North and South. They propose a model
for analysis based on network theories and map four interrelating param-
eters to consider the practices and priorities of musicians ‘on the move’,
whether this mobility is real (living across countries) or symbolic (living
in one country but with the memory or input of others). These four
116 L. Desblache
parameters are human hubs, which allow artists to feed on influences

through social and artistic networks; spatial hubs where living places
interplay, from Western capital cities which are magnets for diverse par-
ticipation and have structured cultural policies, but also provincial towns,
villages and local places from which artistic inspiration and ethnicities are
born; institutional hubs, the network of organisations and associations
that support musical activities; and accidental hubs, various networks
developed by musicians as they play and interact with other musicians
and agents. As musicians travel, evolve and subject themselves to differ-
ent influences, they acquire ‘transcultural capital’. Meinhof and
Triandafyllidou (2006) stretch the Bourdieu theory to analyse how trans-
national musicians should not be considered in the ethnic niches of their
countries of origin but in a multi-dimensional context which is rich in
cross-fertilisations. Texts in this group keenly discuss the lives and prac-
tices of musicians, their political engagements as well as (trans)cultural
policies but rarely consider their effects on music itself.
The second category comprises primarily musicologists, historians and
comparatists. Recent developments in music history set to investigate
cultural intersections, exchanges and misunderstandings across ethnic
and national borders (Fulcher, 2011) in classical (Bohlman, 2011) or
popular music (Hutchinson, 2011). Work which investigates how musi-
cal genres, styles and practices are translated and relocated in time and
space is also becoming more common (Atanasovski, 2015; Hein, 2016).
Yet such publications tend to be isolated and cover very specific ground.
The fact that, as Richard Middleton (1993) emphasises, very opposed
traditions of musical analysis relate to popular or classical pieces, intro-
duces another barrier to how genres and styles are translated. Linda
Hutcheon, for instance, in her desire to demonstrate that ‘in the work-
ings of human imagination, adaptation is the norm, not the exception’
(2006, p. 177), takes opera as a case study for her theory. Her high cul-
ture examples use an entirely different framework from that of a writer
such as Regev (2013), who considers ‘pop-rock’ music, not so much
because their aims are different but because their readers’ and publishers’
‘horizon of expectations’ (Jauss, 1967/1982, p. 23) are. While musicolo-
gists and in particular, ethnomusicologists, have widened ways of analys-
ing music beyond the strict formalism in which it had been entrenched
since the early nineteenth century, the rift between classical and non-
classical music analysis continues to be noticeable. Popular music schol-
ars still tend to focus primarily on meaning and social aspects of the
pieces they consider, while structural analysis remains strong in the clas-
sical spheres. The gap is being bridged, but expectations can run deep.
For instance, Regev, mentioned above, is one of the few music sociolo-
gists not only to consider transnational and translocal issues in music, but
to focus on the music itself to substantiate his arguments, a reasonably
rare feature in popular music critique. Although his work is broadly con-
sidered as important in the area of popular music studies, he is also criti-
cised for not including more political context in his analyses
(Toynbee, 2014).
The third category of music scholars giving weight to transcultural
aspects of music is that of those who explore music as soundscapes, in the
wake of Murray Schafer’s interdisciplinary approach (1977). They high-
light how different processes of translation are essential to musical cre-
ation, be it in transmedia experiences, in transfer across time, or in
questioning the capacity of sounds for meaning in changing environ-
ments (Chan & Noble, 2009). Perceptions of transculturality vary. For
some, music makes it possible to go beyond cultural issues. The transcul-
tural, in this sense, is akin to a universal transcendental tool which values
an aesthetic message, disconnected from specific political or social
engagement. For instance, for Chinese scholar Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, the
use of music and soundscapes which have a global, non-culture specific
appeal in Asian films is a common strategy to de-orientalise a film and
allow it to be meaningful beyond geographic and cultural boundaries:
For a film to qualify as transcultural, it must offer materials from at least

two levels. One is the cross-regional level, the overlapping cultural borders
among various locales. Another level is the increasingly obscure boundaries
between each locale and the rest of the world, namely the international,
global communities. These two levels are juxtaposed and allowed to coalesce
to create a transcultural soundscape. (Yueh-yu Yeh, 2007, p. 6)
Glocal sounds and music which are distant from the original ethnicity of
the film maker also contribute to expressing feelings of emotional and
118 L. Desblache
cultural displacement. In Wong Kar-wai’s film Happy Together (1997),

the tensions between the two gay protagonists are expressed ironically
through the eponymous song by The Turtles referring to heterosexual
love, as well as through a range of songs and sounds associated with dif-
ferent cultures but globally familiar, from Astor Piazzolla’s tangos to
Frank Zappa’s rock instrumentals. Although Yueh-yu Yeh’s definitions of
both transculturality and soundscapes may be contested, she makes an
important point in emphasising the desire to use music as a tool that can
both transcend boundaries and allude to local colours and spirits.
Appropriation is inherent in music making. Jazz musicians base their
improvisation practice on it, and composers consciously or unconsciously
draw their inspiration from existing ideas. It is no coincidence that the
form of ‘theme and variations’ is one of the most common in classical
music, where borrowing is essential to compositional techniques, as com-
posers build their work from an original musical idea. All elements of
music can have intertextual or referential resonances, from the sound of
a French horn evoking hunting, to the tapping of a rhythm suggesting a
particular dance. The most regularly borrowed element, whether stolen,
quoted, or alluded to, is melody, but harmonies, rhythms, instrumenta-
tions and styles are borrowed. They often aim for parody. In classical
music, one of the most ‘quoted’ harmonies, often with parodic intent, is
the famous Tristan chord which is the leitmotiv of the eponymous hero
in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Some have argued that it had been used by
several composers from Guillaume de Machaut to Beethoven, and that
Wagner borrowed it from existing scores (Vogel, 1962, p. 12 in Nattiez,
1987/1990, p. 219; Huebner, 2011, pp. 142–166). Yet at a time when
tonality principles were starting to disintegrate, Wagner gave new mean-
ing to a chord which tonal harmony considered to be dissonant. His suc-
cessors from Chopin (Sonata in C minor, op. 4; Prelude in A minor, op.
28, n°2; Mazurka in F minor, op. 68, n°4) to Debussy (Pelléas et Mélisande;
‘Golliwogg’s Cakewalk’ from the piano suite Children’s Corner), Ravel
(L’heure espagnole) and Benjamin Britten (Albert Herring) quoted it abun-
dantly, mostly with mischievous irony. For instance, in Britten’s comic
opera, Albert Herring, the chord is heard when Albert, a teetotaller moth-
er’s boy, drinks lemonade spiked with rum, a symbol of his emancipa-
tion to come.
Yet parody is not always at the heart of musical borrowing, although

borrowing is always at the heart of music composition and improvisa-
tion. The role of composers is, in many respects, to absorb, transcreate
and sometimes transgress previous pieces, as Benjamin Britten’s state-
ment about his War Requiem quoted in Part I (Sect. 3.1.4) suggests. All
composers use existing models, be they across genres or media, stylistic,
melodic or rhythmic, a tradition firmly established in the nineteenth cen-
tury. Borrowing is particularly present in musical pieces which deliber-
ately attempt to construct or refer to a national identity. The case of
twentieth century American music is interesting in this respect. Aaron
Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, commissioned as a patriotic
piece on the occasion of the USA entry into World War II, is written with
what the composer referred to as ‘an imposed simplicity’ (Copland, 2004,
p. xxvi) in direct reference to military music: percussion and brass are
used in monophonic style; the melody strings its celebratory and solidly
driven tune of 4th and 5th intervals; triad harmonies occur in the typi-
cally bright and brassy key of B flat major; and incisive rhythms, some-
times deliberately displaced but never hesitant, alternate between 4/4 and
3/4 time signatures. All these propel the piece forward with tremendous
éclat and energy. Copland wrote of the paramount importance for
American classical music to free itself from exclusively foreign influences
and find a voice mirroring its identity. In 1952, Copland (1976a) also
noted how important it was for music to be noticed, to stand out as dif-
ferent. And what better than a fanfare to do this.
This three-minute piece has been enormously influential in American
music. It has been endlessly adapted or quoted in ways that have been
constitutive of all styles of American music. Copland himself used the
fanfare as the main theme of the finale of his third and last symphony
(named ‘Americana’) to consolidate its recognisably American identity.
The composer streamlined jazz and other modernist influences into a
direct sound, clean of any of the royal decorations usually associated with
European fanfares, stretching open harmonies into a wide range. This
also dissolved ancestral colonial references to the British. Similarly, he
weakened the exclusively military connotation of the piece by intending
it for ‘the common man’. This fanfare, unlike any other, has influenced
film music (John William’s scores for Superman and Saving Private Ryan)
120 L. Desblache
but also rock (Emmerson, Lake & Palmer; Styx), popular music (Bob
Dylan used it as a prelude to some of his live performances in 2001; John
Williams ‘Olympic fanfare and theme’ and ‘Summon the heroes’, respec-
tively composed for the 1894 Olympic Games in Barcelona and the 1996
Olympic Games in Atlanta), and classical music: the composer Joan
Tower turned this uncompromisingly virile piece into her Fanfare for the
Uncommon Woman.
Melody is often the most apparent element in musical borrowings and
adaptation. It is the aspect of music that generally can be best memorised,
and is therefore most easily recognised, even when altered into a different
style. In musical parody, satire or pastiche, a tune or part of a tune is often
kept intact while lyrics and style are changed. For instance, Claude
Nougaro’s song ‘Armstrong’ (1966) borrows its melody from the tradi-
tional spiritual ‘Go Down Moses’, in order to pay a tribute to Louis
Armstrong and sings an anthem against racism, loaded with history. Jazz
is based on the borrowing of recurrent popular tunes, called standards,
but as the genre developed and fused with other styles throughout the
twentieth century, it became common practice to harmonise known
tunes with chord progressions and rhythms from other pieces. The most
frequently borrowed chord progression in the first half of the twentieth
century, is perhaps Gershwin’s song ‘I Got Rhythm’, used as the har-
monic base for many songs. The fact that improvisation is part of the
language of jazz means that tunes are more freely revisited and re-
appropriated than in music interpreted from a written score. The less
conventional and normalised the musical style, the looser the melodic
derivations usually are.
Borrowings do not only take place in jazz of course. Perhaps the most
unashamed and widely discussed musical borrower among musicologists
is the American composer Charles Ives (1874–1954), who belonged to
the generation directly preceding Copland, and had even fewer non-
European models to draw on. From his early work, often based on quota-
tions, to his last collages, his reliance on existing music is constant. Several
reasons have been suggested for this (Burkholder, 1995, pp. 417–418),
but the most important in my view relates to forging a new path for
American music. His techniques of collage are also key to finding ways of
making disparate content meaningful.
In this, he can be said to have pre-empted late twentieth century and

twenty-first century music production. He has been a major source of
inspiration for composers who strive to give meaning to superimposed or
juxtaposed musical fragments in their compositions. John Zorn and his
Naked City band for instance, not only mixed hard-core rock, heavy
metal and free jazz, but also produced works based on reassembling exist-
ing music segments such as in ‘Speedfreaks’ (1989). As the twentieth
century ended, popular music techniques became increasingly domi-
nated by collage, sampling and mixing. In many respects, music today is
a metaphor of the complex and fragmented ways of contemporary life
pathways that we all endeavour to navigate, and Ives pioneered ways of
thinking music as a puzzle to piece together meaningfully with existing
fragments.
French music found original creative trails in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, but America relied on Italian (for opera) or
Germanic models. The atonal rules of the second Viennese school led by
Arnold Schoenberg could be accepted or transgressed by European com-
posers brought up in a solid musical tradition, but American musicians
only had vernacular contemporary music as a national reference. They
could not deconstruct a past that had not been fully built yet. Borrowing
made it possible for Ives to allude to serial music and atonal develop-
ments and find his voice, just as it enabled Copland, a generation later, to
use jazz in order to deconstruct the conventions of tonal music, but this
vernacular was not fully available to Ives. Ives’ creative use of borrowing,
in other words, his capacity to translate existing material for new audi-
ences and from a wide range of sources, from church hymns to aleatory
music, is what made him remarkable. In his extensive study of Ives’ work,
J. Peter Burkholder (1995, pp. 3–4) lists around twenty procedures used
by Ives to borrow existing music. He gives an example from his repertoire
to illustrate each technique, thus showing the extent of borrowing as a
creative technique, from borrowing a musical structure to setting an
existing tune to a new harmony, paraphrasing a style or using collages of
quotations. Ives’ techniques of adaptation relate primarily to melody or
style, highly recognisable elements in a musical piece. Rather than con-
forming to new rules of composition to express his creative voice, such as
Schoenberg and his followers did, he rewrites from an existing alphabet
122 L. Desblache
of tunes and styles, foreignises his music with the presence of detectable
past references, finding ways to bring forth an American identity. One
aspect of Ives’s creativity that contributes to the originality of his scores is
the fact that he uses intertextuality to a parodic effect relatively rarely. In
this sense, such borrowing is a model for translation, as it is neither seen
as akin to theft (Venuti, 1998) nor as derivative (Aoyama &
Wakabayasi, 1999).
Although Ives’ music could not be described in any way as popular, it
could be argued that the composer’s compulsive borrowing strategy influ-
enced compositional techniques used in popular music 100 year later.
The next sections investigate how borrowing and adapting, with respect
to musical elements such as styles, genres and rhythms, is key to today’s
popular music dynamism and creativity. Klaus Kaindl (2005) has ele-
gantly shown how, in plurisemiotic forms of expression such as music, it
is often unwise to consider various elements such as rhythm, melody,
timbres or lyrics, in the case of songs, discretely. Yet it is useful to under-
stand how they take part both separately and as a whole in the social
interplay of what Pierre Bourdieu (1992/1996) might have called the
‘fields of production’ and the ‘reception of music’. Only some of the
musical parameters that allow a musical text’s translation will be consid-
ered below, mostly under the umbrella terms of genres and rhythms.
Tonal systems, instrumental and vocal timbres, various uses of pitches
and sounds, for instance, all contribute essentially to the construction of
musical meanings and allow music to evolve. A choice has been made to
focus on key aspects of music in its non-verbal creative transformations.
Although this prevents a detailed analysis of musical elements that con-
tribute substantially to music mediation, adaptation and translation out-
side of the verbal sphere, such elements will be considered under two
umbrella groups. We shall focus on genres and styles on the one hand,
and tempi and rhythms on the other, as they provide rich examples of
how music musical pieces can be translated into new ones that keep some
of the essence of the original text while also transgressing against it.
Musical genre, and even more so, style, are very wide concepts. Style,
in particular, is in turn dependent on several musical parameters.
Instrumental and vocal timbre, for instance, play a vital role in cultural
identification and in the intercultural travels of music, as Philip Tagg has
discussed in depth (2012, chapters 9 and 10). The timbre of an instru-

ment can be broadly transnational: organ music immediately connotes
Christian church ceremonies. But it can also be very culture-specific. An
accordion for instance, with its very specific sound quality, immediately
conveys ethnic stereotyping, sending images of traditional, slightly old-
fashioned France to its listeners. It is also strongly associated with par-
ticular musical genres, with the tango, hence with Argentina. A performer
or composer can of course choose to defy these stereotypes, thus contrib-
uting to the mingling of cultures. The Japanese accordionist Hiroko Ito
mentions how her instrument allows her to integrate, appropriate and
mediate different genres to her music, from jazz to tango. She comes
from a Japanese culture, which, in her own words (Ito, 2003; Jallot, 2009,
pp. 24, 25), often wishes to remain Japanese, and can be closed to new
influences. She had to confront French expectations of ‘musette’, old-
fashioned dance music played on the accordion which preceded rock and
other popular genres of the 1960s, but still has an audience today.
Interestingly, as often in relation to stereotypes, these expectations are
strongly if not exclusively exogenous, as they are formed and promul-
gated primarily by non-French listeners. Hiroko Ito also had to challenge
gender expectations, since most established accordionists are male, a par-
ticularly transgressive move for a female Japanese musician. She discusses
how her music is nurtured by traditional genres associated with the
accordion, but also by both her own Japanese background and by a range
of cosmopolitan influences, some linked to her instrument, such as tango
music, others entirely disconnected from it, as she also plays with tradi-
tional Japanese instrumentalists. Her music is both defined through
acculturation, as it becomes a place for musical intercultural encoun-
ters—the musical group she created is named Melting Pot—, and cul-
tural translation, as it mediates music from different cultures into new
idioms that become meaningful beyond reductive stereotypes.
4.2.1 Styles and Genres
Many would argue that musical styles—broad labels referring to particu-

lar eras, creative artists, communities or ethnicities, to expected musical
124 L. Desblache
patterns, or to recurrent individual expressive or technical features—and

genres—traditionally identified with an existing music form or expected
behaviour in relation to musical events—are Western concepts. Most
would agree that this is because they have long been associated with
Western music, particularly with classical music (Crocker, 1966/1986).
For Tagg (2012, p. 267), while the two notions are related, style can be
seen ‘as a set of musical-structural rules or norms, [and] genre as a larger
set of cultural codes that include musical rules’. In other words, a classical
music lover might immediately recognise the style of Bach, but would
consider opera as a genre, which, in turn, comprises more specific and
more distinctively structured musical forms such as opera seria, or opera
buffa. Genres, in spite of their subjective and sometimes controversial
categorisations, play a major role in music evolution across boundaries
and have historically done so for centuries. Scholars since the end of the
twentieth century have traced notions of musical genres and styles to
early eras of history (e.g. Lam, 2011) and have explored them in popular
music, mostly in performative contexts (Middleton, 2006). In spite of
their shifting boundaries, or perhaps because of them, they have been
chosen as the category to classify music and to organise playlists. They are
vessels of existing memories that can be adapted to new contexts, and
tools of appropriation of new cultures. Genres allow the universal to be
particularised efficiently. Their transgressive quality and flexibility make
them instruments of diversity as Robin James has discussed (2017), but
also, of interpretation of the past. A dance such as the polka is a good
example of this. It originated in Bohemia but had a global reach through-
out the nineteenth century. It was soon disseminated and mediated into
many different sub-genres which kept the basic 2/4 rhythm and the mod-
erately fast tempo of the dance, but evolved differently in different coun-
tries. It was popular in a wide range of social classes, from the European
elite to slave populations. It travelled from Peru to the French West
Indies, from Ireland to Italy, taking a new name in some cases, such as the
Hispanic banda. One of the most contemporary and successful variations
of the genre, metal style, has been performed by Taylor Swift in the song
‘Shake It Off ’ (2014). At a time when pop song so frequently fuses with
dance music, this latest version of one of the oldest European dance forms
into the present is not surprising.
In Adam Ockleford’s words (2013), genres are driven by ‘repetition’

(of established structures such as ABA ternary form) and by ‘derivations’,
or variations on these existing forms, even when they rebel against estab-
lished traditions and stretch reference boundaries. As the speed of con-
temporary ways of life accelerates and attraction for novelty expands,
more twenty-first century music lovers listen to and make music across a
wide range of styles, giving new meanings to existing forms. With the
birth of what was named controversially ‘fusion music’ in the 1960s,
some felt that styles and genres no longer existed independently and that
they are hybridised. For Kevin Fellezs (2011), much popular music since
the end of the twentieth century has been characterised by a porousness
between styles, and evolved creatively between genres rather than across
them. Historically, a change in musical style has also reflected a transitory
period and this continuous merging of musical styles and genres not only
mirrors but has pre-empted key contemporary societal features: globalisa-
tion, mass tourism and migration, and the prominence of technologies in
day-to-day life which all lead to different forms of hybridisation. Different
musical practices and platforms spread this phenomenon of hybridity, as
one composition may belong to several genres according to whether it is
performed by jazz, soul, blues musicians or a mix of those. Even the clas-
sical field, known for its ivory tower protection, is used by pop singers:
the Pet Shop Boys for instance have borrowed extensively from Handel to
Nyman. Similarly, twenty-first century classical composers and perform-
ers travel across styles: for instance, acclaimed soprano Renée Fleming
performs music ranging from bel canto to Björk, while composer Mark-
Anthony Turnage incorporates pop into his music. At a time when expe-
riencing the new is highly valued and when travel can happen fast and
frequently, creating and performing across or between musical languages,
stretching beyond one’s comfort zone and discovering fresh music allow
highly desirable shapeshifting. The concept of cultural translation dis-
cussed in Part I, explored by Wolfgang Iser (1994), Michel Serres (1974)
and more recently, Sarah Maitland (2017), who sees translation as a pro-
cess favouring encounters and dialogues between fields and cultures, are
relevant here. Start and target texts are no longer useful as different musics
interact with each other in a constant process of mediation and evolu-
tion. Taking the example of Rastafarian music in Jamaica, Stuart Hall
126 L. Desblache
(Hall & Grossberg, 1996, p. 143) discussed the complex relationship
between the new and the old in musical creativity at the end of the twen-
tieth century, arguing that music was the main creative line of continuity
between past and present in a culture searching for recognisable refer-
ences but also aiming to move forward.
Not only does music travel along with humanity and promote change,
it contributes to its migrations, mutations and expansions. This has been
the case since prehistory. The earliest instruments found (bone or wood
pipes and flutes) seemed to have been largely similar in different geo-
graphical locations, which would tend to demonstrate that they had trav-
elled with their makers. End-blown flutes were found in central Europe,
in South West France and, later on, in the Henan province, in Northern
China. Paleolithic flutes from Europe date back from the transitory
period hosting both the anatomically archaic Neanderthals and the cul-
turally ‘modern’ Homo sapiens. The presence of these musical instruments
is not only evidence that they were taken on human migration paths. It
also suggests that they may have contributed to better human connec-
tions. Archeologist Nick Conard and his colleagues (Conard, Malina, &
Münzel, 2009, p. 739) argue that music played a role in establishing and
maintaining social networks and think that more music making by
humans in the early Upper Paleolithic could have led to their expansion,
at the expense of the Neanderthals.
The social role of music is visible in the earliest examples available: the
caves most crowded with pictures were also the most resonant acousti-
cally. This suggest that they might have be used for music making
(Fazenda et al., 2017). Interestingly, prehistoric and contemporary maps
of human migration do not look very dissimilar, with many routes based
on a common South-North axis. Translating music happens as economic
and socio-cultural contexts evolve. As music travels, the styles, genres,
forms and instruments that are its vehicle tend to change while catchy
melodies and rhythms tend to be borrowed with few changes. Pieces are
imported into existing forms that adapt to new social and aesthetic
trends. Bruno Nettl (1983/2005) discusses how past migrations have
entailed many musical and social consequences, such as the type of music
made, the instruments used and the themes of the music content. For
him, ‘when style changes, content tends to remain, and vice versa’ (Ibid.,
p. 292). Music is unique in offering both features of change and referen-

tial elements which trigger memories and familiarity. Contemporary
popular music is based on this combination with relatively unchanging
elements such rhythm or harmonies and fast moving styles. Like transla-
tion, it requires moving between the familiar and the unknown, as the
example of polka discussed earlier illustrated.
Music also travels without geographical migration of course, through
cultural tourism, transcultural practices, international artists’ promo-
tions, and other ways of dissemination. Yet it evolves primarily, directly
or indirectly, as a consequence of migratory movements. One of the main
reasons for the ever solid links between migration and music is that
migrants are in need of establishing connections both with members of
the new society which they are entering and with their own people and
diasporas. When human beings travel, they have to leave behind most
material culture, but their narrative and musical memories accompany
them and are held close to their hearts. These memories are the continu-
ity that allows them to move more harmoniously across countries, spaces
and cultures. Musicians in exile have not only been numerous, but they
have been remarkably successful. Their hosts could eventually only
admire the creativity which allowed them to create new music from exist-
ing stock belonging to new adopted and old countries left behind. In
many cases, music and dance are the only part of a past that human
beings can take with them and do not have to abandon. They are fre-
quently forced to leave their language behind if they do not migrate as
part of a community or family.
Some of the most original musical developments in human history
came out of forced migration, such as Afro-American slavery, which gave
birth to extraordinarily rich soundscapes from jazz to spirituals and sam-
bas to salsas. Stylistic changes could also evolve more slowly: Simona
Frasca (2014), discusses how the first Neapolitan immigrants arriving in
New York in the nineteenth century brought their local songs with them
at a time when, back home, Italians were ambivalent about local dialects
and cultures since they were attempting the unification of the country.
Dialects at that time were associated with backward attitudes and illiter-
acy. But the second half of the nineteenth century was also the most suc-
cessful and mature time of production for Neapolitan songs, when their
128 L. Desblache
international influence was growing. At first, Naples immigrants sang

and listened to authentic songs of their region. As a diaspora grew in
New York, Neapolitan songs started to be written in New York at the
beginning of the twentieth century. They evoked both memories and
nostalgia of the past, and the reality of being an Italian American. The
hybridisation of the genre was deliberately slow: either the music was
imported from Italy and the words composed in America or vice versa
and this was part of a conscious desire to address an Italian American
audience while keeping the main characteristic of the genre intact.
Technologies, as they developed, allowed musical styles and genres to
travel faster, to evolve and adapt in a range of ways. Şebnem Susam-
Sarajeva (2008, p. 192) notes that in popular music, new genres often
enter a culture through translated songs adopted by another country as
part of their national repertoire, as is discussed below with the example of
French song.
While in classical music, genre shapeshifting is often discreet and hap-
pens mostly at compositional level, in popular music, genres have been
visible drivers of transformation, dissemination and change through per-
formance. The availability of electronic instruments that can instantly set
the beat and style of a rumba or a tango also means that genres have been
used more diversely and have been more easily recognisable. As digital
technologies allowed musicians to play with musical forms, timbres and
beats, genres and styles proliferated, often in hybrid forms. New-born
genres seduced new audiences. No one can deny that rap, for instance,
has changed the music scene of the twenty-first century. Prioritising a
wide audience was also a trend at the end of the twentieth century and
different generations started to listen to very different music styles. For
instance, Madonna’s dance-pop song ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ (1986), a song
on teenage pregnancy, provocatively dedicated to Pope John Paul II, is
introduced by a classically orchestrated prelude in the key of F minor, a
particularly unusual one for a dance-pop song, and in pop music in gen-
eral, where the majority of songs are composed in a major mode (Van
Buskirk, 2015). This formal opening with baroque religious overtones is
evocative of the social and religious establishment and becomes the basis
of a song which was perceived at the time by feminist groups as anti-
abortion. This fusion of styles was considered by the several critics to be
an audience-widening strategy and True Blue, the album in which this

song appears, remains her biggest selling album (Wikipedia True Blue,
2016). As music becomes increasingly ‘datified’ in the twenty-first cen-
tury, more information is received on listeners’ habits, whether they pre-
fer to switch between genres and what their favourite styles or artists are.
An interactive map of musical genres has been drawn by Glenn McDonald,
Principal Engineer for Spotify (Every Noise At Once). In October 2018,
it included 2,140 genres, approximately twice the amount that it listed a
year before, and it is constantly evolving. Spotify also provides maps of
musical preferences in different (mostly Western) cities. McDonald
explains that if his data was compiled quantitatively, it would tend to
return the same global hits in most places. Instead, he aims to find out
the specific preferences of each city:
When I say I want to hear what they’re listening to in Estonia, I mean that
I want to hear what they’re listening to in Estonia that, proportionally
speaking, nobody is listening to anywhere else. I want to hear the music
that is most uniquely Estonian, or more precisely the music that is most
uniquely loved by Estonians.
So I’ve been experimenting with code to generate the kind of additional
alternate chart that I mean, measuring the most distinctive listening of a
country. It’s not perfect, and the occasional global hit wanders in due to
emotionally irrelevant factors like regional licensing contingencies. But for
the most part these charts do appear to be rather effectively getting past the
global to the local. (McDonald, 2014)3
Such precise data shows the scale of category fragmentation and hybridi-
sation, as genres cross-fertilise, nurture and cannibalise each other to pro-
duce new forms, in a market context that is hungry for constant change.
The examples of French chanson and of the rock-punk group Pussy Riot
will be taken to illustrate the impact that the adaptation of genre has in
contemporary popular music.
In twentieth century French chanson, a very large proportion of the
singer-songwriters were immigrants or had immigrant parents. They
contributed to forging new styles for a genre that became associated with
France but was largely shaped by a mix of French and non-French
130 L. Desblache
influences, particularly in its golden age, between the 1930s and 1980s.
A short chronological list of singers who shaped French chanson includes:
Vincent Scotto, Mireille, Luis Mariano, Edith Piaf, Henri Salvador, Yves
Montand, Charles Aznavour, Graeme Allwright, Serge Gainsbourg, Jean
Ferrat, Dalida, Georges Moustaki, Nana Mouskouri, Richard Anthony,
Enrico Macias, Michel Polnareff, Sylvie Vartan, Serge Reggiani, Salvatore
Alamo, Christophe, Jane Birkin and Jean-Jacques Goldman. This contin-
ues in the twenty-first century with singers such as Amel Bent, Claudio
Capéo or Tal, as Pat Harvey’s blog on this topic shows abundantly
(Harvey, 2015). While immigrants bring music with them and blend it
into either dominant styles or into the styles of the new country they live
in, they also mediate other musics into their own. Their songs offer a
blend of common references that are hybrid and show a range of influ-
ences mediated multimodally, through visual images, melodies, rhythms
and lyrics. They either aim to consolidate references and allusion to spe-
cific cultures which are recognisable by their audience, or move the lis-
tener away from those very references, adapting them to make them
meaningful through variation and derivation. These aesthetic techniques
of derivation are essential to music, which plays an essential cohesive role
culturally and socially, in societies increasingly fragmented and diverse.
Music allows migrants, immigrants and other ‘foreigners’ uprooted to
another country to translate their culture while also introducing it to the
people of their host country. Music, more immaterial than any other art
form and fast moving, also allows established cultures to evolve and bring
unfamiliar influences to listeners, who open up to new cultures, often
unconsciously.
One of the most iconic French songs of the twentieth century is ‘Douce
France’ by Charles Trénet. He wrote it in 1942 to boost the morale of
French prisoners of war and French people recruited to work in Germany,
and recorded it in 1947. Its title is inspired from the medieval and oldest
surviving major piece of literature in French, La chanson de Roland. As its
eponymous hero is dying in Spain, he reminisces on France, using this
phrase. At the time of the song’s creation, its interpretation was double
edged: while it echoes the values of a Petainist France, a love declaration
to the eternal qualities of France and to an anti-collaborationist spirit can
also be read between the lines. Musically, it was originally composed as a
slow fox, a slow foxtrot dance played in ragtime style, the most popular
form for vocal music from the 1920s onwards until rock and roll took
over, specially in France and Germany. As Trénet (1966, pp. 4’40”–4’43”)
stated in an interview, ‘swing’ was the inescapable style of the time, per-
haps not the most expected of partners for the pastoral essence of the
song, but this gives it an ambiguous tone which saves it from over-sweet
sentimentalism.
The same year, in the same spirit, although in a more overtly subversive
manner, Louis Aragon wrote the poem ‘Les Ponts de Cé’ published in the
volume Les Yeux d’Elsa (1942), a quiet hymn to the pains endured by
French people fleeing occupied France, and to the Résistance. Composed
of nine eight-syllable distichs, it alludes to medieval poetic French forms
such as the lai or the rondeau. Francis Poulenc used the poem in the song
‘C’ the following year, and it can be considered a high-culture foil to
‘Douce France’. The mood in France at the height of German occupation
was sombre and works of art which were innocuous enough to escape
censorship but could be understood subversively were popular. Trénet, a
major star of the 1940s and 1950s, is still popular in France, and of all his
songs, ‘Douce France’ is the favourite (Big Browser, 2011). It is therefore
not surprising that the song has been covered by many singers in France
both in the original nostalgic spirit and in parody form (Stéphane
Guillon’s ‘Rance France’ as late as 2011, for instance). Among its covers,
two are striking examples of how individual and collective styles can give
new meanings to a song: the controversial recording by the ‘beur’—sec-
ond generation of North African immigrants—group Carte de séjour, led
by singer Rachid Taha (1986) and Carla Bruni’s 2013 recording in Italian.
The Carte de séjour version was produced 25 years after the end of
French colonisation in Algeria, when the children of the first generation
of Algerian immigrants settled in France were becoming adults. They
found it challenging to fit into a society often unwilling to accept this
second generation of immigrants. As a response to an expanding Front
National, anti-racists movements such as SOS Racisme emerged in the
late 1980s, supported by many musical groups including Carte de séjour.
It was also a time of growing tension and a return to islamist orthodoxy
in Algeria which led to the civil war of the 1990s. Many Algerian artists
and intellectuals fled to France for fear of repression. Carte de séjour’s
132 L. Desblache
satirical cover of ‘Douce France’ was produced in this context. Both the
lyrics and the melody—save for some arabising arabesques—were delib-
erately left unchanged. This is in fact the principle of cover songs: new
meanings arise from the mix of recognisable aspects of a song while oth-
ers are changed. In this case, the lyrics and the melody, as is often the case,
were untouched, while style, rhythms and visuals—although the song
was mainly disseminated through a sound single at the time, as music
video clips were in their infancy—were entirely changed. In Carte de
séjour’s ‘Douce France’, it is the contrast between these untouched ele-
ments and the rock-punk Arabic style which clothes it and subverts its
original patriotic meaning. It mocks the nostalgic feel of the original
song, based on postcard clichés of rural France supposedly eternal but
which no longer reflected the increasingly multicultural and industri-
alised country from which young ‘beurs’ such as Rachid Taha felt excluded
at the end of the twentieth century. This cover echoed the ‘beurs’ call for
a 10 year resident permit (carte de séjour) and the right to vote for foreign-
ers living in France. It was a double plea for France to notice this young
generation and to integrate it into mainstream society. It was broadcast
widely on the media and famously distributed to deputies of the French
National Assembly with the support of the then minister of Culture Jack
Lang. At that time—and until 2004, when the law changed—, a resident
permit was required for all non-French people living in France.
The deliberate mix of musical styles, the blend of Arabic instrumenta-
tion and synthetic beat of the arrangement, the provocative but humor-
ous title, in addition to the borrowing of an iconic poem and song, were
tools used to give North African immigrants a voice. Their desire for
integration actually parallels in some respect French governmental poli-
cies for assimilation in the 1980s and 1990s, favoured over multicultural
strategies. Hybridity is used as a tool that may bring common values
between French people and those of Arab origin. Jon Stratton, in his
chapter on Rachid Taha (2010, pp. 147–168) goes further, suggesting
that hybridity can be a key to see the past and the present in different
ways. Taha’s revisionist song can thus suggest that the eternal values of
France may be non-racist and remind listeners that North Africans, be
they members of a former colony or present immigrants, have also played
crucial roles in the construction of contemporary France. In this logic,
Taha mediates an iconic product so that the French may think their eter-
nal values and read history in more polysemous ways that mirror the
contemporary realities of the country they live in.
Going back to Nederveen Pieterse’s idea of a ‘continuum of hybridi-
ties’ (2015, p. 79) explored in the opening section of this volume, we can
also say that Taha uses a range of hybridities as tools for interacting with
the French song that he remodels musically and ideologically. The new
translation of this song is determined by the juxtaposition of different
musical styles and genres, which gives the untouched lyrics an ironic
meaning. The translation therefore does not take place semantically but
through the music. Taha mimics the song’s established tradition but
defies it, subverting it in a number of ways and opening it to new read-
ings. These multiple readings are evoked mainly through the fusion of
three styles: Western, and more specifically French song; punk-rock,
favoured in Europe at the time for its spontaneous, aggressive and rebel-
lious qualities; and raï, inspired by traditional Algerian music, and revived
after the First World War in the cosmopolitan city of Oran, then split
between Arab, Jewish, French and Spanish quarters, as were most multi-
cultural cities in the Middle East in the first half of the twentieth century.
Raï itself was born of subversion and fusion. Rejecting what they con-
sidered to be the stilted classical sung poetry of al-Andalus, young North
African singers mixed Bedouin and Western music into a hybrid genre.
As a new urban social class emerged at the time of the French colonial
expansion in the 1950s, some took to the streets to sing zendanis, protest
songs narrating their poor conditions of existence. They often punctu-
ated their singing with the exclamation ‘raï’, which means ‘opinion’.
More politically engaged performers aiming to sing protest music saw
‘raï’ as a potential vehicle for it. Yet the mainstream journey of raï started
as rebellious and alternative music grew in popularity beyond Algeria. As
Frank Tenaille (2002) showed in his short history of the genre, raï suc-
cessfully pre-empted the fusion music of the late twentieth century. From
jazz to French ‘yéyé’, rock and roll to reggae, funk to punk, new styles
were incorporated into contemporary pop raï. The exotic accents of this
new genre, combined with mainstream popular styles, made raï attractive
to a global audience, attracted to songs of protest and provocation at the
end of the twentieth century. For Taha, who always professed his desire
134 L. Desblache
for peaceful integration, raï, with its traditional roots could be trans-
formed beyond recognition and subverted while keeping a strong refer-
ence to Algerian identity. It was the perfect vessel for voicing this desire.
It also allowed a conversation, however provocative, between North
Africans and ‘beurs’, as well as between French traditionalists and young
music lovers world-wide as they enjoyed the creolisation of new forms
and identified with a sense of displacement between the reality presented
by establishments and the reality of their present lives.
As might be expected, Carla Bruni’s cover of ‘Douce France’ uses
opposite translation strategies to Taha’s, making difference present
through an intimate singer-songwriter’s style. The translation also takes
place musically and verbally, as the song is performed in an Italian ver-
sion. Created in 2011 while she was First Lady of France, ‘Dolce Francia’
was included in the album Little French Songs in 2013, issued a year after
her husband, Nicolas Sarkozy, left the French presidency. This unassum-
ing title breaks potential associations with the high status of the singer. In
Bruni’s cover, the personal, sentimental essence of the original song is
amplified by a tempo which is much slower than the original and blurs
its initial dance rhythm. Her choice of singing the song in her own Italian
translation, in which the lyrics digress from the original at times, and her
individual close-miked vocal style, both express transcultural intimacy
with an immediacy that goes beyond words. The choice of Italian for a
song that is known by all French people and evokes French national iden-
tity sets her apart as an Italian individual addressing a French audience,
in stark contrast to her public persona. It also allows her to express her
views of France, in particular of the cultural France that shaped her and
the songs that she sung—Trénet and Ferrat are mentioned explicitly. And
through her, foreigners who live in France or have cultural links to France
hear France not so much through the ‘the trials of the foreign’ (Berman,
1984) as the voice of the foreign. After all, the album Little French Songs
includes a bilingual song in both English and French, which suggests that
she had an international audience in mind and ‘Little French Song’, a
personal tribute to French-speaking singer-songwriters.
In ‘Dolce Francia’, the use of Italian translated from the French brings
ambiguity. It loosens the song from its original French stereotypes and
inserts a question mark as to whether Bruni’s reminiscences of France
refer to recollections of her life in France or to reminiscences of what

France meant to her as an Italian child: Bruni came to France with her
family at seven years old, and her maternal grand-mother, who lived
with the family, was French. The nostalgia expressed through her husky,
fragile voice is timeless and personal. The vocal contrast with Trénet’s
original piece is strong and part of the song’s mediation. The expression
of musical style is largely dependent on the performers’ body expressions
as well as, in vocal music, on what Roland Barthes called the ‘grain of the
voice’ (Barthes, 1972/1982). Bruni’s intimate performance offers an
opportunity for stepping away from nationalism. This is echoed in the
song arrangement as well, which includes unexpected instruments: a
cello and a Malian kora played respectively by Vincent Segal and Ballaké
Sissoko, two instrumentalists well known in world music for their col-
laboration and hybrid outputs. This distances the style further from
French connotations and gives the sentimental nostalgia of the song a
borderless feel. Svetlana Boym (2001, p. xv), quoted by Susam-Saraeva
(2015, p. 73), observes:
At first glance, nostalgia is a longing for a place, but actually it is a yearning

for a different time—the time of our childhood, the slow rhythms of our
dreams. In a broader sense, nostalgia is rebellion against the modern idea
of time, the time of history and progress. The nostalgic desires to obliterate
history and turn it into private or collective mythology, to revisit time like
space, refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the
human condition.
Adapting style, as mentioned earlier, generally implies adopting social or

personal trends and loosening some of the more flexible musical param-
eters such as tempo or timbre, while keeping others, generally more
directly associated with a musical piece, such as melody or rhythm.
Adaptation is pushed further when genres are blended or dramatically
changed, but somewhat preserved from total fusion. Today, when diver-
sity is being praised as an inescapable feature of the contemporary pop
music scene and when genre models are transgressed and culturally
appropriated ‘the idea of genre has […] fallen out of fashion in pop music
aesthetics’ (James, 2017, p. 21). This is particularly visible in North
136 L. Desblache
American culture, grown out a non-assimilationist tradition. Fabian

Holt, in his volume on Genre in popular music (2007), shows that while
genres constantly transgress boundaries, they are essential markers of dif-
ference in music, and that music depends on difference. I would argue,
however, that their distorted and creative uses, which are driving today’s
popular music, make difference meaningful through parodies, pastiches
or other variations, in two ways: they express a biting critique of past
conventions and categorisations, and they lead to entirely new creative
forms, generally associated with specific countries or ethnicities such as
UK Afrobeat (African and the UK) or reggaeton (Latin America and the
Caribbean). Even if genres are still used as convenient categories to mar-
ket products by the music industry and to keep track of how fast they
evolve, they are no longer the instruments of standardisation which were
once used by music industry corporations. They are tools of reappropria-
tion of the past and of hybridisation of the present. Similarly, both in
literature and in film, existing genres have led to new creative outputs:
Nordic noir novels, for instance, renewed a tired crime thriller tradition.
Parodying styles and genres is often undertaken by non-professional
musicians such as comedians, but can also be used as an instrument of
critique. The art collective Pussy Riot thus chose popular music as their
principal form of expression. Although their members have been working
with seasoned professional musicians in their more recent productions,
originally—their first public events date from 2011—, none of the punk
band’s members had a musical background. Their events give spectacular
illustrations of how musical genres can frame an aesthetic of protest. As
the collective considers them to be political leaflets, they could be called
‘soundtracts’. Yet as Nadya Tolokonnikova, the leader of the group stated,
they decided to be a music band, initially borrowing tracks from British
punk rock bands such as Cockney Rejects and Angelic Upstarts before
members with a music background were involved (Gessen, 2014,
pp. 65–67). These borrowings led to improvisations and translations in
all senses of the word intended to use pop music politically, in order to
bring forth and fissure social structures of repression. Unlike pop, which
often endorses conventions, rock and punk both have a rebellious history,
and use a violent language of liberation in answer to the violent language
of oppression and control. The punk spirit allowed seemingly spontaneous,
although carefully constructed performative references from which to

establish their protest, as Ivan Gololobov and Yngvar Steinholt note
(2012, p. 250). Their first song using English was recorded only in 2016,
so in their earlier work, the music and visuals mostly expressed their
rebellious message to non-Russian audiences. They did so effectively,
hence their rapid rise to global fame. Polly McMichael (2013, p. 101) is
one of the few scholars to stress the importance of music in Pussy Riot’s
performances, and in particular, of recognisable, stylised musical elements:
The group interpreted and performed an idea of punk rock and of musical
authorship as inherited from both sides of the old Cold War divide, placing
it in a new context of activism catalyzed by the global financial crisis and
protests that were aided and disseminated by new media.
Their provocative music videos were initially in punk-rock style, with the
music leaning more towards rock while the visuals, with their spontane-
ous, disquieting succession, were more akin to punk style. As the
production of the clips became more sophisticated, a variety of musical
genres was woven into the soundtrack. Since 2014, they have been includ-
ing electronic dance music, punk, rap, rock, Russian orthodox choral
music and latino dances, deliberately hybrid settings for the unsettling
lyrics and images of their fearless protests. This is, as has been suggested
earlier, in line with the current practice of pop music which meanders
through a multitude of genres, hybridising them most of the time. It also
echoes the listening habits of twenty-first century audiences, no longer
loyal to specific styles or genres and defined by their eclectic tastes.
While Pussy Riot’s lyrics are always sung by one voice or in a unison
chorus, instrumental arrangements and musical forms vary. In the out-
puts of the art collective preceding 2015, instrumental arrangements ‘are
based on fast-paced non-syncopated drum tracks and fast-played electric
guitar chords in straightforward harmonic relations to one another,
underpinned by a driving distorted electric bass line’ (McMichael, 2013,
p. 105). While unexpected images and disruptive lyrics run to stimulate
or shock their viewers, the music remains in some ways steady and pre-
dictable, particularly as regards the tempi chosen. Pussy Riot’s perfor-
mances moved away from collective live flash events and gave way to new
138 L. Desblache
media recordings—which became increasingly relayed by the interna-

tional press. This echoes a general decrease in the staging of flash events.
Extremely successful in the 2000s, they lost popularity in the second
decade of the twenty-first century as they came to be used more commer-
cially. The last entry posted on the Pussy Riot live events journal, save for
friends’ contributions, is provocatively dated 4th March 2024 but
recorded as 8th June 2015, and is entitled ‘Pussy Riot is dead’ (Pussy
Riot, 2015). Since then, the collective has been active on social media
and has announced a more traditionally produced, solo driven album
which combines several musical genres. Those are juxtaposed rather than
fused. The sharp contrast between them highlights harsh, untold realities
of human oppression against smooth, neutral television news reading and
the sadistic voyeurism of torture. Unlike Rachid Taha’s musical fusion
aimed at bringing forth facets of an unacknowledged past into the pres-
ent, Pussy Riot juxtaposes music with contrasting styles to evoke a dys-
topic future.
‘Make America Great Again’ (Pussy Riot, 2016a) was made public just
before the USA presidential election on the 27th October 2016. It was
the most viral track on Spotify globally the week after the release of the
first EP album of the group, xxx (2016b). The clip is performed by Nadya
Tolokonnikova with a background chorus of actors. The EP includes two
other tracks also released as music videos the previous week: ‘Straight
Outta Vagina’ and ‘Organs’. Although the album only mentions her first
name, ‘starring Nadya’, the anonymous presentation typical of the previ-
ous Pussy Riot clips is no longer a feature. Musically, this is a mature
album, written and produced by Grammy award producer Ricky Reed
and award-winning music video director Jonas Åkerlund. Politically, it is
a full attack on the biopolitics of the United States. The video opens on a
televised news bulletin preceded by typically innocuous news music
which sets the scene in the 2016 USA presidential election context. It
includes real excerpts of Trump’s election campaign which give way to
torture scenes of Nadya who is being branded with signs such as ‘out-
sider’, ‘fat pig’, ‘pervert’ or ‘just had an abortion’, and eventually killed.
They are interspaced with a female Trump agent singing prophesies of
what the world would be under Donald Trump’s presidency. Other images
include reconstructed news clips and set-up torture scenes peppered
with intertextual references to colourful balaclavas evoking Pussy Riot,

Nazi symbols, and Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Nadya is the sole
actor in the clip, representing in turn a news reader whose supposed neu-
trality shows pro-Trump enthusiasm, an abused female victim and a
female sadistic government official perpetrating torture. This is an effec-
tive strategy used to suggest that women are not only victims of the vio-
lence that is at the heart of patriarchy in contemporary America, but can
also be passive observers of it and misogynistic agents of this patriarchy.
It is also in line with Pussy Riot’s anti-stigmatisation ethics which do not
blame individuals but aim to sharpen their awareness. Treating audiences
in non-judgemental and non-patronising ways though, does not imply
compromising the daring content of performances. Shocking visual vio-
lence is the most striking element of the clip. It is framed by the English
lyrics of the song, and the reconstruction of the news with its factual
verbal delivery. The choice of innocuously seductive Latin American
music which is at the same time associated with the perpetrator of vio-
lence and accompanies the lyrics of an anti-Trump poem broadens the
meaning of the performance.
With this recorded performance, Pussy Riot moves away from the bor-
rowed punk rock style of their early musical events. Two contrasting
musical genres, which are used discretely, playing against each other
rather than fusing with each other, are used as the backdrop of the clip.
They match two contrasting styles: news bulletin introductory music and
a Latin American song. The song is a bossa-nova, reminiscent of the 1964
world hit ‘Girl from Ipanema’. It starts and finishes with the voice scat-
ting the rhythm a cappella. The choice of an intimate genre associated
with seduction, generally performed with light instrumentation or with
guitars and voice is in sharp contrast with the brutal violence of the
images. Born of a mix of samba and jazz, bossa-nova is instantly recogni-
sable as Brazilian, with its slow binary syncopated rhythm and soft guitar
instrumentation. It accompanies both the torture scenes—it is associated
with the sadistic USA official enjoying the harming of a young woman—,
and the same official singing a song at her desk. The song is sung in lan-
guid, dispassionate tones that echo the original timbre of Astrud Gilberto,
who made ‘Girl of Ipanema’ famous. Gilberto’s ‘doe-eyed, vacant stare,
set off by girlish brown bangs, evoked every straight man’s daydream of
140 L. Desblache
an exotic, submissive woman in a bikini’ (Gavin, n.d.). This implicit idea

of submission permeates the music and is expressed by it. By contrast,
this musical backdrop is used as Nadya sings the alternative American
dream, dressed and made up in a uniform and colours conjuring the flag
of the United States. Unexpectedly and perversely, Nadya also plays the
role of the sadistic perpetrator of torture who sings an alternative view of
the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’, reversing Trump’s themes to
show how America could really be great again in a non-racist, non-vio-
lent society.
The three musical examples above have exemplified the key role that
the use of musical genres and styles can play in giving music different
layers of meaning. Style combinations and hybridisations are not always
successful of course: Beyoncé’s debut as Carmen in the 2001 hip-hop
opera, based on Georges Bizet’s masterpiece and on its Afro American
musical adaptation Carmen Jones, was certainly not the most convincing
musical piece. Besides, it is difficult to isolate genres and styles from other
musical elements, as has been mentioned above with tempi, rhythms and
beats for instance. Yet because they are associated with structured forms,
they can and do play a crucial role in both ensuring a referential presence
and allowing the translation and transgression of these past references
and stereotypes.
4.2.2 Rhythms, Tempi and Beats
Some have described music as an ‘art of time’ rather than an ‘art of sound’
(Alperson, 1980). This understanding is justified, since rhythms, tempi
and beats are the main parameters that embody it in a moving moment.
Rhythm is strongly associated with tempo, which refers to a choice of
speed, and beat, primarily defined as the unit of time that structures a
piece. The notion of rhythm, though, ‘has no owner’ (Hoogstad
& Stougaard Pedersen, 2013, p. 11) and is used not only in music, but
also in medicine, literature, philosophy, art and with general reference to
life. For most translation scholars, it would be fair to say that translating
rhythm relates to poetry, fiction or creative texts such as advertising. It
equates to translating language in movement. It may include translating
meter but is not limited to this, since a static transfer of versification or

any poetic language, even in prose, can take all meaningful life out of a
text. Clive Scott (2011, p. 101), who works on issues regarding the musi-
cality of poetry, emphasises that ‘[i]n a translational context at least,
metre is a dulling of the senses, and a warrant for keeping one’s senses
dulled’ if it is not accompanied by a transformative rhythm. Translating
rhythm also evokes the mediation of theatrical performances which can
be produced at different speeds, both verbally and as regards staging
(Baines & Dalmasso, 2011). It can illustrate how a language may be
pushed beyond its expected linguistic rules and structures through the
imaginative distortions of translation (Karsky, 2015). These rhythmic
variations primarily relate to verbal language, which may be one of the
components of musical texts, but may not feature at all in them.
Today, many musicians compete to be ever louder and faster, and time
is stringently structured in everyday life. Current values of rhythm and its
increasingly strong structuring into beats, which mark repetitive periodic
patterns, reflect what can be perceived as both an acceleration and a
quantification of time. In music, rhythm is inseparable from beat, mea-
sure and tempo. In fact, rhythm has increasingly been measured through
those since the nineteenth century. Echo Nest, a platform owned by
Spotify, in a survey on the use of tempi and what they name ‘energy’, ‘a
combination of beat, loudness, structural changes and sounds of the
instruments’, state that since the 1950s, tempi have accelerated to a peak
of speed between 1980 and 1983 (Echo Nest, 2013a) but that Western
music lovers are hungry for ever more ‘energy’ (Echo Nest, 2013b). This
is probably due to the fact that most popular music consumption is in
hip-hop or related genres (Hooton, 2015), which require a relatively slow
tempo, or dance music, which favours tempi relating to human heart
beat. Today’s popular music is primarily composed for its ‘danceability’ or
‘rapability’. This means that save for some genres such as singer songwrit-
ing, which is more flexible in terms of speed and timing, tempi for most
pop music range between 95 and 140 beats per minute. A study of the
top hundred songs on Spotify in 2015 found that 120 beats per minute
was both the most common tempo and the median tempo (Strom, 2016).
The effect of technology on popular music has been to reduce both the
variance of tempi and the capacity to produce beat flexibly. In classical
142 L. Desblache
music for instance, it would be absurd to calculate an average speed.

Tempi are not only extremely varied, they are also attached to specific
genres or styles, as mentioned in the section above. Besides, the sequenc-
ing of beats in music, when it is not produced by technology, is more
flexible. Temporary changes in speed, such as rallentando or stringendo,
are frequently requested by composers; different performers and conduc-
tors choose different speeds; and finally, in some traditional genres, irreg-
ularity is expected. Viennese waltzes for instance, epitomised by Johann
Strauss’s ‘Blue Danube’ (1866), are based on the ternary rhythm associ-
ated with any waltz, generally in 3/4 time, but the second crochet of each
bar is generally played slightly early to give it its particular style and its
light touch. Tempi and rhythms are also translated differently according
to the medium chosen by the composer or performer. A musical piece
can be performed at different speeds for contrasts. For instance, Brahms’
Hungarian Waltzes, published between 1869 and 1880, were inspired by
genuine Hungarian dances, but those meant to be played by an orchestra
are much slower than similar waltzes interpreted by a few gipsy string
instrumentalists.
With reference to music, some have considered the role that collective
responses to rhythms have played in human history, in the pursuit of
power, excitement or war, such as in marching with military bands or
entering trances in responses to religious dances (McNeill, 1997). Others
placed rhythm in history within a specific musical genre (Butler, 2006),
analysed how rhythmic sequences relate to specific ethnic identities
(Fuhr, 2013), or studied how rhythms have been beaten at particular
points in time and space (Grant, 2015). Jenny Fuhr (2013, p. 23) holds
the view that ‘rhythm appears to be the starting point for musicians’
search of a collective identity. Since it is linked to dance and body move-
ments in ways that other elements are not, rhythms lead to collective
actions. In particular, musical rhythms translate into social rhythms.
Key moments of change in society are echoed, and some would say
pre-empted, by musical styles driven by new uses and perceptions of
rhythm. The rapid penetration of jazz in Europe in the years following
World War I is a good example of this. For saxophonist Sonny Rollins,
‘the whole idea of jazz is political because jazz is freedom’ (Bölke &
Enoch, 2013, p. 4). Jazz broke not only musical barriers but also social
and racial ones as black musicians gained recognition in dominant white

societies. A transnational, primarily collective musical genre drawing on
oral recollections, jazz translated old rhythms into new ones, structured
improvisations in ways that showed that something could be built from
nothing, and allowed people to move freely. Rhythms were dislocated,
borrowed from different cultures, superimposed and rearranged mean-
ingfully. As it gained audiences, jazz provided a space for new beginnings
in a post-war, disillusioned and demolished Europe. It became music for
moving more than for listening. Early jazz was frowned upon by the
establishment as protest music, and this is why it penetrated society as
instrumental music, a safer space for shared, but unnamed ideas perhaps.
In the early twentieth century, two main strands of music co-existed in
Western societies: popular music was primarily the realm of largely con-
ventional songs, and classical music held the fort of conservative culture.
In Britain, jazz broke through as ‘hot’ dance music, initially performed by
white musicians such as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and later
through ‘rhythm clubs’. The first Parlophone and HMV recordings of the
‘Rhythm style’ and ‘Hot rhythm’ series issued in the USA at the end of
the 1920s, as jazz was becoming more mainstream and global, advertised
their products as ‘performances illustrating the most advanced trains of
thought in modern rhythmic interpretation’ (HMV 1931 catalogue in
Davies, 2014, p. 15). Rhythm was undoubtedly what cut through con-
vention and allowed not just moving, but moving on. It not only influ-
enced all developments of contemporary music but also led to
extraordinarily strong movements of social cohesion: new dynamics of
popular dancing which reflected urban realities; an open door to racial
integration as the talent of black people became recognised; and finally,
the beginning of a border meltdown as far as different styles were con-
cerned. Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts, including the one hosted in
1973 at Westminster Abbey on United Nations Day, are powerful sym-
bols of how quickly new expression of rhythm contributed to dissolv-
ing barriers.
It may be useful here to borrow aspects from Adam Ockelford’s psy-
chomusicological zygonic approach. This approach ‘suggests that it is a
sense of derivation stemming from one musical element imitating another
that is important in creating the sense of narrative in music. The easiest
144 L. Desblache
place to hear the theory in action is in “canons” which are explicitly struc-
tured through repetition: one musical line consciously being made to
copy another’ (Ockelford, 2013, p. 16). Ockelford uses this framework
primarily to discuss musical influence and development in children with
complex needs, in the field of psychology. Nevertheless, there is scope to
consider this model to explore how imitation and derivation in music
allow listeners to perceive different musical cultures. Cases of ‘poly-
rhythm’ which combine contrasting rhythms, offer listeners a layer of
repetitive references which creates expectations of recurrent beats or pat-
terns and another layer deriving from those or contrasting with them.
Examples taken from Bartók, Stravinsky and from the British Indian
singer Susheela Raman will be discussed later in this regard.
Musical rhythm is understood differently whether in relation to instru-
mental music or to music involving words, which has implications for
verbal translation. In both cases, it refers to patterns of sound, pulses or
words. Yet the rhythms of words are not only different from those of
sounds, they can express linguistic meaning while the latter are abstract.
Speech and music are processed differently by the brain: in music, rhythm
is the most important element that allows sound patterns to be meaning-
ful, unlike in speech, as neurologists discovered in the late twentieth cen-
tury (Thaut, 2005).
In vocal music, the rhythms of musical and verbal languages co-exist
in contrast or harmony. When the lyrics are transferred into another lan-
guage, the rhythmic correspondences chosen by a composer or a per-
former, essential when the text is sung, can dissolve. Finding solutions to
ensure that the lyrics fit the stresses of the music and respect the original
intention regarding rhyming is an arduous task for any translator. These
challenges have been considered by several scholars (Apter & Herman,
2016; Franzon, 2008; Low, 2016) and issues concerning vocal music will
be discussed in Chap. 5 (Sect. 5.1). Here, the aspects of translation relat-
ing to tempo and rhythm in performance and composition are high-
lighted. Apart from the musical arrangement of a song, the individual
timbre of voice and the singer’s personality, speed is the most apparent
vector of change in a cover, as the table below, giving a sample of Jacques
Brel’s famous song ‘Ne me quitte pas’, originally recorded in 1959, shows.
Nearly 200 covers of this song have been commercially recorded in the
original French or in translation. The small selection below includes

eleven versions, here selected in French for comparability of text, which
have all been recorded for an album and are faithful versions of the origi-
nal (Table 4.1).
Large variations in tempi occur in the interpretations, as evidenced
above, with Barbara’s fast poetic declamation by far the shortest, well
under two minutes shorter than the longest version, even though it
includes an instrumental introduction. Céline Dion’s version, at the other
end of the spectrum, is twice as slow and much more lyrical in style.
Some versions, such as Sting’s, remain similar to the original in most
respects but that of speed: Sting’s cover is only made different though the
inclusions of silences and rhythmic stretches, particularly towards the end.
In vocal performances, music and language rhythms are strongly
linked. Words usually have to follow musical rhythms, however, some
composers write music which espouses language, and rhythm thus
becomes cultural through language. In her book on Malagasy music,
Jenny Fuhr, who performs traditional Malagasy music although she is
originally trained as a Western musician, discusses the interaction between
musical and linguistic rhythms in traditional music:
The more I engage in singing, the more I understand the direct link
between the Malagasy language and the rhythmical structure of the music.
[In contemporary Malagasy music,] ‘rhythm’ plays a crucial role as the
starting point for the musician’s search for a collective identity. (2013,
pp. 179, 180)
Composers are aware and sometimes wary of the challenges regarding the
relationships between verbal and musical languages. Most music makers
who write or perform vocal music transmute rhythms to adjust to the
demands of language. Béla Bartók, who based much of his music on the
adaptation of Hungarian and other central European folk songs, stresses
how each language affects rhythm, and therefore how rhythms are influ-
enced by culture:
Three kinds of rhythms prevail in Eastern European rural music. First is the
parlando-rubato, that is, free declamatory rhythm without regular bars or
Table 4.1 Jacques Brel’s ‘Ne me quitte pas’: table of cover examples
Duration of Instrumental
Recording date Singer the recording introduction Accompaniment Album
1959 (original recording) Simone 3’17 13” Orchestra Ne me quitte pas.
Langlois Philips
1959 Jacques Brel 3’50 19” Ondes martenot, piano La Valse à mille temps.
and orchestra Philips
1961 Barbara 1’57 12” Piano Barbara chante Brel.
Odéon
1965 Nina Simone 3’35 0 Orchestra I put a spell on you.
Philips
1971 Vicky Leandros 3’25 7” Guitar Ich Bin
Philips
1972 Jacques Brel 4’05 38” Ondes martenot, piano Ne me quitte pas.
and orchestra Barclay
1993 Sting 3’30 6” (The song is recorded live Shape of my heart.
for the album) CD Digipack
Piano A&M records
1996 Yves Duteil 3’32 0 Piano 1962. Les plus belles
chansons françaises.
Atlas
1998 Hugues Aufray 3’20 11” Light orchestra Ils chantent Jacques
Brel.
Atlas
2012 Céline Dion 4’10 0 Piano Sans attendre.
Columbia, Epic
2013 Juliette Gréco 3’56 0 Orchestra Gréco Chante Brel.
Deutsche Grammophon
regular time signatures. […] Second is the more or less rigid rhythm, with
regular set bars, generally in 2/4 time. […] The third kind of rhythm is the
so-called dotted rhythm especially characteristic for certain types of
Hungarian rural music. […] I must lay the stress on the fact that these dot-
ted rhythm patterns originate in the metrical peculiarities and the accen-
tuation of the Hungarian language. […] Our third and perhaps most
important rhythmic source, […] of vocal origin, […] can be transferred
into purely instrumental music. (Bartók, 1943, pp. 383, 384, 389)
The debate around harmony or rivalry between music and words goes as
far back as music history can be traced down and is often political. In the
fourteenth century and right through the Counter-Reformation period
for instance, the Roman Catholic Church pushed for bans on vocal com-
positions that obscured the intelligibility of the words in sacred music.
This led to a stricter polyphonic style, characterised by two or more voices
singing simultaneously and epitomised by Roman Renaissance composer
Palestrina’s religious pieces. The question of the intelligibility of words is
also frequently discussed. It has been the theme of several operas, includ-
ing Richard Strauss’s final opera Capriccio. Singer-songwriters and folk
musicians are often led by the prosody of the words, but for many com-
posers, music rules over words. As Mozart famously wrote in a letter to
his father of the 13th October 1781 with reference to his first opera, ‘Bei
einer Opera muß schlechterdings die Poesie der Musik gehorsame Tochter sein’
(Mozart, 2018, p. 150). Nevertheless, no musician would deny that
words influence musical choices in order to mediate the sung text, rhyth-
mically and melodically. The prosodic features of a language, the typical
intonations and syllabic stresses that contribute to the making of that
very language, determine its rhythm and lead to a musical prosody when
a text is set to music. These challenges are heightened by the transnational
and performative nature of music, as singers, producers, audiences may
not be fluent in the languages used in a composition or performance.
Composers, of course, use rhythm creatively and controversially, delib-
erately building tension between words and music by using words pri-
marily as sounds rather than semantic units of meaning. The case of
Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress (1949/1951) is a good illustration of a conten-
tious use of words in music. Stravinsky’s only opera is a pastiche of
148 L. Desblache
e ighteenth century opera on a libretto skilfully crafted by W. H. Auden

and Chester Kallman, in verse for the formal ensembles and in prose for
the recitatives. The American conductor and close collaborator of
Stravinsky, Robert Craft, played a large role in giving the composer guid-
ance regarding English during its composition and staging period. He
notes that, in the early days of the creation of this opera, Stravinsky’s
musical ideas started with rhythms:
In setting words Stravinsky began by writing rhythms in musical notation

above them, note-stems with beams indicating time values—quarters
(crotchets), eighths (quavers), sixteenths (semiquavers), thirty-seconds
(demisemiquavers), triplets, and so forth. In the act of doing this, melodic
or intervallic ideas would occur to him, and be included either in the same
line or just above. In Shadow’s ‘giddy multitude’ aria, for example, the
pitches and harmony given to the words, ‘ought of their duties’, came to
the composer’s imagination during his preliminary sketch of rhythms, and
it remained unchanged to the final score. (Craft, 1994)
Throughout the opera, forms, melodies and orchestration are faithful

replications of the style of eighteenth century composers such as Bach
and Mozart. Apart from some bi-tonal passages that register parodic dis-
sonances, the music is more imitated than adapted. Rhythm is the main
agent of displacement in this piece, and distortions happen primarily in
relation to the lyrics. In vocal music, this deliberate dislocation of rhythm,
meter and accentuation, takes place principally in structured sections
such as arias or ensembles rather than in the spoken style of recitatives.
For many, including the novelist, composer and translator Anthony
Burgess (1985, p. 10), Stravinsky’s approach to speech stress is ‘cavalier’
and unacceptably disruptive. But for the Russian composer, his deliberate
interference in verbal accentuation is intended to have a strong effect on
the listener. Long before The Rake’s Progress, Stravinsky applied this sub-
versive strategy to some of his vocal work using Russian texts, such as in
Les Noces for instance, as Chandler Carter (2010), Pieter van den Toorn
(2004) and Richard Taruskin (1996) have demonstrated. Yet in The Rake’s
Progress, rhythmic displacements happen through unexpected syllabic
accentuation in the sung text in a language that is neither his own nor
one that he masters well, and the results are sometimes peculiar. According
to Robert Craft (1958, p. 74), this treatment of the poem was intended.
Although the composer asked his English-native speaker’s opinion on his
setting of words in compositions, he never followed his advice. What
mattered to him was the musicality of the words as he intended it in the
context of his musical piece.
Stravinsky undoubtedly intended rhythmic and meters displacements.
In the first scene of the third act of the opera, Sellem, the auctioneer who
sells the possessions of the ruined Tom Rakewell, enumerates objects
which include Baba the Turk herself, immobile in a corner of the room.
The misaccentuation of most words adds to the strangeness of the scene
as the excerpt below shows (strong beats have been highlighted in bold):
An unknown object draws us near.

A cake? An organ? Golden Apple Tree?
A block of copal? Mint of Alchemy?
Oracle? Pillar? Octopus? (Stravinsky, 1951, p. 289)4
Stravinsky’s English was not fluent and these subversions, although they
mirror asymmetries and unusual situations in the opera, can prevent the
comprehension of the text and obscure the meaning of the piece. This is
especially the case in a libretto that is more sophisticated than most as it
parodies eighteenth century texts, whereas libretti overall tend to aim for
simplicity. In the tender lullaby sung by Anne Truelove in the third scene
of the third act, the misaccentuation of the poem also creates a sense of
unease, and even, emotional distance, as Chandler Carter (2010, p. 610)
has noted. Stravinsky may have wished to prevent sentimentality through
rhythmic displacement, but neither the poem nor the lyrical expressive-
ness and gentle ostinato orchestration call for irony or parody at this
point, and the stressed syllables on strong beats do, in fact, mar the natu-
ralness of the prosody in a way that is perhaps not fully envisaged, as
misaccentuations are not meaningful in English in the way that they
could be in Russian or French, the languages that Stravinsky knew well.
Unexpected changes in tempi, beat and rhythm can of course be spec-
tacular agents of variation in instrumental music. To stay with the exam-
ple of Stravinsky, long before The Rake’s Progress was composed late in his
150 L. Desblache
life, the composer’s rebellious treatment of rhythm was key to his musical
genius, and in particular to his commitment to alter musical traditions
which made him famous from the scandalous opening of The Rite of
Spring in 1913. This priority given to bending rhythms is the signature of
his original style. In instrumental music, this has been his main strategy
for bringing change into tradition, for spicing melodic references. While
music is only meaningful through the holistic interaction of all its param-
eters, rhythm seems to be the most self-sufficient among them. Melodies
or harmonies cannot survive without rhythm, but rhythm can survive
without them. It gives melodies and harmonies dynamic power.
Rhythm thus refers to the experience of constructing, dividing and
perceiving sound events in time. It can be the voice of dissent and mar-
ginalisation, introducing change and rebellion into mainstream cultural
products. This has been the case for most twentieth century music, influ-
enced directly or indirectly by African rhythms, which favour syncopated
patterns, that is, rhythms that do not fall on an expected beat. These pat-
terns are at the root of most musical genres from spirituals to reggae and
various jazz forms. Rhythm is the perfect agent of the unexpected, the
dialectical companion to a steady beat, Gaston Bachelard, author of The
dialectic of duration (1936/2016), might have said. It allows variations,
changes in movement against or around the points of reference that a
steady beat provides.
Rhythm can be strongly associated with a specific culture, as listeners
from different ethnic backgrounds have particular expectations of how
temporal structures should run. It also thrives on co-existences, displace-
ments and combinations. The tango is perhaps the most successful exam-
ple of a musical form that keeps an identity through its immediately
recognisable rhythm and time signature while constantly evolving, as all
other parameters, from tempo to instrumentation, change according to
where and when it is played. It originated in Argentina, a country nearly
entirely populated through immigration in the nineteenth century, and
culturally defined by its fusions, borrowings, and parodic or nostalgic
references to past and present. This sets this musical form apart from
most other South American forms in that the tango evolved, and still
evolves, by absorbing a particularly wide range of influences: Cuban
habanera—from which it borrowed its distinctive rhythm—, African
candombe, and many European genres including mazurkas, French con-

tredanse, Italian canzione, as well as gipsy and Yiddish folklore. Tango is
perhaps the best illustration of the famous Argentinian saying that
‘Mexicans are descended from the Aztecs, Peruvians from the Incas, but
Argentinians from ships’: a dance that is not rooted in one main cultural
reference and dresses a unique rhythm in many guises.
Many traditional musics, particularly in Africa, Arab countries and
central Europe, have used the combination of two or more contrasting
rhythmic parts for centuries. These parts, intended to be played simulta-
neously, may superimpose a binary rhythm—that of a march for
instance—on a ternary rhythm—that of a waltz. At the beginning of the
twentieth century, these combinations became extremely common in all
music styles from jazz to pop and classical. They echoed a world of
polyphony that was too complex to be deciphered unilaterally any longer,
which favoured cross-cultural fertilisation and which also could make
reference to traditional music. Polyrhythm is an incarnation of what most
prominent theorists of the twentieth century from Mikhail Bakhtin
(1981) or Roland Barthes have argued: that things, including cultures, do
not exist in themselves but co-exist in relation to each other.
Polyphony is particularly visible in rhythmic language from the begin-
ning of the twentieth century onwards. The excerpt below is a duo for two
violins composed by Bartók which gives a clear example of co-existing
contrasting rhythms. Although the two violins start with a similar time
signature of 6/8, which means that the value of six quavers is included in
each bar, the last two bars of the excerpts show that they play simultane-
ously different time signatures: the first violin plays one 6/8 bar followed
by a 5/8 bar (the value of 5 quavers must be included in each bar); mean-
while the second violin plays a bar of 5/8 followed by a bar of 3/4 (the
value of 3 crochets must be included in each bar). In Western music, at
least since the sixteenth century, patterns of rhythms have been organised
within bars, represented as the spaces between two lines on a musical
score such as the one below; the first beat in each bar is generally stressed.
It has to be added that this transcription convention and artificial way of
assembling beats, universal in post-Renaissance Western music, has been
criticised, in particular by ethnomusicologists, as inadequate for record-
ing accurately many traditional musics, as the duration of beats can be
152 L. Desblache
irregular and not periodically recurrent (Clayton, 1996). Jazz allows for
improvisation and asymmetries, but twentieth century classical compos-
ers often felt restricted by a rhythmic alphabet that no longer suited their
rhythmic language. Aaron Copland (1976b), for instance, explored pos-
sibilities in new notations of rhythm within the traditional Western
system of musical writing. Many, such as Bartók, used Western notations
as a convenience to transfer the irregularities of folklore on to a written page.
In the two-voice piece mentioned above, the rhythmic counterpoint
which results in asymmetrical cadences chasing each other playfully is all
the more apparent in view of the simplicity of the two melodic lines
(Fig. 4.1).
Contemporary popular music, particularly world music in its broadest
sense, thrives not only on such polyrhythmic strategies, but more broadly
on the superimposition and blending of beats characteristic of specific
‘global’ musical styles, and more sophisticated ‘local’ rhythmic patterns.
The fusion of traditional and/or non-Western classical music with a
Western musical structure can lead to a product which loses its soul and
authenticity as it is absorbed by repetitive beats and chords. While this
may be true of neo-folk or ethnic music marketed in the world music
category for the largest possible audience, as already discussed (Part I,
Fig. 4.1 Excerpt from Béla Bartók, 44 Duos for Violin, volume 2, ‘New
Year’s Song’
Sect. 2.2), these techniques can benefit musics that favour intersections
between different styles.
A good example of such creativity is the inventive music of British
singer of South Indian origin Susheela Raman. Although her music is
embedded in a range of Western popular styles from Chicago blues to
soul and art-house rock, it primarily mediates South Indian music for
contemporary audiences across a range of musical traditions. Raman’s
background in Carnatic singing means that her musical mother tongue is
South Indian, even though she, in her own words (Omkar & Raman,
2017), never felt very close to the Asian underground movement present
in Britain and in Australia, the two countries where she grew up. Her
long-term collaboration with acoustic guitarist, producer and ‘world’
music composer Sam Mills led to a series of experimental albums which
aim to interpret Indian, and primarily South Indian music through a
range of diverse musical traditions or, less frequently, Western songs with
Indian twists. Her music is always fresh and unpredictable, drawing on
different styles and what she calls ‘illicit’ geographies (Raman, 2005). It
stays clear of the traps of global world music, which is perhaps why she
was the first world music singer to be nominated for a Mercury Music
Prize in 2001. She and Mills use a range of strategies to connect East and
West effectively. They entail multilingualism (English, French, Tamil,
Panjabi, Urdu, Marwari, Bengali, Sanskrit and even occasional Latin
words are included) and musical parameters which include a wide rang-
ing orchestration, Western and non-Western performers using standard
tonal as well as modal music. But the most important agent of cross-
culturalism in her music is rhythm. It is primarily through rhythms that
she reworks traditional Indian Carnatic songs, giving them Western hues,
or covers Western songs from Dylan to the Beatles into Anglo-Indian
music. First and foremost, she superimposes recurrent beats associated
with Western style with complex patterns, the ‘tals’ that structure Indian
musical improvisation and African rhythms. For instance, one of the
tracks that attracted the public’s attention is ‘Ganapati’, a song celebrat-
ing the powers of the Hindu deity Ganesh in Sanskrit, included in her
first album Salt Rain (2001). The melismas of the voice—melismas are
strings of notes sung to one syllable of text—are answered here and there
by the unexpected outbreaks of classical cello, acoustic guitar and bass,
154 L. Desblache
which adds to the cosmopolitanism of the song. Yet it is the use of

rhythms that gives the song its constant transnational dimension. It
includes a wide range of percussion instruments—Indian tabla and
dholak, African drums, bongos, congas, surdo, claypot and shakers—
which puts the Indian tradition in a transcultural context. To borrow
terms once more from Ockelford’s zygonic theory of music, her songs
play with repetitions—steady guitar riffs occasionally peak into furious
solos—which give birth to a succession of multicultural derivations.
Listeners make their own imaginary connections as African and Indian
traditional instruments (including the voice, also used percussively at
times) call, respond and dialogue with European ones. They contrast
with or borrow from each other, taking the audience on a transcultural
journey. Raman works from what can be considered as a minor musical
idiom (South Indian) into major ones (African and Western). She medi-
ates Indian music, relatively unknown and challenging to listen to for
those who are not familiar with it, transcreating its rhythms in ways that
make them meaningful for listeners. This goes against the mainstream
flow of translation in media cultural products, which are mostly trans-
lated into minor languages. As all audiovisual translators know, most
films are translated from American English into less dominant languages
and cultures (see Part III (Sect. 8.4)). Music is one of the few cultural
fields in which the opposite is relatively common. Some might argue that
the language of African hand drums is not a mainstream language, but in
music, African rhythm has become mainstream and is the basis for most
contemporary music. Raman also uses this tri-cultural interaction to plu-
ralise music, to give it multiple identities that are meaningful to different
people in different ways.
Susheela Raman’s albums all have Indian traditions at their core, but
these traditions are mediated though different musical cultures: Ethiopian
pop music (Love Trap, 2003), classical Tamil songs infused with blues or
rock (Music for Crocodiles, 2005; Queen Between, 2014; Vel, 2011), Indian
covers of Western tracks from the 1960s and 70s (33 1/3 2007; the EP
Tomorrow Never Knows/Love You To, 2016), Indian and Indonesian music
(Ghost Gamelan, 2018). They are primarily intended for listening rather
than dancing (with some exceptions such as ‘Corn Maiden’ from the
Queen Between album), due to their complex, unexpected rhythms, and
to the use of percussion instruments associated with different ethnic

roots. While a large proportion of popular music today, particularly in
the hip-hop genre, is built on the expression of resentment—‘grime’ for
instance is primarily about letting go of frustrations and aggression—,
Susheela Raman’s songs are songs of integration and discovery: she and
her musicians play for everyone of course, but there is a sense that their
mediation of Indian music is particularly meaningful for non-Asian peo-
ple, curious about ways of life and music from different parts of the globe,
as well as for young Indian listeners or members of the Indian diaspora
who may feel distanced from classical or religious Indian music and want
to reconnect with their culture. In her earlier albums such as Salt Rain,
Raman exposed her listeners to many languages in pieces inspired from
traditional Indian music. In the second decade of the twenty-first cen-
tury, she has put more emphasis on new interpretations of music from
different origins rather than words. In the case of Western music, such as
Tomorrow Never Knows/Love You To, this interpretation does not take
place through the lyrics, which are kept in the original language, but
through the accompanying music, which picks up the Indian theme of
the original but appropriates it once more, in particular through rhythm.
This strategy may have been aimed at her largely European audiences.
Yet even Indians living in India are exposed to ‘Indian’ cultural products
that are increasingly hybrid and integrate elements of Western culture, as
recent Bollywood productions show. Aspects of source cultures, rather
than one source text, as is usually the case in translation, are re-enacted,
engaging with a wide array of target cultures in encounters with an other-
ness that is perceived differently by each listener: a young Asian may
discover a transformed classical Indian music in the twenty-first century
that gives new meaning to an old tradition; an African listener may pon-
der on bridges between African, Indian and Western rhythms; and
Westerners may reflect on how the Beatles, in their album Revolver imag-
ined India in ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and ‘Love You To’, and how, fifty
years later, a British Indian artist is reconnecting them, and all their lis-
teners, with this reconstruction of a 1960s interpretation of Indian cul-
ture. While many aspects of music translation, particularly in vocal music
as shall be seen below, directly relate to European linguistic and cultural
traditions, those relating to rhythm, so often from African origin, and in
156 L. Desblache
the case above, from India, have stretched the limits not only of Western
music, but of Western understanding, beyond what melody and
words could do.
Notes
1. ‘Formalists’ can also be named ‘essentialists’ or ‘absolutists’. They believe
that music only exists within its own world. By contrast, for ‘referential-
ists’, music is intended to trigger extra-musical associations (Meyer
1956/2008). These terms in this book will be used in this musical context
and not in a broader literary or philosophical context.
2. An ekphrasis most commonly refers to the verbal description or evocation
of a work of art which is not verbal, such as a painting.
3. Since 2014, the particular licensing problem Glenn McDonald was refer-
ring to above has been solved by using audio analysis to match up differ-
ent copies of the same song across releases (personal communication of
the author with McDonald, November 21, 2018).
4. © Copyright 1951 by Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd.
Reproduced by permission of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd.
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5
What is Translated: Vocal Music, Voice
and More
The previous chapter considered how music can be translated beyond

words, and how the models of translation suitable for the non-verbal can
break through musical and social borders. For many, these cultural views
of transfer are peripheral to the core notion of translation. People com-
monly equate translating music to the translation of songs and their lyr-
ics. Yet as translation scholars such as Luis Pérez-González (2014a, 2014b)
or Klaus Kaindl (2005) remind us, audiovisual translation, even when
confined to verbal transfer, is not only multimodal but is also shaped by
a range of environmental factors: platforms used for dissemination, audi-
ences targeted, and cultural expectations. In a culture which has shifted
from print to audiovisual, music plays a key role in a wide spectrum of
texts, in which print is no longer at the core of communication.
This means that song translation, even when it is limited to the transfer
lyrics, needs to take a broad spectrum of elements into consideration, as
this section will discuss. First, it will contextualise the practice of transla-
tion for vocal music within the traditions that have led to today’s popular
music; it will then debate the case of non translation in vocal music; a
third section will consider what can be transferred in a voice; finally, we
shall focus on what verbal translation entails in vocal music. As m entioned
in Chap. 1, vocal music has been the topic of most investigations

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54965-5_5
168 L. Desblache
relating to music translation. A number of articles, guides and manuals

have listed the possible and expected ways in which lyrics are transferred
in most contexts. Moreover, the next chapter will give an overview of the
range of strategies used in music translation, particularly in vocal music.
For these reasons, the pages below consider vocal music translation within
the broader movements that have led to the creation of songs as they
thrive today in the popular music sphere. While the history of vocal
music translation has varied according to time, place and style, its main-
stream traditions have been key to how music today is conceived and
performed, be it in high or popular cultures. While music, as we have
seen, has no aesthetic borders, the social models and musical conventions
which shape its notation, transcription, production, reception and dis-
semination are primarily rooted in European traditions, hence the
European focus of the next section.
5.1 Vocal Music and Its European Traditions

Until technology allowed music to be reproduced and disseminated
instantly and ubiquitously in the twentieth century, the translation of
lyrics largely depended on human travel. Folk music, for instance, jour-
neyed by way of migration. Its creators and performers, moving essen-
tially to find work, or being forced to move through slavery or various
forms of press-ganging, were its translators, making it meaningful not
only to their own new ways of life but to the new people they encoun-
tered and interacted with through the narratives of their words and the
tales of their music.
Popular songs and their lyrics were never impervious to influences.
Some cultures had long established systems of transcription and nota-
tion, in particular as regards rhythms, such as in Turkish music for
instance, which developed its notation from both Ancient Greek and
Arabo-Persian traditions. However, most popular vocal music was trans-
mitted orally. This was also the case in Europe, where songs accompanied
ordinary people’s key moments of life such as weddings and burials.
While courtly love songs, as its name suggests, were born among the rich
and educated, social or historical chronicles of the times were sung by the
5 What is Translated: Vocal Music, Voice and More 169
people. In most of Europe, censorship was rife and political songs forbid-
den for centuries. In September 1393 in Paris, for instance, a police order
stated that any text or song mentioning the King, the Pope or the French
nobility was prohibited (Bernhard, 1842, p. 404).
Folk music, mostly associated with rural ways of life, in Europe at
least, was primarily performed locally, often in dialects, but also travelled
across borders well into the first decades of the twentieth century:
‘The Lament of the Robbers’ Bride’ is the same thing in the Balkans, the
Ukraine, and Czechoslovakia; the Romanian Marco and the Turk is a
translation of a Serbian or Bulgarian original. […] The gypsies of southern
Hungary sing ballads of German and Greek origin among others inspired
by the conditions of their own life […]. There is movement of ballads lit-
erature all over Europe, just like the movement of books. The transition is
from mouth-to-mouth and not hand-to-hand. (Entwistle, 1939, p. 77)
Some song collectors, such as Cecil Sharp (Sharp & Campbell, 1917),
who documented how songs migrated from Britain to North America, or
Lajos Vargyas (1983), who investigated folksong borrowings from France
to Italy, Spain and Portugal, showed how dissemination and translation
happen through migration, nomadic ways of life, colonisation and travel.
As predominantly rural ways were overtaken by urban lifestyles from the
end of the eighteenth century, more attention was given to a repertoire
that had previously been taken for granted and was considered part of a
heritage to be preserved. Two attitudes to folk song translation emerged:
it allowed an enlightened interpretation of history but also made it pos-
sible for views on the present to be made.
In the first case, idealisation was usually driven by the (re)-discovery of
a talented artist. In some countries, such as the United Kingdom, the
search for ‘authenticity’ became key to the translation process. It led to
prioritising historical traces in poetic and musical folklore.
Adaptations were made in order to give visibility to an unrecognised
culture and foster its identity, at home and abroad. The English transla-
tion of Ossian by James MacPherson (Ossian & MacPherson, 1760/2010)
in the eighteenth century may well have been pseudo-translations, that is,
original texts deliberately created as translations in order to promote their
170 L. Desblache
international reach (see O’Sullivan, 2011). Whether genuine translations

or not, the texts led to a reinvention of both popular and highbrow music
that not only gave prominence to Gaelic identity in the United Kingdom,
but had a global resonance throughout Europe. Such was its impact that
the reaction of audiences at the time is fully documented, be it through
the individual voices of poets (Goethe and Chateaubriand for instance)
or through broader evidence of influences gathered from different
national literary circles (Gaskill, 2004). The Ossian ‘phenomenon’ led to
a trend of song translation that was instrumental in establishing that a
British identity was not only Anglo-Saxon and Greco-Latin, as the estab-
lishment were keen to believe, but also Celtic. It disseminated values that
pre-empted those of Romanticism: a sense of subjectivity and of a lone
genius figure forgotten or misunderstood; positive relationships with the
natural world; and the importance of resisting domination. Music, absent
from MacPherson’s publications, but associated with many of the texts,
also allowed printed epic poems to be re-inscribed in an oral tradition.
James MacPherson’s publication of Ossian did all these things using sub-
versive and creative translation practices on a scale that perhaps had not
been seen before:
There is probably no more complex and elaborated example in the annals

of Europe of the use of translation to invent new movements, styles and
political departures than this of Ossian, which became itself a form of
‘pseudo-translation’, that is, works by writers masquerading under pseud-
onyms suggestive of dangerous ‘foreigners’ but providing safety for mere
‘translators’. Ossian became the cover name for new initiatives. (Gaskill,
2004, p. x)
While translators such as MacPherson took control of ‘authentic’ source

texts in interpreting—some thought fabricating (O’Reilly, 1830)—them,
others viewed the popular song repertoire as owned by everyone, in ways
which anticipate more closely the trends of popular music today. Music
could be culture-specific, but it could also cross borders: the comparative
and transnational study of similar music available in different written and
oral sources was essential to establish interpretations of history meaning-
ful in the present.
Music translation also entailed gathering collective fragments, com-

paring them and recognising that it was an essential tool to preserve oral
traditions in danger of being lost (Bohlman, 2011, p. 510). This approach,
epitomised by the eighteenth century cosmopolitan and multilingual
intellectual and translator Johan Gottfried Herder, propelled music trans-
lation as a unique tool of modernisation and historical interpretation of
the present, as Philip Bohlman has argued (2011). The composer Johann
Gottfried Herder could thus be seen as an early adept of what Bakhtin
(1981) would later name heteroglossia. He conceived songs as instru-
ments of multiplicity, as platforms allowing multiple interpretations of
life, musically, aesthetically, historically, culturally and socially. He was an
adept of a transnationalism that can also be visible in folk songs, which
often cross borders and languages. Before the twentieth century when
technology made it possible to convert a performance into a sound
recording, folk song transcriptions were the main method for recounting
songs. Such transcriptions were frequently incomplete or inaccurate: the
music may not be provided, or part of the song only may have been tran-
scribed, or a later variation may be the only recorded version. Yet the
reading of these fragments and that of the available layers of their sources,
be they linguistic, musical, historical or performative, became essential to
deciphering their meaning and assessing their influence.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, folk song collections were
often made in the context of emergent nationalisms, as was discussed in
Chap. 2. The work of song gatherers such as Nikolaj Lvov and Ivan Prach,
Julien Tiersot, Joseph Canteloube or Cecil Sharp testifies to this repertoire.
Songs were key in ensuring that local voices could be heard if not globally,
at least nationally. Herder’s work (Herder & von Müller 1807), for
instance, involved broad geographies and led him to pioneer languages in
relay translation—his translation of Madagascan songs into German from
a French translation, for instance—, which has been a common strategy
since the nineteenth century. These song translators can be considered as
the first ethnomusicologists. Most tended to concentrate on their own
culture(s) and had a political agenda as well as a cultural one. They not
only transcribed songs but also dialects, which have sometimes become
extinct as oral cultures have died. They did so, in general, with the aim of
172 L. Desblache
constructing a national culture. Joseph Canteloube thus opens the preface

of the first volume of his Anthologie des chants populaires français:
To know, feel and understand the French soul well, and even more so, to
make it alive, safeguard and touch it, we only need to study and dissemi-
nate French popular songs. […] Popular songs are not, as so many people
believe, a regional form of entertainment, simple, often sentimental or pic-
turesque. Much more so than the work of poets and artists, they constitute
[…] the true national music of France. (Canteloube, 1951/2001, p. 6, 7,
my translation)
A post-World War II statement intended for a bruised France perhaps,

but one that is typical of many European countries of the twentieth cen-
tury. Today, in any case, Canteloube’s transcriptions and translations are
valued not as instruments of unification of France, but as evidence of its
diversity.
A tradition of scores providing two or three linear translations appeared
at the end of the nineteenth century. Previously, songs were either pub-
lished directly in translation or with the original followed by a translation
without music, on the opposite or next page. With these interlinear
translations, below the dialect—for example Occitan or Corsican—was a
singable translation in the main language, for instance French, and some-
times a third international language such as English followed. In France,
until the mid-twentieth century, the use of dialects was actively discour-
aged or even punished, and many scores only offer a French version, or at
least proposed French first, with the dialect below in smaller print. The
position of the original and translated texts varied. In Britain, Irish songs
were always published in English only, while Welsh could be included
along with the English in folk repertoire from Wales. In transcriptions of
foreign songs, English had the prominent position, and a smaller foreign
text was transcribed below in italics, as in Granville Bantok’s 100 folksongs
of all nations, a popular volume in pre-First World War Britain, typical of
practices at the time. Translation, in popular music, until the second half
of the twentieth century, was therefore both a tool of domination,
imposing a main language, and an instrument of preservation. By con-
trast, today, it is essentially an instrument for global outreach.
The translation of popular songs was not confined to that of lyrics of

course. The late nineteenth century and early twentieth century musi-
cologist Julien Tiersot (1903) thus stated in the preface of his volume on
popular songs in the Alps that different variations on the most memora-
ble songs travelled orally, and could be found throughout France and
even in its neighbouring countries. Similar catchy tunes appeared with
different lyrics and slight variations in many provinces: borrowings and
parodies were the most common strategies for song creation, as they are
today. Recording songs by a written form of transcription, dependent on
classical music notation as well as on the ear and subjective interpretation
of the musician(s) transcribing them, were translations in themselves.
They were not always faithful to the original, since the tools of their tran-
scription did not always reflect the exact recording of oral material.
Modes, tones, rhythms and other patterns which did not exist in main-
stream Western music were therefore transcribed approximately. As tech-
nology allowed ethnomusicologists to travel and record music from the
beginning of the twentieth century, extensive sound collections from all
over the world, vocal and instrumental, were gathered. Aural recordings,
available from the early 1900s, gave a more reliable account of a popular
song repertoire which was not created to be written in the first place. One
of the most impressive oral music archives collection, and an open-access
one for the most part, is the one held by the Centre de recherche en ethno-
musicologie in Paris. Such collections are an invaluable starting point to
listen to musics from the past and to imagine their transformations into
the future.
For publicly performed music in the Western world, the situation was
different, primarily in two respects. First of all, the verbal language was
more strongly valued and encouraged as a political tool. The translation
of lyrics into a dominant language was the most common strategy for
widely disseminated music. The use of Latin by the Christian Church
from the fourth century AD marked a change of value from oral tradi-
tions to a written one, which became pervasive in the whole of Europe.
Plainsong, an entirely monophonic form of vocal music, was influenced
by the Jewish singing traditions of melisma, but was also structured
according to the less spontaneous Greek mode system. As Christianity
established itself throughout Europe, the Church’s relationship with
174 L. Desblache
music was at best one of tolerance, with singing valued only as a means
of spreading the Christian doctrine. The aim of plainsong was to give
religious words visibility and power. Music was discovered as the power-
ful vehicle for a lingua franca that it still is today: it both contributed to
the dissemination of the Christian religion throughout the Roman and
post-Roman worlds, similarly to the way English in pop music is pres-
ently used to disseminate Anglo-Saxon values, and to spread a consump-
tion culture. Latin was the language of religion and science, as English is
the language of culture and science today. It is relevant in this respect that
Augustine’s musical treatise De musica (387/2006), cautious about the
subversive and emotional power of music, is more about metrics and
poetic rhythms than about music as we understand it today. One impor-
tant difference in the dissemination of music today, is that the written
mode, while it still exists in printed or electronic scores, is no longer the
main mode of dissemination, which is aural. Most people today listen to
music, they do not read it, and while provision for the translation of lyr-
ics has grown into new forms in the twenty-first century, it is mostly
published independently of the score itself.
The languages used in the public performance of secular music, on the
other hand, very much developed from vernacular languages. Popular
music and theatre including music played a role in its development of
course, but it was primarily shaped by the nomadic performers that
moved from court to court. In the Middle-Ages, itinerant poets and
musicians who moved from court to court, such as troubadours and trou-
vères, were the agents of sung poetry. As feudal systems gave way to more
urban ways of life, permanent musical groups were formed to perform
polyphonic music throughout Europe. From the fourteenth century
onwards, composers tended to no longer be anonymous and musical
links, previously favoured in sacred music, were established across coun-
tries. Popular songs must have attracted the interest of composers, but
were only recorded sporadically until the eighteenth century. However,
records of secular compositions, mainly polyphonic chansons, composed,
published and circulated throughout Italy, France and England from the
fifteenth century and throughout the Renaissance, are numerous.
Publishers, also often composers at that time, played a large and pio-
neering role in this multilingual and multicultural dissemination. For
instance, the French town of Lyons had been an international centre for
Italian music since the end of the Middle-Ages. In the sixteenth century,
the Italian-born publisher Jacques Moderne settled there as a printer and
published a wide range of volumes of vocal and instrumental music for
amateur use written by Flemish, German, Italian and even Spanish com-
posers. Such publications could be multilingual, but did not include
translations. Their influences are seen in many of the French composers,
such as Pierre de Villiers, who writes in different styles. Some of these
publications were reprints of volumes originally printed elsewhere.
Similarly, the Frenchman Antoine Gardane contributed to establishing
the madrigal in Venice as a dominant form. As the European nobility
grew in power and status, they acquired musicians as part of their staff
which they recruited from all over Europe. This tradition only stopped at
the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Flemish composer Orlande
de Lassus (1532–1594) possessed the typically international background
of court composers and performers, as he followed the nobles who
employed him. He lived in the Low Countries, all over Italy, visited
England, before settling in Munich where he died. He composed in at
least four languages and in a range of styles intended for his multinational
audiences.
In the sixteenth century, polyphonic music gave way to monody, with
one, more expressive voice given prominence and accompanied by the
others. The meaning of words and their musical expression was priori-
tised and, with the re-discovery of Greek theatre, new dramatic vocal
forms emerged. The rise of opera led to new attitudes to language, as I
have discussed elsewhere (Desblache, 2007, 2009, 2013). Dominant lan-
guages, such as Tuscan, promoted by the rich and powerful, were consoli-
dated by highbrow forms of musical expression. Originally produced
privately in aristocratic circles, commercially run operas started in Venice
from 1637. They were extremely successful and proliferated throughout
Europe. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, hundreds of
new operas were composed every year. New music would be offered but
libretti would often be retained or adapted, as Patrick Smith noted (1970,
p. 14). Until the twentieth century, libretto translations were intralingual—
as they were mostly adaptations from a previous text, often in the same
language—and interlingual, and included two languages if required:
176 L. Desblache
the language of performance and the language of the audience. Ottavio

Rinuccini’s original libretto of Dafne, a piece that can be considered to be
the first opera, and was the first printed one, was used by Jacopo Peri in
1598 but also by other composers such as Giulio Caccini. Although the
original musical score was mostly lost, the libretto was adapted for other
scores such as Marco da Gagliano’s a few years later. The composer
Heinrich Schütz, also composed a Dafne, the first German opera, for
which Martin Opitz translated the Italian libretto. In turn, that work was
adapted back into Italian by the composer Giovanni Andrea Bontempi
and Marco Giuseppe Peranda in 1672 (Alms 2012).
Unlike in today’s theatres, where the public sits and listens in reverence
to a performance, productions were extremely noisy, seats were installed
on the stage and members of the public could walk or talk throughout
the shows, like at outdoor music festivals today. Going to the opera was
common in Venice only at first in the mid-seventeenth century, and then
gradually caught up with audiences in large European cities as it became
one of the most sought-out forms of entertainment. In Italy, it was not
uncommon for people to go to the opera several times a week in the eigh-
teenth and nineteenth centuries. Opera houses became increasingly a
place to socialise, to be seen, and most members of the audience did not
stay for the full length of a performance. Librettists had more status than
composers and were allowed to print and sell libretti and their transla-
tions at performances. By contrast, the music was never printed for pub-
lic purchase—composers wrote orchestral parts by hand well into the
eighteenth century—and the composer’s name was generally only men-
tioned in the preface of the libretto. It is at this time that music theatre
translation habits as we still know them in classical music were created.
Italian, or rather Tuscan, as it was called then, gradually became the
dominant language of opera. While France, mostly through the influence
of Italian-born Jean-Baptiste Lully, established opera in French language
and style, in most of central Europe and England, Italian opera reigned
supreme and was sung in Italian well into the mid-nineteenth century.
German-speaking countries developed a tradition of singable translations
in German quite early on, in particular as regards light music theatre,
which favoured performances in German as spoken text alternated with
sung items. This tradition is still alive to some degree: in Vienna, operet-
tas and musicals are thriving in German and Wienerlieder, which have
penetrated all music styles from folk to rock, are still sung and hosted in
music festivals such as the Wien im Rosenstolz. Musical theatre could also
be linguistically hybrid, with spoken text in German and sung text in
Italian. This practice is still occasionally used internationally, for pieces
such as The Magic Flute or Der Freischütz, which alternate spoken and
sung text.
Overall in Europe, Italian opera troupes were the most popular, and
performed in Italian. They were mostly transient, hired by princely courts
or theatre managers for a season or more. Star singers travelled with their
costumes. Various forms of musical theatre, often aimed at popular audi-
ences and alternating sung and spoken texts, were of course performed in
the language of the countries where they took place. A long and varied
tradition including these forms existed in most countries. But as grand
opera and its repertoire became established, the (non-Italian) public
became accustomed to listening to singing in a foreign language. There
were a few exceptions: Thomas Clayton, an English composer who had
studied in Italy, staged Arsinoe, Queen of Cyprus, ‘An opera, after the Italian
manner: all sung’ (Clayton & Motteux, 1705) in an English translation,
in the hope of both training a troupe of English singers in Italian style
and introducing English audiences to opera; the Emperor Joseph II who
controlled the management of Vienna’s Imperial Theatre, the Burgtheater,
replaced Italian singers with a German opera troupe to perform Singspiel,
comedies mixing musical numbers and spoken drama between 1778 and
1783. Yet these attempts and others did not prevent the dominance of
Italian opera which remained sung in Italian throughout Europe until the
mid-nineteenth century.
Audiences became accustomed to reading an accompanying libretto in
translation during performance. Richard Wagner was the first to request
lights to be down during shows in the Bayreuth theatre, but it is not until
the end of the nineteenth century that switching lights on and off became
feasible and that the practice changed. Libretti and scores reduced to the
vocal lines of the main arias and ensembles became available and were
read with the help of small torches. As opera became increasingly popular
from the late nineteenth century onwards, audiences responded posi-
tively to music sung in their own language, and two traditions emerged:
178 L. Desblache
international opera houses of prestige such as the Metropolitan Opera, La

Scala, the Royal Opera House, staged productions in the original lan-
guage. Provincial theatres or companies of less prestige offered them sung
in translation. At the same time, an operatic repertoire started to become
established, consisting of contemporary works that were preserved to be
played in future productions (and in new translations). Verdi’s Rigoletto
(1851) for instance, although performed under different titles to avoid
issues of censorship, became one of the first staples of the operatic reper-
toire and still is today. A canon of pieces was gradually assembled. As
respect for original creations grew, so did the consensus that serious musi-
cians and opera lovers should only consider opera in its original language.
The American critic Gustav Kobbé (1919, p. 2, 3) thus wrote in his
opera guide:
Any speaker before an English-speaking audience can always elicit pro-

longed applause by maintaining that in English-speaking countries opera
should be sung in English. But, in point of fact, and even disregarding the
atrocities that masquerade as translations of opera into English, opera
should be sung in the language in which it is written. For language uncon-
sciously affects, I might even say determines, the structure of the melody.
Far more important than language, however, is it [sic] that opera be sung
by great artists. For these assimilate music and give it force in all its essence
of truth and beauty. Were great artists to sing opera in Choctaw, it would
still be welcome as compared with opera rendered by inferior interpreters,
no matter in what language.
Kobbé’s quote reflects a dichotomy that is still present to a degree,

although the introduction of surtitles in the 1980s has changed the scene,
making performances sung in an unknown language instantly under-
standable. The musical elite and most singers still proclaim that original
languages in opera and art songs are essential but others, such as the
music critic Hugh Canning, think that the lack of will to perform operas
in translation is only motivated by snobbery (Canning, 2011, p. 28).
The recent ubiquity of surtitles may have damaged the popularity of
singing in translation in classical music since the end of the twentieth
century. Yet there is a long tradition of singing in translation, and not
only in opera. In church music, Catholic countries continued to use

Latin until the late twentieth century, but in Protestant countries, a tradi-
tion of works in translation has long been established. The success of
works such as Handel’s Messiah (1741/1989) and Haydn’s Creation
(1800) have largely depended on their translation. Baron Gottfried van
Swieten, an Austrian diplomat posted in London in the 1760s and music
patron, introduced Viennese audiences to Handel’s oratorios when he
went back to Vienna in the 1770s. He copied a score for Mozart to update
The Messiah to the taste of the day, made some decisions regarding the
choice of voices, and asked Daniel Ebeling to translate the original
English libretto by Charles Jennens into German. These were common
practices at the time, particularly in German-speaking countries, as dis-
cussed earlier, and van Swieten’s initiatives largely led to The Messiah score
that we know today, even if the words have varied according to time
and country.
A close friend of Haydn’s, van Swieten also provided a working transla-
tion of The Creation, inspired by John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The libretto
had originally been adapted from Milton’s text for Handel and passed on
to Haydn for consideration. Van Swieten rendered it into German for
Haydn as the composer was working on the piece. Van Swieten later
wrote a version intended for performance, from which, ironically, the
Standard English edition was derived, and which includes many German
calques and interferences. For this reason, in most countries, it was often
performed in German during the nineteenth and part of the twentieth
century. The original libretto included excerpts from Genesis, the Book of
Psalms from the King James Bible and John Milton’s Paradise Lost,
although the last source is more challenging to identify. Haydn was in
London when he started to work on the piece, hence the request for a
German working translation, but the first performance took place in
Vienna in 1799. The following year saw the first bilingual edition of a
vocal score. This started a publishing trend. In 1800, the first publication
of Mozart’s Requiem was also published in two languages, Latin and
German. The complex story of Haydn’s oratorio in translation (see
Jenkins, 2005 for a detailed history) is a good illustration of how transla-
tions can be key to forging what eventually becomes the canonical ver-
sion of a piece.
180 L. Desblache
The Creation’s score marks a change of attitude towards composers.

The reason why Haydn’s oratorio was initially performed in German was
due to the composer’s authority on the piece. While only a few decades
earlier, as noted above, librettists were much better recognised than musi-
cians as creative artists, the composer’s image is changing at the end of the
eighteenth century: he is seen as the driving force. The Magic Flute,
printed for the first 1791 performance shows the name of Emanuel
Schikaneder directly below the title of the show and Mozart’s in small
letters below, followed by a short biography of the composer. But not
even a decade later, the 1800 original score of The Creation names Haydn
as the sole artist in charge. Later editions even mention the arranger of
the score, such as John Bishop for the 1842 English edition, on the front
cover. And in 1814, both on the poster advertising the first performances
of Fidelio and on the front page of the first edition of the third version of
the opera, the name of the librettist, Joseph Ferdinand Sonnleithner, is
nowhere to be seen, while Beethoven is placed in a prominent position.
Did this change in the esteem of the librettist lead to a more relaxed view
of the text? A tradition of singing in translation started to prevail, which
is still visible today, at least in classical music. For instance, no one sings
the original Shakespeare words of Franz Schubert’s ‘To Silvia’, even
though they fit the music, as discussed in Part I (Sect. 3). The German
translation by Eduard von Bauernfeld is expected in any performance,
even though another version of the song, written at the end of the six-
teenth century and first published in 1623, had previously existed in
English—it is sung in the second scene of the fourth act of The Two
Gentlemen of Verona.
Franz Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’, whose words bear relation to the Catholic
prayer, also became known in a German translation by Adam Storck. In
spite of its Latin title, the song lyrics were written in German—inspired
from Walter Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake (1810). It was
first published in English and in German in 1826, two years before it was
first performed in Vienna. Schubert later included ‘Ave Maria’ in a volume
of seven songs with words taken from the same poem, Sieben Gesänge aus
Walter Scotts Fraulein vom See (1826) (see Fuld, 1966/2000, p. 103), fur-
ther asserting his preference for setting songs in German translation, even
if the original has been written by William Shakespeare, already revered in

the German-speaking world in Schubert’s day.
In secular music, the popularity of opera grew, and so did the number
of languages composers used for their libretti. While Italian, French and
German were the languages of opera until the mid-nineteenth century,
Czech, Hungarian, Russian and other languages became important in the
repertoire. From the mid-nineteenth century, composers took the lead in
making decisions regarding libretti, which were generally translations
from existing plays. Giuseppe Verdi, for example, was known to ask for
changes from his librettists. The eventful history of Don Carlos and its
many versions in both French and Italian, shows that he considered not
only the words and their impact on the vocal line (Verdi was fluent in
French) but also the general style of the music. The French adaptation of
the original play by Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien,
created in 1864, was suited to the five-act style of French grand opera and
when it was reconsidered in 1884 for the Italian, it was reduced substan-
tially, with some gaps which impacted on the narrative of the play.
Different versions were staged but over the years, the shorter four-act
Italian version of 1884 has become the favourite, although the French
version is still played in France. Similarly, Richard Wagner agreed to a
version of Tannhäuser adapted into French that also implied structural
changes to the work such as the insertion of a ballet.
Most of the time, composers were not involved in the provision of the
translations, but until the 1970s, with the exception of international
opera houses, the majority of operas were sung in translation, particularly
in provincial theatres. One of the main adepts of opera translation and
one of its most established practitioners in the first half of the twentieth
century, Edward J. Dent, confirmed in 1935 that ‘[i]n France, Germany
and Italy, as well as in other countries such as Holland, Sweden, Poland
and Hungary, where the language is not one that is commonly learned by
foreigners, opera is regularly performed in the language of the people’
(Dent, 1934/1935, p. 81). As was discussed in Part I (Sect. 3.2.2), few
studies exist on operatic audiences’ desires and expectations and the few
that are published do not stress translation as a key element in the public’s
preferences. Some conclusions about the popularity of opera in the nine-
teenth century can be drawn from summaries of theatre ticket sales and
182 L. Desblache
some events such as the 1809 riots in protest against the increase in the
price of seats at Covent Garden. In Victorian Britain though, opera
remained essentially aimed at privileged audiences. It was Emma Cons
and Lilian Baylis who laid the ground for accessible opera. They did so
with the aim of attracting working-class audiences away from gin palaces
and other ‘perilous’ forms of entertainment at the end of the nineteenth
century. These moral endeavours were consolidated by the work of a few
dedicated musicians such as Edward Dent. Dent, for instance, not only
re-introduced Mozart’s operas in England in the early twentieth cen-
tury—The Magic Flute was the only Mozart opera popular throughout
centuries and countries—but he also strived to promote their perfor-
mance in translation with the aim of widening opera audiences.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the operatic repertoire,
which had comprised primarily new pieces until the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury, was limited to a few dozen established pieces, which most people
knew in translation. When Albert Carré, the director of the Paris Opéra
Comique commissioned a new translation of The Magic Flute in 1909,
with the aim of going back to Mozart’s original intentions, he met much
disapproval from Parisian audiences who no longer recognised ‘their’
Magic Flute (Gibbons, 2012, pp. 37–53). Adapting opera to the stage for
foreign audiences, until the emergence of surtitles in the 1980s, primarily
involved writing translations to be sung. It means abiding by what Peter
Low (2005, pp. 185–212) has defined as the ‘pentathlon’ principles of
singable translations concerning singability, sense, naturalness, rhythm
and rhyme. But it also involves cultural translation: meeting the expecta-
tions of target audiences in terms of content, which involved staging and
lyrics translation. Offenbach’s frivolous and eccentric operettas adapted
for the English market in the mid-nineteenth century (and beyond) are a
good case in point. Orphée aux Enfers, created in Paris in a two act version
in 1858—a second, four-act version was produced in 1874—, became a
model for Austrian, British and French operettas. A restriction to four
characters in musical theatre was lifted in 1858, and Offenbach’s libret-
tists, Ludovic Halévy and Hector Crémieux, who had the theme in mind,
immediately worked with the composer on a large scale stage work.
Whether James Robinson Planché’s burletta of 1831, Olympic Devils; or,
Orpheus and Eurydice, inspired Offenbach and his collaborators is not

mentioned, but it is likely. Planché produced Orpheus in the Haymarket
in 1865, aware of what to leave out or replace from the French original,
in a Victorian England more puritanical about language and customs
than imperial France. The key French word ‘enfer’ is carefully suggested,
but ‘hell’ is avoided throughout the opera, which is renamed Orpheus in
the Haymarket. After the first run of 76 performances at Her Majesty’s
theatre in London and a few provincial tours, the show reverted to the
more neutral title by which it is known today in English-speaking coun-
tries, a title given by the Viennese, who first produced it in 1859: Orpheus
in the Underworld (Orpheus in der Unterwelt). This light music tradition
gave way to the musicals that we know today, which are increasingly sung
in translation, and to popular music in translation, which was the norm
until English became the global language of ‘pop-rock’ from the
1960s onwards.
The popularity of songs in translation was reflected in printed scores.
Many were printed in translation only until the mid-twentieth century.
Even in opera, where libretti in source and target languages had been
offered for sale to the public since the seventeenth century, traditions and
expectations changed. In the nineteenth century, opera was appropriated
by different nations as a symbol of national identity, and libretti became
written in a large number of languages. Operas became more frequently
translated to be sung. International theatres kept to a tradition of singing
in the original language, but translation provision was always made, gen-
erally through bilingual libretti which were available for purchase. Less
prestigious opera houses offered performances sung in translation and
libretti in translation only. This two-fold tradition of operatic translation,
for singing and for reading, continued until the emergence of surtitling
in the late 1980s which changed the way in which textual support was
provided for opera. Printed lyrics have continued to be available in opera
and classical concerts involving vocal music.
In sum, historical developments in vocal translation show a trend of
transfer from minor languages and cultures to dominant ones, such as
Latin and living major languages. Three practices which remained com-
mon until the 1920s, or later, in some cases, can also be identified:
184 L. Desblache
• The adaptation of folk songs in different languages or dialects, as they

travelled from country to country or region to region, and, from the
nineteenth century onwards, their printing in anthologies, published
in two or three languages, generally a dialect, the main language of the
country, and sometimes, a dominant language such as English.
• In sacred music, a long tradition of translation into Latin controlled by
the Church establishment, which only changed in the 1960s. Texts
were essentially intended as instruments of support for this liturgy.
• Secular music, if printed, increasingly favoured multilingualism. In
Europe, while songs were usually published in the original language,
without translation, or in translation but with no reference to the
source text until the eighteenth century, a tradition of linear transla-
tion placed below the music, which included the source language and
a target language flourished after that time.
What really transformed the vocal music scene in Europe, though, was
the explosion of popular music after the Second World War. From a lin-
guistic and translational point of view, it no longer was multilingual. As
listeners and viewers enjoyed less predictable models of entertainment,
and as music formats changed to become more dematerialised, from LPs
to CDs, MP3, and streaming platforms, textual support for lyrics, whether
inter- or intralingual, became sparser. In the last sixty years, most music
listeners have consumed music largely in their native tongue—often in
translation—or in English. Songs in languages other than English which
reached international audiences have tended to have exotic value, and
their linguistic meaning was ignored. This led to different expectations
from music lovers, as was mentioned in Part I (Sect. 3.2.2). It also led to
a more systematic strategy of non translation, which is justified in some
cases, as is discussed below, but which can also take place because music
or film producers are simply allowed to get away with it, in spite of the
fact that, in many cases, translation would enrich the listeners’ experience.
However, in spite of these high standards for the provision of lyrics in
classical music, audiences today do not expect the translation of lyrics in
more informal live settings and in popular music concerts (see Part I
(Sect. 3.2.2)). Initially, such concerts were, of course, performed in their
own language. However, since the 1950s most popular music has been
performed in English, even though performers are not always English-

native speakers themselves. By the time surtitles appeared in opera, popu-
lar music audiences had already been used to certain patterns of music
consumption, which did not include lyrics translation provision in most
cases. In pop-rock, stage production, visuals and dance, the performance
of the singers themselves and their accompanying musicians became
important communication elements intended to extend the meaning of
the lyrics of songs that were often, although not always, deliberately short
and repetitive. Lyrics became part of multimodal and performative texts
that would made the discrete translation of words irrelevant or incom-
plete. Elements such as visuals were and are built to construct the full
meaning of a song, contradicting or enhancing its words.
Since the second half of the twentieth century, the relatively fast shift
to English as the dominant language of popular music, and the increas-
ingly dematerialised technologies that ensured music reproduction and
dissemination, have deprived audiences of traditions or models regarding
the provision of lyrics in translation that could be borrowed and adapted
to new situations. Equally, vocal music is a passive activity for most peo-
ple who no longer sing in their daily lives. When singing accompanied
daily lives, it tended to be in the language of the singers, with the excep-
tion of rituals such as Latin for church music, or Italian for opera.
Generations of music listeners and viewers since the end of the twentieth
century have also prioritised mobility, that is, the ability to listen to music
anywhere at any time on portable devices, over other aspects of musical
provision, including sound quality. Audiences eventually broke new
ground in setting lyrics translation networks, as was mentioned in Chap.
2. There are, however, many cases when lyrics in vocal music are not
transcribed or translated, for convenience, but also for good reasons at
times. This is explored in the next section.
5.2 When Vocal Music is Not Translated

The words of songs are not always provided for performers and listeners
either in transcription or in translation. In some circumstances, transla-
tions are possible, may exist and may even be desirable. However, the
186 L. Desblache
context in which music is performed or the platform on which it appears

can make it difficult to offer translation. Few song translations are
included on the radio for instance. The title of the song and its composer
or performer(s) are mentioned orally and generally appear on the radio
screen if the transmission is digital, and a companion website may offer
information on the pieces broadcast but a full translation is generally not
provided on air. A presenter may set the scene, discuss the words, read
part of the words in translation in some cases, but this is the extent of the
translation, unless, of course, the song is sung in translation.
In some cases, composers or performers do not wish for words to be
made available. Most singers do make their lyrics available on their web-
site or the companion website of their album, but some choose not to:
the words may be considered to be sufficiently comprehensible, to dis-
tract listeners from other aspects of the song performance or to be associ-
ated with a musical style linked to high culture, for instance. In the
twenty-first century, as barriers between musical genres tend to dissolve,
this last reason becomes less likely. Yet The Pet Shop Boys, for example,
never used to include lyrics in their albums. When asked why, Neil
Tennant (Needham, 2018) does not give a reason other than wanting
their songs to be identified with pop music rather than rock or any other
genre. Nevertheless, the group’s lyrics were often resonant, provocative,
frequently cryptic and in need of decoding. A large selection has been
published by Faber & Faber as a separate volume (Tennant, 2018), which
validates their interest as meaningful texts in themselves. Establishing in
which case song lyrics should be transcribed or translated may be chal-
lenging to judge. In some cases, a translation may be impossible or unde-
sirable, whether in printed, recorded or performed music. However, it is
audiences’ expectations, established traditions and (post)production costs
which tend to determine whether its provision is made or not. As always
with media products, translation is generally considered as an a fterthought,
and dealt with in post-production, which makes it more difficult to
include: budgets may not have been planned for it and technical issues
not sufficiently thought out.
The following pages describe the range of situations in which words, be
they lyrics or not, are usually not translated and assess in which cases this
is justified.
• Tempi and Mood Markers
In printed music, markings expressing tempi and mood in musical

scores are left untranslated if they use the standard Italian terminology:
terms such as ‘andantino moderato’, ‘allegretto vivace’, ‘tempo rubato’…
are considered ‘universal’ in Western music composition and require no
translation. They are part of a terminology which has been used in Italian
since the eighteenth century. From the mid-nineteenth century, compos-
ers have also used more personalised phrases in their own language to
replace or complement standard tempo markings. This is particularly
common in German and French music, and in popular music today.
Robert Schumann, for instance, always indicated his required tempi in
German, sometimes accompanied by the suggestion of a mood such as
‘Innig, lebhaft’ (intimate and lively). Those markings are either not trans-
lated at all, translated in English underneath the original marking, or, less
frequently, included in a glossary, as in the two volumes of songs by
Debussy (1993) published by Hal Leonard Publishing. Not all phrases
are included in these two volumes, but the recurrent expressions used by
Debussy are listed alphabetically at the end of each volume. Today, pub-
lishers are guided by usability, and tend to include what they expect
might be needed by the readers of the score who may not have any knowl-
edge of the language used.
• Wordless Vocables
The vocal part of a song may be partially or entirely based on wordless

vocables that are not meant to have semantic meaning and gives singers
the opportunity to improvise as instrumentalists do. Ella Fitzgerald’s scat
singing shows this genre at its best. Scat is often partially integrated into
a song, to lighten the word content, and to give more instrumental power
to the voice. The Australian group ‘Yolanda Be Cool’ thus presented a
cover of the 1956 hit ‘Tu vuó fá l’americano’ by Carosone and Nicola
‘Nisa’ Salerno, reducing the original lyrics to a couple of verses and inter-
spacing it with scat. The original song, published the same year as Vladimir
Nabokov’s Lolita (1955), is a satire of Americanisation. The new cover
makes sure that key words relating to this theme are highlighted to make
188 L. Desblache
this association prominent. It also uses a chaplinesque video reminiscent

of The Immigrant film (1917) to emphasise this reference.
• Non-sense
Non-sense pieces such as Charlie Chaplin’s mock song in Modern

Times (1936), a parody cover of the 1917 song Je cherche après Titine, is
transformed into an improvised gibberish of French, Italian and Spanish
for comic effect. The singer (Charlie Chaplin) is immediately perceived as
a European ‘foreigner’ to be laughed at by audiences of all nationalities
since no words can be understood by anyone. This is the only piece in the
film when speech can be heard—Modern Times is considered to be the
last silent film. It powerfully associates the protagonist with the jumbled-
up identity of a migrant.
• Fictional Languages or Languages Used for Musical Effect
Some songs are created in a fictional language, fully or partially. These

are generally not translated. In some cases, minor adaptations are made
so that the singing is adjusted to the target language intonation. For
instance, ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ in Mary Poppins’ famous
song varies in some languages. In the German version of the 1964 Disney
film, the magic word, sung by Monika Dahlberg, becomes ‘superkalifra-
gilistigexpialigetisch’, ending with a typically German derivational suffix
for natural effect. In Spanish, it is adapted to ‘supercalifragilisticoespiali-
doso’ for similar reasons. This is typical of the care that Disney produc-
tions take in ensuring transparency and fluency in the target version, as is
discussed in Part I (Sect. 3.2.2) and later in Part II (Sect. 6.1.3) on trans-
lation strategies for vocal music.
However, a fictional language is usually meant to produce a poetic
effect, and needs no adaptation. Enya’s album Amarantine (2005) is par-
tially sung in Loxian, a language created by lyricist Roman Ryan. Enya
also uses decontextualised foreign languages in songs. They are primarily
intended for Western listeners, to create a sense of defamiliarisation. For
instance, ‘Sumiregusa’, also from Amarantine, is based on the Japanese
words of a haiku by seventeenth century poet Bashō. Enya agreed for the
song to be used for a commercial produced and disseminated in Japan
only, but in spite of requests from the Japanese affiliate of Warner Music
to release an album intended for Japanese markets, and even an announce-
ment that it would happen, she refused to produce a specific album for
Japan (Enya, n.d.). Japanese was meant to be used non-semantically in
her work, for its musical qualities.
• Exoticisation
Rare languages can also be used for exotic effect, geographical associa-
tion and virtual travelling where the unknown language is an expression
of fresh discovery of a virgin territory. For instance, the gospel-like song
‘Maimoatia’, sung entirely in the endangered indigenous language of Te
reo Māori, was the surprise number one of the 2016 ITunes chart (Ainge
Roy, 2016). It is an example of this use of language for the purpose of
exoticisation which may benefit from a translation from a semantic point
view, but for which a translation may break the sense of wonder of the
unknown that is part of the lyrics.
• Dead Languages
Some musical compositions make a deliberate use of a dead language

such as Latin, Ancient Greek or Church Slavonic, as part of religious or
social traditions. These texts may be translated for comprehension if they
are lengthy, but are still sung in the traditional language. The most com-
mon use of Latin in music is in classical music, in genres such as masses
and hymns. While the use of Latin in church music declined after 1963,
when the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy
introduced the use of vernacular languages at Mass, some still use Latin
or Greek for effect. A famous example is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem,
composed in 1985.
• Monosyllabic Content
Many pop songs rely on refrains which repeat a few words which are
the ‘hook’ of the song, and contribute to its memorability: ‘All You Need
is Love’, first worldwide live broadcast in 1967, did not require a transla-
tion. As previously mentioned (Part I, Sect. 2.3, and Part II, Sect. 4.1),
190 L. Desblache
English owes some of its success as a global language to a high proportion

of common monosyllabic words. Such a statement may be contested, but
there is no doubt that most popular songs in English use short words. For
instance, ‘Let It Be’, one of the most successful songs of the second half
of the twentieth century comprises 92 words: 75 monosyllabic ones and
no word above three syllables. In most cultures, popular music tends to
favour short words, but monosyllabic words are not so common in the
lyrics of some languages. Table 5.1 gives a few examples of national
anthems in a range of countries, and illustrates this point.
Table 5.1 Table of national anthems

France Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L’étendard sanglant est levé.
Germany Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Über alles in der Welt,
Wenn es stets zu Schutz und Trutze
Brüderlich zusammenhält.
Japan Kimigayo wa
(transliteration) Chiyo ni yachiyo ni
Sazare-ishi no
Iwao to narite
Koke no musu made.
Russia Rossiya—svyashchennaya nasha derzhava,
(transliteration) Rossiya—lyubimaya nasha strana.
Moguchaya volya, velikaya slava—
Tvoyo dostoyan’ye na vse vremena.
Spain ¡Viva España! Cantemos todos juntos con distinta voz y un
solo corazón.
¡Viva España! Desde los verdes valles al inmenso mar, un
himno de hermandad.
(The Spanish national anthem is mostly played
instrumentally. The words above are one of the
proposals made to provide lyrics)
United Kingdom God save our gracious Queen!
Long live our noble Queen!
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the Queen.
Of course, the words of national anthems, by nature, are never trans-

lated for singing purposes—although their tunes, intended to be memo-
rable, are often borrowed from existing pieces or even from other national
anthems (Marshall, 2015). They are nevertheless used in compositions as
a nationalistic motif, such as the ‘Marseillaise’ in Tchaikovsky’s 1812
Overture for instance. Musically, a national anthem immediately conveys
national linguistic and cultural identity. ‘God Save the Queen’, for
instance, has been quoted in hundreds of major compositions. However,
from the point of view of words, a national anthem is not intended to be
sung by foreigners, even if a translated version of the lyrics may be made
available to them.
The reason for not translating pop songs or dance songs is different.
First, songs can be deliberately repetitive. Although their meaning can be
vacuous, a combination of common words and memorable ones such as
‘Shake It Baby’ (Hooker, 1962) often renders translation undesirable.
Second, they prioritise the musical aspect of the language, making sure
the words stresses are appropriately emphasised. This also contributes to
the comprehensibility of the lyrics. No one would want to translate
Madonna’s ‘Music’ for a singing performance for instance. The song is
meant for the dance floor and is semantically quite meaningless. But the
singer ensures that striking words such as ‘acid rock’ or ‘boogie-woogie’
are accentuated in harmony with the music and its rhythm.
A song in a foreign language is perceived differently by a listener, who
will find its lyrics much more challenging to understand. Lyrics can, of
course, impoverish a song which, paradoxically, may be more successful
with a foreign audience. The use of short words as propellers of energy
and key ideas often contribute to the global success of songs, free to go
beyond semantic meaning, such as in Madonna’s song mentioned above.
• The Lure of the Foreign
The strategy of non translation is common in and well suited to the

features of twenty-first century pop music and, in some cases, audiences
will not wish to have a translation of the lyrics. Pop songs comprise
hybrid genres in constant transformation, in an era when audiences are
192 L. Desblache
no longer attached to specific genres or styles: R&B, hip-hop, electro-

pop and others merge happily (or not) in clips that are both meant to be
seen and heard. They are based on expected beats and structures and on
intertextuality—most songs today are covers of some sort—that provide
steady references or discreet allusions. This blend of familiar elements
means that listeners and viewers are picking up references that they can
decipher or that they perceive unconsciously. To this familiar base, the
spice of a foreign, untranslated element can be added. Most listeners of
pop songs sung in English are not English native speakers, and some can-
not speak any English. But this love of songs in languages that are not
understood also happens with English-speaking audiences. For instance,
the album Chaleur humaine by Christine and the Queens (2014), or
Chris, as she is now called, was adapted for an international market with
some changes made to the original lyrics, rather than translations into
English as such, but it kept a substantial amount in French in this second
version. The album’s global success was a surprise. In the UK, not known
for its love of or aptitude for foreign languages, it was 2016’s best-selling
debut album.
The theme of this album and of many of her songs is the trespassing
of borders and the need for fluidity. While the singer exposes it primarily
in the context of gender, it is also understood beyond it. Her ways of
weaving the familiar into something new somehow resonates of both the
known and of an exciting unknown. This blend of techno, pop, French
chanson and theatrical dance is controlled in order to not need transla-
tion. The complexity of the carefully crafted lyrics sung both in English
and French contrasts with the usual simplicity of pop lyrics. The music,
which borrows elements from these unexpectedly combined genres and
dance routines, is immediately meaningful to an international audience.
The bilingual lyrics may be challenging to understand but they are attrac-
tive to Chris’ public. Some listeners will look for the words and for the
translation of the French lyrics, but many will gloss over the lyrics as an
unfamiliar channel of communication that adds exotic spice to the
deliberately repetitive techno style of her music. The fact that twenty-
first century dance music, and techno in particular, is not normally asso-
ciated with words also means that audiences do not expect to focus
on lyrics.
• Political Resistance
Non translation can also be a deliberate political strategy. New, impen-

etrable vocabularies can be created to defy understanding. As for various
slangs, invented not to be understood by mainstream and institutional
members of the public, rap was initially intended for performance and
dissemination in closed groups, for instance. By contrast with spirituals,
which normally used standard language with double entendre only
decodable by slaves (Desblache, 2000), rap was based on the construction
of languages inaccessible to mainstream listeners. As its success became
international this inaccessibility has tended to dissolve with meaning
being woven across local and global cultures and languages in ways that
are grassroots and inclusive.
Lesser-used languages can be actively promoted in music as a means of
resistance to dominant cultures, whose agents of power can establish lin-
guistic and political ascendency and can attempt to repress translation
into a minor language. An opera house in Poznan was thus built in 1910
by the German authorities on condition that performances would take
place in German only. The opera is now named after Polish composer
Stanisław Moniuszko and offers a range of operas translated and sung
into Polish, such as Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus (2017 season). The
building and the right to perform in translation both stand as a symbol
of freedom and recognition of Polish identity.
The act of refusing translation can be enacted by people denied power
rather than those in power. For instance, French rappers of the beginning
of the twenty-first century often wove Arabic into their songs as a politi-
cal statement. As fewer French-Arab rappers living in France speak Arabic,
fewer include Arabic in their texts at present. Some, such as Sanguee, still
do, as a mark of protest against France’s monolingual policies and politics
of assimilation, but also as a way of opening up imagination, constrained
by the use of dominant languages such as English and French
(Miclet, 2017).
The genre of Cantopop, which emerged in the 1970s in Hong Kong,
is another example of the power of non translation in vocal music. Under
British rule between 1841 and 1997, Hong Kong was exposed to the
emergence of Anglo-Saxon popular culture in the 1960s. As a result, the
194 L. Desblache
hybrid form of Cantopop was born, a hybrid form of vocal music mixing
Cantonese opera and Western pop sung in Cantonese. This commitment
to Cantonese reflected a desire to resist the spread of Mandarin culture as
well as the fear of the future in the years preceding the handover of Hong
Kong to China. A dynamic form of popular culture in the last decades of
the twentieth century, it has been fading as the dominant culture—and
language—of mainland China took over, and as more non-Cantonese-
speaking immigrants arrived in Hong Kong (Chu, 2017).
These examples show that while the translation of political and protest
songs can ensure that their local message is heard globally, non transla-
tion can be used as a strategy to defy the global and its stereotyped out-
puts. They also exemplify how strongly the disappearance of popular
songs in an indigenous language reflects the decline of this indige-
nous culture.
• Censorship
The elimination of part of a musical piece through translation is also a

recurrent censorship technique, be it in the lyrics and/or in their accom-
paniment (see Part III (Sect. 7.2)). For instance, in the localisation of
some animation films for children for the Saudi Arabian market, instru-
mental music can be removed, as well as part of the words (see Aladdin
example below). In some countries, censorship can take the form of ban-
ning music altogether. In Iran, a country with a rich and long music tra-
dition, most forms of music, be they foreign or not, are censored today.
Women are banned from any public performance and musicians of both
genders are frequently arrested (Siamdoust, 2017).
In most countries though, music censorship involves primarily the lyr-
ics of songs. The elimination or substitution of some words is common
practice on mainstream platforms such as TV and radio channels, and the
process of ‘clean-editing’ is pervasive. Songs as famous as Bob Dylan’s
‘Baby let me follow you down’, The Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the sky with dia-
monds’ or the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’ were banned from the
air in the UK at the time of their issue. Closer to us, the song ‘Ding Dong
the witch is dead’, initially composed for The Wizard of Oz, which reached
number 2 in the UK charts at the time of Margaret Thatcher’s death in
2013, was briefly partially banned from BBC Radio 1 for being associ-
ated with an inappropriate celebration of death: only seven seconds of the
song were played.
Request for the change of words can also be used as protest before
translation has taken place. In the film Aladdin (1992), The American-
Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee complained to Disney about the
misrepresentation of Arab culture and characters in the film in general,
and in particular, about the lyrics of the opening song ‘Arabian Nights’,
which perpetuated a stereotyped image of Arabs as cruel. Their plea was
not without reason, as Arabs were portrayed in the original song as a
barbaric ear-cutting people. Disney, on this occasion, agreed to change
the lyrics to less offensive ones. This was done before the film was circu-
lated on the international market in its different versions (Lister, 1993).
• Use of Lyrics for Mood
In film or theatre, music is intended to create a mood, in order to pre-

empt or accompany events taking place on screen. When a song is
involved, its lyrics are not always important to the narrative and need not
be translated. For instance, the last scene of the film The Killing Fields
(1984) stages the poignant reunion of two journalists separated by war.
John Lennon’s Imagine expresses their restrained but overpowering emo-
tion. Such a well-known song of hope for global peace requires no trans-
lation in this context. As will be discussed in Part III, in such cases, it is
music that translates moods, but it does not need to be translated.
This said, many songs in films do benefit from translation and many
are left in their original language, primarily because they are not consid-
ered essential to the success of a film, in spite of their meaningful input.
Such matters are only considered in post-production which makes them
more difficult to include, as discussed earlier. Copyright costs for songs
are often not considered at the initial stages of the film budgeting. On the
whole, songs are also more challenging to translate than ordinary dia-
logue and therefore more costly. Many songs are thus left untranslated in
otherwise dubbed or subtitled versions. In many cases, the extra layer of
meaning provided by the song, which can contradict or enhance the film
script is denied to the foreign viewer. For instance, the narrative of The
196 L. Desblache
Graduate (1967) is strongly underpinned by ‘The Sound of Silence’ by

Simon & Garfunkel. The song, played in its entirety at the beginning and
at the end of the film, expresses the emotional difficulties that people
have communicating with each other, a key theme in this film. In the
opening scene, immediately after the theme song has been heard, Ben
(Dustin Hoffman) is seen to avoid contact with people. The song in this
scene echoes very potently the sense of isolation that permeates the film.
Similarly, at the end of the film, it is played to anticipate Ben and Elaine’s
feelings of uncertainty and anxiety as they face to the reality of their life
together, but are unable to discuss them.
Many other examples could be given of songs that are crucial to films
but are not translated, leaving foreign audiences at a disadvantage in their
comprehension of the film. This is primarily the case for films in English
and a typical case of non-translation linked to pre-conceived ideas and
expectations. The general public world-wide is perceived to listen to
music in English, and film producers assume that no translation is
needed. Yet the case of singer-songwriters whose work is based on com-
plex poetry is different from that of pop singers whose lyrics are generally
short and repetitive. In addition, while vocal music is polysemiotic and
does not rely only on the meaning of lyrics, the latter can play an impor-
tant role, specially when they are used in cross-reference to a story. In
non-English speaking films, songs are more frequently translated if they
are crucial to the narrative of the film, as the expectation is that English-
speaking audiences will have no understanding of the language the song
is sung in.
5.3 Voice
The quality of a voice itself and how it is replaced in the adaptation of
media products is not only as important as the translation of its textual
content, it is part of the translation. It reveals audiences’ expectations and
preferences as well as market practices in different countries. The case of
the voice-over of documentaries is a good example of how the choice of a
voice can be essential to its successful transfer. 2006 marked a turning
point in the ways natural world documentaries were produced. The BBC
series Planet Earth was not only the most expensive one produced by the
BBC at that time, the first in high-definition footage, and the first to
systematically include behind-the-scene footage of nature filming, it was
also the most widely-watched of all television programmes on release at
the time (Timms, 2006). In the UK, the success of the series was largely
associated with the much loved broadcaster and naturalist David
Attenborough, but the series was successful internationally. It was trans-
lated for and distributed in 130 countries. The USA, as an Anglophone
country, could have kept the original programmes without making
changes, but the choice was made to edit them slightly and change the
narrator’s voice. There is a relatively low proportion of foreign pro-
grammes on US channels, and a tradition of subtitling or redubbing
British programmes into American English. The belief that celebrity
voices replacing the original UK narration would draw a larger American
audience was strong among media professionals and led to the dubbing
of a wide range of nature programmes narrated by star talents since the
beginning of the twenty-first century: Morgan Freeman dubbed the film
March of the Penguins (2005) and Oprah Winfrey was the narrator of the
Life series (2009) for instance.
Following this practice, the actress and conservationist Sigourney
Weaver dubbed Planet Earth. Yet contrary to expectations, USA viewers’
responses were negative. Amazon purchases and media forums showed
that USA audiences who had the opportunity to access both versions,
something that is not possible for audiences who do not know the origi-
nal language of a programme, preferred the original version narrated by
the veteran British presenter (Skipworth, 2010). This led to the decision
to offer other series such as Planet Earth II in the USA in its original
British version. This is a good example of how presumed public prefer-
ences do not always match real ones, and how twenty-first century media
is allowing the public to voice such preferences.
Many aspects of a voice come into play when a film or any media
product is translated (Bosseaux, 2015; Chaume, 2012). What Frederic
Chaume (2016, p. 77) calls ‘suprasegmental features—intonation, stress,
the various tones of voice and features like whispering, greediness, huski-
ness, and nasality that can be used by speakers to affect the meaning of
utterances’—, are carefully taken into account in the adaptation and
198 L. Desblache
localisation of products. In an age when communication in both mass

and alternative media is reaching its audiences more frequently through
audiovisual channels than print media (World Press Trends, 2018), voice
and other sounds, more systematically transferred when a product is
adapted to another country, are gaining importance. A large number of
viewers prefer the subtitling mode of translation in films for the very
reason that the voice of the actors and narrators is left intact. This prefer-
ence is of course largely determined by their habits and the norms of the
country they live in. Viewers in non-subtitling countries are thus more
likely to find subtitles disturbing. In any case, the actors and presenters’
pitch, tone, timbre, pace, accent, all key to the expression of their person-
ality and to the meaning of the film, reach them directly. These viewers
though, are undoubtedly a minority. Subtitling requires reading, watch-
ing and listening at the same time, and many viewers find that this dis-
tracts them from the enjoyment of watching a programme. Those who
prefer subtitling often have a degree of proficiency in the original lan-
guage and enjoy both the original voices and the opportunity to hear a
language they partially know. As European reception studies have dem-
onstrated (Media Consulting Group, 2007, 2011), these viewers often
speak at least two languages and are university educated. For the minority
who prefer original versions, dubbing is primarily ‘a perverse artifice’
(Borges, 1945/1988, p. 62), an unwelcome intrusion which distorts the
original meaning of the film. While voices can be replaced by convincing
artists, and while this may be justified, the original semiotics and aes-
thetic quality of the voice will be different. Dubbing voices implies more
than the translation of the film, it involves its re-appropriation.
Overall, media consumers are unaware of the process taking place,
particularly in the case of interlingual adaptation. They wish for a prod-
uct that is easily watchable and dubbing allows this to take place with no
additional demands on the viewer. The linguistic and emotional content
of the original programme may have changed, but for most, a successful
transfer with a voice acting and singing in another language is just another
way to use suspension of disbelief, required in film in any case. In 2008,
Marcus Orff, the German dubbing actor playing Jack Sparrow in Pirates
of the Caribbean sued the German arm of Disney, claiming that the fee he
had received was not proportionate to the importance of his role in view
of the success of the German version of the film. He lost but appealed to
the Berlin Court of Appeal (Kammergericht) and in 2012, the Federal
court (Bundesgerichtshof) stated that the voice actor had a case for com-
pensation since a dubbing actor could be considered as one of the co-
authors of a film (Clark, 2013). In 2016, the actor was granted further
compensation for his work (Kammergericht, Berlin, June 1, 2016, case
2016 ZUM-RD 510). The case gave visibility to the key roles played by
voices in media seen primarily based on visual communication.
Aware of the general public’s wariness of subtitling, media companies
have been introducing multilingual audio for their products. Netflix
started exclusively with captions and subtitles when they expanded inter-
nationally in 2010, but since 2017, they have been producing dubbing
tracks for mainstream languages and this practice is growing. Media com-
panies in general are also increasingly favouring celebrity voices to
enhance the success of their products. Celebrity dubbing is culturally
engrained in some countries: this is the case in Italy where famous actors
have always dubbed foreign films, or in India and Pakistan where play-
back singers are sometimes as famous as the actors who mime their voice.
Globally though, the trend for celebrity voices is growing, as Sofia Sánchez
Mompeán (2015, pp. 270–291) has evidenced. And this trend is accom-
panied by a tendency to favour more authoritative, generally deeper,
voices (Sherwin, 2014). While dubbing actors tend to recreate a vocal
persona that is in line with the original character overall, celebrity voices
are also hired to make their mark on their audiences, to assert their pres-
ence and to bring glamour.
Changing the suprasegmental features discussed above also impacts on
the type of voice chosen whether in song or speech. For instance, singer-
songwriters who started their career in the 1960s and 70s are frequently
slightly out of tune. They can sing marginally flat or sharp to add differ-
ent qualities to their music. Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen are two
famous examples of this. They deliberately do not hold each note very
long and tend to let it drop. While singing off key is not always deliber-
ate, the influence of genres such as blues, where slightly flat vocals are
used to express sadness or nostalgia, permeated the songs of that genera-
tion. Similarly, singing sharp can be used to give more edge to a voice. In
today’s pop world, shaped by standardised features, this off-pitch trend is
200 L. Desblache
not prominent. Most pop and hip-hop recordings are ‘corrected’ by soft-
ware such as Auto-Tune which amends pitch imperfections and can also
be used creatively for sound effects. This has led to more melodic music
in the second decade of the twenty-first century, as the success of the soul
singer Adele and of the melismatic style of Beyoncé show. Even Bob
Dylan, to go back to him, recorded covers of Frank Sinatra’s songs in
2015 in a much more melodious style than in his early period (Shadows
in the Night, 2015).
In media and multimedia products which include songs, original
voices can be replaced in musical numbers. This first happened in film,
and curiously, in Hollywood, it took place more frequently intralingually
than interlingually. Bosseaux discusses voice in film and takes the exam-
ple of Marilyn Monroe’ s initially squeaky voice gradually moulded into
a sexier, breathier tone as she becomes more experienced. She shows how
Monroe was generally dubbed with voices that had more authority than
hers. In the case of the song Diamonds are a Girls’ Best Friend, Monroe’s
French equivalents, ‘Mony Dalmès in spoken dialogues and Claire
Declerc for the sung parts, [sound] generally more mature, more in con-
trol, due to the solid chest voice, lower register and fuller tone’ (2013,
p. 91). Lower voices are deemed more authoritative. The case of Marni
Nixon who dubbed renowned actresses either partially (assisting Marilyn
Monroe with high notes of Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend in Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes) or fully (most famously for the singing parts of Deborah
Kerr’s role in The King and I and Natalie Wood in West Side Story for
instance) was long hidden from the public, deliberately leaked by
Deborah Kerr (Wilson, 1956, p. 8), and is now well documented, as the
documentary Secret voices of Hollywood (2013) shows.
Interlingually, dubbing has been less common in film. Some cases of
live play back behind a screen in a language different from the original in
early cinema were not uncommon (Brown, 2019, p. 117) but overall, in
musicals, intertitles were used and later on, overall, subtitling. The first
film companies were hoping to benefit from the universal appeal of
music, but they were soon faced with the reality of songs diffused across
cultures: not transferring at least their lyrics was impacting negatively on
the comprehension of the film. While initially, the public’s expectations
regarding song localisation in media products were low, the success of
multimedia in the twenty-first century brought high expectations of

localisation in all areas, including in songs. Today, as will be discussed in
Chap. 6, song translation is needed in all genres in the creative industries,
from title songs for television to advertising, animation films and video
games. But media products are created with much emphasis given to
voice in general, and this priority happened within a decade. After all,
wasn’t Final Fantasy X, issued in 2001, the first video game introduc-
ing voices?
To conclude this short section on matters peripheral to music but per-
tinent to musicality, choices made regarding recorded voices have histori-
cally been linked to collective perceptions. And as was seen, these were
not always interpreted accurately by the music and the media industries.
Hollywood films did not become less popular with the public after the
practice of ghost singing was revealed; and in the area of narration trans-
lation, the perception that a celebrity voice would add to the value of an
established programme led by another celebrity, was erroneous. At least
in the case of intralingual translation.
5.4 L yrics and Other Words: Music Publishing

and Recording
Songs dominate twenty-first century popular music. As mentioned in
Part I (Sect. 3.2.2), most rock, pop and hip-hop music today is vocal and
involves lyrics. In addition, specific song genres, such as the singer-
songwriter genre in Britain, France, Italy or North America, exist in most
countries and are specifically focused on lyrics. A large proportion of
music performed and listened to in the world is in English, although
statistics from streaming servers show that up to 30% of songs down-
loaded are in other languages in non-English speaking countries (Map
Porn, 2015). James Fuld’s (1966/2000) study of how successful music is
borrowed and travels in print also shows how, with respect to vocal music,
and particularly popular music, the language catered for is often English
only. Yet 2.2 billion people are estimated to speak and understand English
at various levels of fluency (Ives-Keeler, 2014) which leaves 5 billion with
202 L. Desblache
little or no English, as discussed in Part I (Sect. 2.3). While the next chap-
ter (Sect. 6.1) will focus on which translation strategies are used to medi-
ate content in vocal music, I would like to briefly show the importance of
publishing and recording within the sphere of the music industry in the
transnational dissemination and moulding of musical practices and
expectations. I will start with some historical background.
Music publishing has played a crucial role in the international history
of music and in the development of transnational cultural movements. It
evidences how music and cultures were traded, exchanged, adapted and
consumed. The work of publishers has also impacted directly on musical
products and on the ways they were performed and listened to. As Kate
van Orden (2011, p. 373) points out, printed scores are not the transpar-
ent, reliable source they were once believed to be; they bring to light their
own history of the period and its players, one enriched by complexities of
the material cultures and social technologies of the time.
Publishers, like interlingual translators, are expected to be faithful to
the original composer in the public’s imagination, but they give their
interpretations of the texts they choose to publish. Even more impor-
tantly perhaps, they choose whom and what to publish and in the case of
vocal music, whether to provide translations. The majority of these scores
do not provide translations. Norms were gradually established over four
centuries of Western music publishing and four types of editions became
available in classical music, driven by different use: facsimile (a printed
edition meant to reproduce the first score available), urtext (urtext edi-
tions, as their German name suggests, favour the notion of authenticity,
considering that the original intention of the composer prevails), perfor-
mance editions (often affordable and intended to support amateur musi-
cians) and critical editions (scholarly editions). Among these, performance
editions are most likely to include translations of lyrics. In performance
editions, publishers provide what they think is most useful to the musi-
cians who read, study and perform the piece, including comments on the
text, or music and lyrics in translation.
Canonical vocal works often have a long and interesting history of
performance and publication, as was discussed about the oratorio The
Creation. In vocal works, translation in its narrowest sense often plays an
important part. Popular music travelled too of course, but this was more
dependent on individual musicians’ whereabouts, political disturbances

and wars. In addition, popular songs were generally composed in the
language of the country in which they were published and circulated
locally, at least initially.
Various forms of international copyright conventions applicable to
music emerged in the nineteenth century, leading to the Berne conven-
tion in 1886 and to the foundation of the CISAC (Confédération
Internationale des Sociétés d’Auteurs et Compositeurs) in 1926, created to
protect artists’ rights. Classical music’s advantage over popular music is
that it was often free of rights. Neither did it have a ‘sell-by-date’ as for
songs of the day. To put it in Bourdieusian terms, the ‘symbolic capital’
of classical music was not only associated with artistic value; as a com-
mercial commodity, it also had ‘economic capital’. These reasons explain
why care and money have been poured into them.
Until technology made it possible to listen to music anywhere, people
had to actively perform to enjoy music in their daily lives, or listen to
performers live. From the nineteenth century onwards, many had a
library of sheet music in their homes, as print remained the main form of
access to music until the 1920s. Print music still exists today of course,
but the various formats and platforms making music available to all have
transformed most music lovers from performers to listeners. Just as pub-
lishers in print media, when recordings became the main form of access
to music, music producers, and a growing number of agents, from arrang-
ers to sound engineers, put their mark on the recordings that they com-
plete. They became instrumental in making decisions regarding creative
content, including the translation or adaptation of songs. By the mid-
twentieth century, the music industry had grown into a phenomenally
profitable business and these decisions were primarily driven by economic
and marketing factors within the remit of global companies. Reebee
Garofalo (1999, p. 319) identifies three phases in the history of the music
industry from the twentieth century onwards which are linked to differ-
ent sectors:
• Music publishing houses, which occupied the power centre of the

industry when sheet music was the primary vehicle for disseminating
popular music;
204 L. Desblache
• Record companies, which ascended to power as recorded music

achieved dominance; and
• Transnational entertainment corporations, which promote music as
an ever-expanding series of ‘revenue streams’—record sales, advertis-
ing revenue, movie tie-ins, streaming audio on the internet—no lon-
ger tied to a particular sound carrier.
A fourth phase, linked to the mass adoption of online products and

streaming worldwide, emerged in the twenty-first century.
While the rise of electronic music gave more choice and more power
to consumers of popular music, the monopoly of the English-speaking
work established for over a century in the music industry, meant that
while consumers can (and do) choose to listen to music in languages
other than English, this practice, unlike in classical music where it has
always thrived, has not been encouraged. Moreover, it has rarely been
supported through translation. This is for economic and imperialistic rea-
sons, but also, as discussed in the following paragraph, because it is
inscribed in a long tradition of favouring the core over the periphery,
dominant cultures over the smaller ones.
In vocal music, a universalising trend based on the use of one domi-
nant language, which favours uniform patterns and styles, has been at the
basis of Western music, even if variations of this dominant language have
given it accents of diversity, as in rap today with the use of global Englishes
(see Pennycook, 2007). Economic and intellectual concentration within
publishing, whatever its forms, has never favoured a diverse environment.
The case of the Roman Catholic Church’s attitudes to music may seem far
away from twenty-first century preoccupations, but it shows a relevant
parallel with contemporary global publishing practices. The Church not
only imposed Latin as the sole language for sung liturgy and religious
music pieces from the ninth century throughout Europe, it encouraged
the standardisation of musical forms as ways of spreading its power and
ideologies. Even today, Gregorian chant is considered by the Sacred
Council of the Church ‘as being especially suited to the Roman liturgy.
Therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in
liturgical services’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 1963 IV, p. 116).
Gregorian chant appeared much before printing did of course, and it
was only sung by monks during Mass, but as printing developed, it played
a role in consolidating the uniformity of music practices and in excluding

what was not normalised. Before the Council of Trent in the sixteenth
century, local variations on congregational singing could take place in
vernacular languages. In Germany for instance, outside cities, it was not
uncommon, and provided a strong basis for Lutheranism. Joseph Herl
(2004, p. 24) states that one ‘form of deviation was the practice of trun-
cating or omitting portions of the text of the public sung mass, substitut-
ing paraphrases or unrelated text in the vernacular’. The Council of Trent,
aiming to repress the spread of the Reformation, ruled that such devia-
tions should be stopped, that Latin should be used and that sung words
should be intelligible. Sacred vocal music became not only ‘logocentric’
(Gorlée, 2005, p. 8; Tagg, 1987, p. 287), it was recorded and dissemi-
nated through publications in a language that strengthened its status. The
Church had attempted to impose linguistic intelligibility as a criterion in
sacred music since the thirteenth century, although the Council of Trent
decree concerning music remained rather vague—‘They shall also banish
from churches all those kinds of music, in which, whether by the organ,
or in the singing, there is mixed up any thing [sic] lascivious or impure’
(Council of Trent, 1562/1848, p. 161). This did not stop the develop-
ment of complex polyphony which, since the thirteenth century, had
been very melismatic and could require the singing of different texts in
two languages simultaneously, each language devoted to one part, had
been brought to a halt.
While the Church did not act as publishers, it controlled them in the
area of sacred music and even beyond until the eighteenth century.
Martin Luther (1438–1546), who started the tradition of hymns sung in
German, transgressed the Catholic Church’s moral order and did so with
the help of translation. As no established sacred repertoire existed in the
vernacular, he composed psalms and hymns, borrowed existing melodies
and created or even adapted texts from non-liturgical sacred pieces. One
hymn, the Christmas carol ‘Vom Himmel Hoch’ (‘From Heav’n above’),
was initially the contrafactum of a secular folk song ‘Ich kumm aus fremb-
den Landen her’ in an early 1534 version, but Luther published it in 1539
with a new melody that he composed. Although Luther still used Latin
and valued it as a lingua franca, he favoured the use of Early New High
German as the most appropriate language for choral singing. His work
206 L. Desblache
was published by dissident publishers, sometimes under the tacit protec-

tion of the powerful such as Frederick III of Saxony who was not in
favour of Lutheran principles but was striving for autonomy from
the Church.
However, it was in secular music that publishers had free rein over
content. This explains why songs were published in a number of lan-
guages (one at a time, initially) in an international context. The first
music publisher, Ottaviano Petrucci, although based in Venice in the six-
teenth century, published primarily Flemish composers in French,
German and Italian and started a tradition of printing in various original
languages. This trend of secular vocal music in a range of languages,
which included translations from the nineteenth century onwards, is still
alive today. In classical music, in print or digital format, no single editing
practice can be identified regarding translation provision. There are some
trends of course. Works in English generally include no translation and
scores which only include a singable translation have disappeared—a few
operas written in lesser-used languages, such as Smetana’s Bartered Bride,
originally written in Czech, are still primarily published in translation
only, but they are rare. A large number of vocal scores using texts other
than English, although not all, are published with an interlinear singable
translation underneath the original, and this can be extended to two
translated languages. Occasionally, especially if the original language is
considered a minor one, the first line of lyrics can be the translation and
the second the original. No standard practice is established and this can
lead to inconsistent editing. In the case of Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas
Brasileiras n°5 published by Associated Music Publishers/Schirmer, for
instance, we find in the same score, a vocal reduction with an English
singable translation on the first line with the original Brazilian Portuguese,
in italics, on the second line. Yet the orchestral score offers Brazilian
Portuguese on the first line and English in italics on the second line.
Generally, the default translated language is English, but this depends
on the publisher. For instance, the German publisher Bärenreiter offers
Mozart’s Italian operas such as The Marriage of Figaro or Cosi FanTutte in
Italian and German, but bilingual English/German forewords. Most
scores originally written in major European languages, in particular
English, French, German and Italian still publish the original language
only, although for art songs and lieder, interlingual translations, which
would not be singable, may be available at the beginning or at the end of
the volume. Again, this largely depends on the publisher. French songs
published by French publishers tend to be in French only for instance,
while American publishers of similar volumes would normally—but not
always—include a singable English version beneath the original poems.
Even the choice of italics or Roman font does not follow norms: in the
majority of cases, the original foreign language is written in italics by
contrast with the translation, in Roman, but it can be that the first line of
lyrics is in Roman while the second is in italics, regardless of the language.
In popular music, the situation is different. While scholarly publica-
tions of folk music were issued throughout the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, the expansion of popular songs with mass appeal was encour-
aged from the end of the nineteenth century, particularly in the USA. In
his detailed panorama of the music industry in the twentieth century,
Reebee Garofalo (1999, p. 321) shows clearly how Tin Pan Alley publish-
ers understood that monolingual, formulaic songs, mostly intended to be
slotted into theatrical shows or sung at home, provided a good revenue
stream and encouraged such standardisation. This was the start of both
reductive mass-produced popular music and of a concentration of music
publishers in one place (New York), if not yet in one corporation. At the
same time, recorded music was becoming technically more exciting to
listen to, and music, including songs, was recorded from all over the
world in a wide range of languages by European companies such as British
Gramophone (Garofalo, 1999, p. 325, 326; His Master’s Voice gramo-
phone catalogue, 1899). Unfortunately, such a qualitative approach was
not sustained after the First World War, when spending on culture was
reduced. The 1916 records catalogue of Columbia Records (1916), for
instance, mixes popular, classical and operatic music. All songs listed are
in English apart from some operatic arias. One record is in French, but
all other vocal pieces are in English (sometimes translated from the
French or the Italian), in original Italian or in Italian translations of
French originals, such as Bizet’s famous arias, as was common at the time
when Italian singers sang a multilingual repertoire in their own language.
The difference between the two catalogues of 1899 and 1916 is strik-
ing, and this rapid change left the way open for American music publish-
208 L. Desblache
ing houses and record companies, already established, to conquer popular

song. The universalising and impoverishing trend associated with these
songs was only slowed down by the emergence of the radio. While some
regional radio channels were open to a diversified repertoire, national
radios, ideologically loaded in most countries, tended to play conserva-
tive music from the 1930s onwards. In the USA, some instrumental jazz,
mostly in the language of the country, at least until the end of the Second
World War, was also included. With rock and roll, popular music
exploded in the USA, and finally started to embrace some diversity, a
trend that will continue through to the 1980s. Popular music, recorded
on a master tape in one country, was packaged to attract non USA audi-
ences in different target territories. While popular music evolved excit-
ingly in the second half of the twentieth century, and while Western
audiences expanded their musical tastes beyond the European canon, the
music industry became more centralised than ever. As Garofalo (1999,
p. 342) aptly states:
The transnational music industry could have taken this development as a

glimpse into a more decentralized and culturally diverse future. But
embracing such a vision would have required the industry to challenge
some of its own restrictive patterns, such as privileging the English lan-
guage as a precondition for success in the largest international markets.
Instead, the major labels retreated into a formula mentality that pointed
the way to a more limiting international culture.
As for print music, it continued its decline since fewer people performed
music and bought scores. The respected classical music publisher
Bärenreiter summarises the challenges of music publishing on its website:
a decision must be made about which works will suit a publishing house
and the ‘market’. An important assessment now begins, for the ‘goods’ are
not transient things such as screws or jelly beans but cultural property. The
decision to take either a particular work or the whole oeuvre of a composer
(living or dead) marks a tradition or establishes a tradition. The attraction
for a music publisher lies in the balancing act between culture and the
market: ultimately a music publisher is a commercial enterprise which
needs to make a profit. (Bärenreiter, n.d.)1
Today, electronic publishing strongly impacts music publishing, as is the

case in other fields, financially and in other ways. For instance, a very
extensive repertoire has been made available publicly for music which is
out of copyright. By January 2019, the IMSLP Petrucci Music Library,
which offers the largest virtual library of music scores in the public
domain, had provided 460 000 scores and 54 000 sound recordings to an
international audience (IMSLP, n.d.). It is relevant that the name of
Petrucci was chosen for this project, as digital libraries now revolutionise
world-wide access to music in ways that are as monumental as in six-
teenth century Italy.
Digital publishing has also expanded in the area of new music, as com-
posers can register and make their work available online. In the area of
popular music, e-publishing is making sheet music accessible for twenty-
first century music lovers. By contrast, print for popular music has always
tended to be limited to the most commercially successful pieces. It has
generally been published by way of albums such as excerpts from musicals,
collections of songs or successful singer-songwriter’s volumes. Since the
Second World War, most of these print publications have been in English,
with some exceptions for singer-songwriter songs, published in the lan-
guage of the singer. The predominance of English is pervasive, to a degree
that is damaging to the quality of the music sometimes. Songs which
include other languages can see those omitted or ignored. For instance,
the opening song of The Lion King musical, entitled ‘Circle of Life’, is
preceded by an African chant. Based on a traditional call and response
folk song, it is in Zulu. The presence of this language is instrumental to
the narrative: it sets it in Africa and since animals are the main protago-
nists in the film, the use of a language that very few people would under-
stand allows the audience to enter the story the way an animal might,
making sense of sounds which are not verbal. The music of the song is
transcribed in the purchasable score, but all the words in Zulu—a dia-
logue between father and son about lions and leopards who come to the
open plains of the savannah—have been removed. Only two indications,
‘African chant’ at the beginning, and ‘African chant continues’ on the
tenth bar are visible. Lyrics only start appearing for the English verses of
the song, which are in Western style. Yet both the musicality of the Zulu
210 L. Desblache
language and the semantic meaning of the words are of crucial impor-
tance to the story and the musical mood.
The history of patchy and inconsistent translation delivery in popular
music, which is mostly vocal, the reduced profitability of the music pub-
lishing industry—and the music industry in general—in the twenty-first
century, as well as the dematerialisation of music into electronic forms
have led to a disengagement regarding the translation of lyrics. Two pre-
vailing types of provision exist in popular music: the audiovisual model,
based on what is happening in subtitling and media accessibility in gen-
eral; and the classical music model, where translation, whether for perfor-
mance or publishing, has nearly always been provided and continues to
be. The music industry tends to rely on the hegemony of English in pop-
ular music, and favours it as a universal principle that can be damaging to
its originality. Yet as we shall see in the next chapter, the development of
electronic media and the communal and international fan culture that
emerged from it made it possible for the general public to take things into
their own hands.
Note
1. Quote by permission of the publisher.
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duction by Cecil Sharp: iii–xxiii).
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Tiersot, J. (1903). Chansons populaires recueillies dans les Alpes françaises (Savoie
et Dauphiné). Grenoble: Librairie Dauphinoise; Moûtiers: Librairie
Savoyarde.
Verdi, G. (1851/2006). Rigoletto. Milan: Ricordi.
Verdi, G. (1867/1886). Don Carlos. Milan: Ricordi.
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tra of violoncellos. New York: Associated Music Publishers/Schirmer.
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Page
6
How is Music Translated? Mapping
the Landscape of Music Translation
In spite of the partial and at times desired untranslatability which shapes

their essence, most musical texts, and especially songs, require some
degree of translation. Translation can make them (more) meaningful
musically, linguistically, culturally, modally and sensorially. As for media
translations, they are deliberately incomplete: while taking the whole text
into consideration, they choose to transfer one or several aspects of this
text, while others are left untouched. For instance, the literal translation
of the lyrics of a song will aim to add a level of semantic comprehension,
in order to allow the listener to enjoy the original experience of the song
on all other levels, musically, theatrically or visually.
Useful models of translation that can be applied to music have only
been explored in depth since the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Some areas, such as opera and song translation (Gorlée, 2005; Kaindl,
2005; Low, 2005, 2010, 2013; Mateo, 2012; Susam-Sarajeva, 2008),
have been explored extensively, while others are more neglected. Those
who have considered song translation have also been influenced by the
latest research in audiovisual translation and multimodal communica-
tion, which stresses the importance of taking into account verbal, non-
verbal, audio and visual elements in the way they contribute to meaning

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54965-5_6
220 L. Desblache
(Bauldry & Thibault, 2006/2010; Pérez-González, 2014; Zabalbeascoa,

2008). Music’s meanings certainly change according to the visual, lin-
guistic, social and spatial context that it is listened to and played in. As
Fig. 6.1 testifies, many factors influence how songs and musical texts are
translated. Music entails a range of modalities which includes the music
itself, sound, voice quality and language. These can also acquire meaning
across other modes, such as visual ones.
When translating a song or a text involving music, a specific transla-
tion type needs to be chosen: do lyrics need to be transcribed or adapted
intralingually, in the same language as the original? Across a different
language, interlingually? Across different musical styles or genres, as seen
Genres: classical
song, experimental
music, opera, MODALITIES
operetta, musical,
musical theatre, Music Sound Voice Language
jazz, popular
music…
A A
Live concerts P
R Music videos Descriptive P
Video games Music and Translation
R
E TV programmes Theoretical O
Film A
A Radio Applied C
Publications Discipline-specific (AVT) H
S Commercials Interdisciplinary E
S
intralinguistic interlinguistic intersemiotic intermodal intergeneric intercultural
TRANSLATION TYPES Translation

strategies:
adaptation,
literal
translation,
transmutation,
audiodescription,
SDH…
Fig. 6.1 Music translation map (Kaindl & Desblache, 2013)

6 How is Music Translated? Mapping the Landscape of Music… 221
earlier in Sect. 3.2.1? Intersemiotically across different art forms? Across

different cultures which may even share the same language such as Spain
and Mexico? Or does the translation need to be intersensorial and to
mediate a range of meanings for audiences that may have visual or hear-
ing impairments? Music translation also takes place across a contrasting
range of platforms and areas such as live events, non-linear internet chan-
nels, television, radio and specific programmes or publications: advertis-
ing, long feature films, video games and so on. The genres and styles of
musical texts also impact on choices made for the translation. Moreover,
translators will consider different overarching translation approaches in
order to best render the text.
6.1 M
usical Content and Translation
Strategies
Leaving more metaphorical notions of translation behind, this section
investigates current practices of music translation, considering what is
translated, in what areas, using which platforms, which translation types,
strategies and approaches. Although, as discussed above, many aspects of
music, including genre, form or style can be translated, we shall focus
here on transfers which include words. This means considering the ‘par-
tial’ translation that is most often needed in music: that of the lyrics in
vocal music, whether for a general or specialist audience, and of audio
description for the blind and visually impaired. Target texts can also be
created to mediate a musical text that does not include words: for the
purpose of cultural transference or accessibility for audiences with special
needs, for instance. Shakespeare’s story of Romeo and Juliet was intended
by Prokofiev (1935/2018) to be a ballet, many choreographers mediated
it for dance, from Leonid Lavrosky to Kenneth MacMillan, but specta-
tors have also had the opportunity of buying a programme containing a
synopsis of the story in the language of the country of performance
to this day.
The current generation of millennials has taken the production of
music videos into their own hands to amend them in order to give
themselves a touch of glamour and the videos an individual touch. They
222 L. Desblache
transmediate them across visual/musical languages, and/or translate

their lyrics as the importance of virtual spaces is growing. These ‘home-
spun’ transmediations reflect a trend that Henry Jenkins (2003) dubbed
‘transmedia storytelling’, focused on the spin-off of lucrative franchises
that involve the adaptation of successful products across a wide range of
genres and platforms, from video games to series. It is also important to
note the expanding popularity of live events which contribute to this
diverse landscape of musical places. This broad and diverse context of
translation implies a skilful use of strategies, often hybrid, to suit the
circumstances of music playing, listening or making: words may be par-
tially translated into another language for instance, or English may be
used in a particular local variety. As Şebnem Susam-Saraeva (2018,
pp. 358–367) notes, a full array of strategies from code-switching to
self-translation can be created or blurred into one another, contributing
substantially to the creative spirit of each translated piece. This allows
identities to be deconstructed, reconstructed or merged fluidly. It also
gives control to the artist as regards the degree of comprehensibility of
the text, which can be made opaque or transparent to listeners. Malian
singer Rokia Traoré uses these strategies skilfully. She sings in French,
English and Bambara, one of 13 Malian languages, or in a mix of any of
these, which represent Beautiful Africa (2013). Most songs are her own,
but Traoré’s spare interpretation of Billy Holiday’s iconic and disturbing
‘Strange fruit’ places protest against racism at the centre of her album. Its
sober accompaniment of guitar, drums and West African ngoni lute
seems to echo the three verbal languages she uses, in a musical transcul-
tural encounter different from but comparable to the verbal one. The
eponymous song of her 2016 album, Né So, which means ‘home’ in
Bambara, is narrated in French and English, with superimposition in
sung Bambara. It involves several Western and non-Western artists, most
of them prominent, such as rock musician John Paul Jones and folk
singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart, in an attempt to convey the pain
of the displaced migrants forced to leave their homes. It sings their inse-
curity about both their present and future, as well as Westerners’ duty in
responding to their crisis. The Bambara refrain acts as an ostinato that
allows the Malian identity not to be drowned, while French and English
prosodies evoke the cruel ‘translation’ of the migrants in the Homi
Bhabha (1994/2004) sense that they have to leave who they are behind
in order to survive. This mix of languages which call, translate and com-
plete each other also allows social bridges to be built. Traoré has always
called for appropriating traditions inclusively through music. Her own
noble Malian background, for instance, prohibits her from singing the
very griot songs that are incorporated in her music. Using this tradi-
tional musical form of storytelling allows her to transgress social divi-
sions and place herself as a Malian, regardless of her social background.
In spite of her understated style, she calls forcefully for music making to
take place transgressively, using verbal and musical translations to unlock
its multiple meanings and make them available to a diverse audience.
This example shows eloquently how the translation of vocal music can
be based on the intersection of different languages. Songs are, of course,
frequently translated in more traditional ways, inter or intralinguistically.
The section below attempts to map how these translations are largely
dependent on the spaces in which music is being made and listened to.
6.2 Music Spaces

The places in which music is performed and listened to impact on all
agents of music making and listening. They also determine its translation
provision (or lack of provision) to some degree. As digital audio scholar
and engineer Barry Blesser states, ‘aural architecture has its own rules for
survival, mutation, reproduction and extinction’ (Blesser, 2009, p. xi),
and influences the production, performance and reception of music.
Large outdoor events, such as Summerfest, one the world’s largest music
festivals, for instance, provide different stages not only to mirror different
musical styles but also to prioritise how music intersects with senses other
than hearing, or with other disciplines: the BMO Harris pavilion is built
for visual spectacles, while the Kohl’s Captivation Station is devoted to
hybrid art-making experiences which can be thematic—e.g. linked to
environmental concerns—or interartistic.
The mediation of music, including the translation provision of lyrics in
the case of vocal music, depends on many factors, many of which are
economic and cultural. As shown in Part I (Sect. 3.2.2) and in Part II
224 L. Desblache
(Sect. 5.4), translation provision for musical texts and its norms are pri-
marily shaped by traditions and expectations. In turn, it plays a vital role
in the transnational, transcultural and transsensorial circulation of musi-
cal ‘symbolic goods’ (Bourdieu, 1971/1993). For example, audiences
now expect surtitling at an operatic performance while they presume lit-
tle textual support at a pop concert. There are unwritten norms of trans-
lation provision in music which are outlined below. This aims to show the
scope of the translation spectrum than offer a comprehensive list.
6.2.1 Live Performances
While today people listen primarily to recorded music, live music atten-
dance has increased spectacularly in the twenty-first century. Live music
has increased from 33% of the global music industry revenue in 2000 to
43% in 2016 (MIDiA, 2017). Internet channels were the first to broad-
cast concerts live. Although Youtube does not usually offer accessibility
provision for live music transmission, channels such as MTV Live have a
better track record in this area, providing transcriptions of lyrics.
Companies established in recorded music now also provide live music.
Amazon, for instance, launched Prime Live Events in 2017, organising
concerts and their same day video delivery. Some emerging free or paying
platforms such as Livelist or Concert Window also offer live concerts
streamed on the internet, and the largest music festivals have their own
dedicated websites with streaming video. However, little translation pro-
vision is made on these platforms. Many festivals acknowledge that
streaming their events, or some of their events live is one of the most
efficient marketing strategies for increasing audience attendance. Just as
most listeners involved in piracy at the end of the twentieth century were
also the best purchasers of music, those attending live streamed events go
to live concerts and festivals regularly. As noted earlier, live music has
become very popular since the second decade of the twenty-first century
(Eventbrite, 2016) and in 2016 alone, live audience attendance has
increased by 12% in the UK (UK Music, 2017).
My discussions with festival organisers and live events providers lead
me to believe that most organisations are open to accessibility provision,
although it tends to not be available yet. Until the end of the first decade
of the twenty-first century, surtitling for the stage, with the exception of
opera, was limited to some performances and provided by disability char-
ities. There is now a more comprehensive translation provision, and as it
grows, it is also increasingly expected by audiences. New forms of live
music involving streaming do not yet provide translation or accessibility
provision on the whole. There are exceptions, when the events are cov-
ered by large broadcasters, as mentioned earlier. MTV or the BBC, for
instance, provide song transcriptions for the Glastonbury Festival both
on stage, as live surtitles, and as subtitles for television retransmission.
Festival providers, in particular, are increasingly aware that such provi-
sion needs to be made in the future. More importantly, they know that it
can be implemented relatively cheaply and even small organisations are
considering it.
Live popular music, overwhelmingly vocal, needs to facilitate the com-
prehension of lyrics. Yet opera companies, in spite of their elitist reputa-
tion, are the ones who have, perhaps surprisingly, pioneered accessibility
in music. They were the first to offer surtitles, as early as in the 1980s,
interlinguistically in the case of a libretto in a foreign language, and later,
intralinguistically for operas performed in the language of the country.
Initially used in Hong Kong to introduced Western opera to Chinese
audiences (Chan, 2009) they caught on as a cheap and efficient way to
provide understanding linguistically, culturally and across disability bar-
riers. Opera is by tradition a global art form, often co-produced interna-
tionally and has always aimed at a very international audience. Surtitling
has remained ubiquitous in opera houses since the end of the twentieth
century, although practices vary widely across the world. In English
speaking countries, large companies tend to provide surtitles in English,
even if the original libretto is in English. Smaller companies, who per-
form in smaller venues, on the whole only provide interlingual transla-
tions. In non-English speaking countries, two languages may be offered:
it may be the original language and the language of the country of perfor-
mance. The two languages are sometimes projected with a different font
or light intensity. Opera surtitling in the Western world is one of the best
documented areas of research in the field of music translation. See for
instance Burton (2009), Desblache (2007, 2013), Low (2002), Mateo
226 L. Desblache
(2007) and Palmer (2013) for detailed accounts of how rules are made
and broken in different theatres. Opera audiences are often older, with
a higher proportion of members who have a hearing or visual impair-
ment (Audience Agency, 2017, p. 9). Opera houses, often criticised for
catering for the rich and privileged, in a move to show their willingness
to be inclusive, soon became models of accessibility. In addition to their
work on surtitling, they were the first to provide audio-introductions
for the blind, experimented with audio description, and, in some cases,
signed performances for the Deaf.1 They were also the first to transmit
performances live in live High Definition video streams in 2009, a
model now taken up by theatre companies and concert organisers.
Opera companies’ innovative use of technology is now recognised. For
instance, The Centre for Economics and Business Research emphasised
in its 2013 report for the Arts Council of England how they pioneer
new technologies in making entertainment available and accessible
beyond their own area:
The Royal Opera House’s experiments with 3D technology, for example,

were groundbreaking in the field of live event capture, which is now fairly
common. By 2012, the technology had become mainstream enough for
several major events to be broadcast live in 3D, including the opening
ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, the Last Night of the
Proms and the Wimbledon final. (Centre for Economics and Business
Research, 2013, p. 68)
Musicals have become more popular as a live genre in the twenty-first

century. Anglo-American in style, they are often co-produced interna-
tionally with a global tours in mind and have increasingly been adapted
to be sung in different languages, rather than surtitled, except when sur-
titles are provided as support for hearing-impaired audiences.
Classical music apart, translation provision remains poor. Accessibility
provision for sensory impaired audiences at music events, opera apart, is
still mostly unavailable. When it is offered, words can be scripted (lyrics
may be transcribed ahead of the performance, or an audio introduction
of the stage may be written, as they are in opera) or not (when they
involve live interaction with or improvisation from performers). When
lyrics are not transcribed before the performance, live surtitling tech-
niques through respeaking are becoming more common, especially on
mainstream television, but are still experimental in live situations that are
not broadcast.
Translation provision varies across the spectrum of live music events,
but is usually poor. As always, classical music has the best provision. Print
programmes are available. For vocal music concerts, they include infor-
mation about the performance and performers, lyrics in their original
language and in translation in the language of the country in which the
concert takes place. Specialist publications intended for music lovers can
also be bought: opera libretti mainly, but also volumes on a specific rep-
ertoire. These publications are not purchased by a large number of read-
ers, but often are classics in their own right and they are reprinted for
many years. For example, Pierre Bernac’s The interpretation of French song
has been in print since 1970 and is still a key resource among French
mélodie learners and listeners.
Elsewhere translation is generally, and sadly, non-existent. At many
music festivals, little background information on performance and per-
formers is available and no translation of any kind is offered. In Europe,
associations for the Deaf, Blind and disabled users in general are working
to improve the situation. In the UK, charities such as Stagetext or
Attitude is Everything are vey active. Their work for greater inclusivity
benefits everyone, as most people enjoy information related to the con-
certs that they are attending.
6.2.2 Radio
Most radio stations broadcast in one language, with the exception of

songs which may be in different languages, but some support multilin-
gual outputs. Blind Radio’s website, for instance, offers a range of coun-
tries and musical genres, a list of online radios and an accessibility service,
Radio Blind, run by the Blind. Some streaming platforms, such as Deezer,
also encourage radios to give details of their sites in order to build a direc-
tory. Overall though, most radio stations are monolingual and offer no
translation as such. The concentration of power in a few global radios
228 L. Desblache
such as Apple Beats1 has given even more weight to English as the lan-
guage of transmission. Although monolingual, radio usually offers infor-
mation on the music played, its performers and composers, even if only
as an oral summary before or after the piece transmitted. In 2008, the
BBC tested a system of synchronised titles for opera listeners on Radio 3.
Titles were due to appear on the radio display, but for budgetary reasons,
this was not taken further. Today, an increasing number of digital radio
stations make the title of the song and its composer or performer visible
on the radio display, so that listeners in their car or at home can read the
information as music is broadcast.
6.2.3 Digital Music on the Move
Walkman players first became available in the late 1970s and mark the
beginning of a new era for music, controlled and listened to by individu-
als who now create their personal music library and can exclude their
environment and others from their experience of music listening. But in
the twenty-first century, the growth of social networks meant that this
individual approach to music is also supported by shared networks. In
the age that Daniel Guberman calls the age of ‘post-fidelity’ (2011),
sound quality has been sacrificed to prioritise portability, low cost, dura-
bility and storage. Besides, in an era of media convergence (Jenkins,
2006/2008), music is rarely produced and disseminated without extra-
musical elements, in particular visuals. Music is also rarely listened to on
a device exclusively designed for musical purposes. In the twenty-first
century, ‘the ideal musical experience is as much about convenience and
style as it is about sound’ (Guberman op. cit., p. 449). In line with this
spirit, music consumers started to want the translation of lyrics to be part
of their musical experience. And when they saw that it wasn’t there, they
created their own, with the help of music groups and networks.
A wide range of translated lyrics is available on the internet: transcrip-
tions and translations of song lyrics on musicians’ or companion web-
sites, fan translations on sites dedicated to songs or subtitled music videos,
forums sharing information in music, contextual material on artists, their
compositions and performances, and software applications or song data-
bases such as Lyrics Translate, Musixmatch or SongMeanings.
In popular music, the translation of lyrics has been reinvented as part

of a multiscreen culture driven by users’ interactions as they consume and
share music. Applications such as Shazam allow music to be recognised as
it is listened to, and give information about it. Transmedial exchanges are
also the norm for audiences that have been brought up to expect visuals,
including the staging of film productions and dance, to accompany
music. This is evidenced by the success of applications such as TikTok
that make these transfers possible for individuals, encouraging personali-
sation and visualisation of music. In the contemporary media conver-
gence arena, soundtracks tend to be listened to on devices that provide
access to all these services. The translations of lyrics are therefore present
as an optional service, although their quality varies and they are rarely
synchronised to the music.
6.2.4 T
ranslation Standards for Physical Formats
of Recorded Music
Listening habits vary according to which format is used. Expectations

vary in similar ways as regards translation. In popular music, lyrics provi-
sion on CDs and DVDs, as elsewhere, is very limited, be it as transcrip-
tion—lyrics made available in their original language—or interlingual
translation—lyrics offered in the language of the audience when different
from the original. As for other formats, more textual support is offered in
classical music, where the lyrics of both art songs and operas are either
transcribed or translated multilingually on a companion website—book-
lets included in CD cases became rarer after the first decade of the twenty-
first century—, or added as subtitles in DVDs. There are a few exceptions:
for instance, non-Asian viewers expect K-Pop or J-Pop video clips to be
subtitled into English. Such translations are included as part of a market-
ing exercise intended to encourage the growth of Western audiences in
this area. For songs such as J-Pop songs, in particular, which are produced
in physical formats rather than streamed, some form of textual support in
English is usually expected.
Overall, listeners who stream music, often on the move, are used to its
dematerialised nature, and have fewer expectations as regards textual provi-
sion. However, even physical formats include transcriptions or translations
230 L. Desblache
sparingly. Although pop stars now tend to offer their products in a range of
physical formats such as CD and vinyl, song lyrics and their translations
are increasingly provided by consumers, and listeners have to look for them
on social networks, artists’ or fans’ sites.
6.2.5 Video Games
Video game music thrives on creating global soundscapes. It aims to cre-

ate an atmosphere to accompany a type of storytelling that has a global
appeal. Video game music is intended to communicate directly with their
audiences, to trigger emotional responses or to play an active role in the
game’s performance. Surprisingly perhaps, this focus on engagement has
led to the use of classical sounding music, and in particular, opera in
video games. Its monumental stature, its capacity for storytelling through
leitmotivs (Summers, 2014, 2016), and its cohesive quality, are well
suited to texts that only rely partially on verbal language and aim for a
global audience.
On twentieth August 2003, a new form of live concert was held in
Leipzig. A young music producer, Thomas Böcker, had convinced the
organisers of the Video Games Convention to open their event with a
symphonic concert of recent video games music, to be performed by the
Czech National Orchestra. It included Kyd Jesper’s music composed for
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin. This was the first concert of this kind outside
Japan. It was held in the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, a concert hall with a
long artistic and social history, built in 1791, destroyed during the Second
World War and rebuilt in 1981. This choice of one of the temples of clas-
sical music for a concert marking the opening of Europe’s biggest trade
fair for video games, was meaningful: it added ‘symbolic capital’ to a
music genre that was overall scorned by devotees of high cultures; it revit-
alised the image of the formal concert hall; it highlighted the capacity of
music to engage audiences in an interactive context; it created trans-
generational bridges, as attendees were often families; and bridges
between light music lovers, who may not be gamers, and gamers, who
may not have gone to a light music concert. Such musical events are now
taking place all over the world from Paris to Hong Kong, and are gener-
ally live-streamed on the internet. They are international in all respects:

their management, their audiences and the places of their performances.
They are increasingly popular and aim to engage viewers and listeners, at
a distance, on screen, with each other in real time, in play, and live.
Video game music was primarily instrumental until the twenty-first
century. Songs tended to be used when playing a key role in the game
(Dance Dance Revolution) or when the player was the musical star of the
game, such as in Guitar Hero or Rock Band. If a song was not key to the
action, it tended to be kept in its original language, generally English.
When the player was involved with the song, the latter tended to be
localised, or replaced with equally successful local pieces rather than
translated.
However, video game music has become increasingly vocal, even when
the songs are not an integral part of the game. In the live events men-
tioned above, though, the only mediation provided is visual as montages
of moving images related to the games accompany the music. Christopher
Tin, one of the most successful composers of video game music, names
such music ‘adaptive’, because the music follows the action of the game,
but also its dynamism is based on the interplay of different musical styles
and on the encounter of the known and the unknown (Tin, 2009). Such
interplay has a global appeal but relies on local touches. Tin’s album
Calling All Dawns (2009) for instance, which includes the famous ‘Baba
Yetu’, the Lord’s prayer sung in Swahili in the game Civilization IV, com-
prises twelve songs, each in a different language.
Songs and choruses are frequent in video games, and often not in
English: imaginary languages and Latin, in particular, which contribute
to creating a timeless atmosphere, are favourites (The World of Warcraft
includes distorted Latin; The Sims uses Simlish; Final Fantasy V comprises
animal languages…). A deliberate untranslatability is created: either a
language is used in association with a specific identity, Russian with the
Soviets for instance, or as the expression of an unreachable world.
Video game music is the wealthiest sector in the creative industries and
can afford to be experimental. No other music blends so many styles,
from ambient to chip music and rock to classical. It is conceived and
performed for a wide range of media, from synthesisers to full symphonic
orchestras. The music is mediated visually and thought out for a global
232 L. Desblache
audience. Yet the choice is made to offer no translation for song lyrics.
Live music shows such as the ones mentioned above are undoubtedly
successful. Audiences, including video games audiences, can be puzzled
by this lack of translation, and as they prove in their online feedback,
they are curious about the lyrics that are often hidden from them. This
has led to a strong movement of fan translation with some impressively
well-rendered dubbed songs in some cases. By nature, these localised ver-
sions are transient, and often removed from the internet for copy-
right reasons.
6.2.6 Television and Non-Linear Internet Streaming
Song translation on television and internet screens varies. On mainstream

European and North American television channels, intralingual tran-
scriptions and sometimes translations of songs are provided on general
programmes as part of the accessibility service for the Deaf and Hard of
Hearing. For viewers who do not use this service though, provision is
inconsistent and songs are often left untranslated, as is the case in cinema
(see Sect. 6.2.7). Films which are dubbed rarely include dubbed songs,
even if the latter contribute to the understanding of the narrative. Film
musicals which are dubbed tend to offer subtitles or no translation for
songs (Di Giovanni, 2008). Children’s programmes, and particularly ani-
mation programmes are an exception and are usually dubbed. But songs
in other programmes, even in a country such as France, where the law
mandates a quota of products broadcast in French (Conseil Supérieur de
l’Audiovisuel), are frequently left untranslated.
In series, translation decisions, regarding title songs in particular, vary
according to programme and country. New songs often replace original
ones, to project a different image of the programme it introduces, to
market it for a specific age group, public or time slot. Choices largely
depend on producers’ perceptions of target audiences. The American
theme music of the ‘Prison Break’ series, for instance, was changed to a
new hip-hop song (Larage, 2007), ‘Pas le temps’, for the French version,
and by cover songs of the original for the German and Belgian versions:
‘Ich glaub’ an dich’ (Azad & Tawil, 2007) and ‘Prison Break Anthem’
(Styles, 2006). The millennials, who grew up in an online, visual and

participatory culture, and, in Europe and North America at least, who are
used to media accessibility provided by various hybrid television systems,
are accustomed to closed captions and know how to access them. They
also find and share information relative to music programmes on com-
panion sites or fan sites. Many, of course, fandub or fansub original songs
into a target language, or propose new music to accompany a programme,
which is often removed due to copyrights issues.
While title songs may be adapted for another language and culture,
such as in the example above, in mainstream television, songs are often
left untranslated. By contrast, YouTube and other video-sharing websites
provide a fair number of music video clips which include intralinguistic
or interlinguistic subtitled lyrics, mostly completed by fans. Interestingly,
while YouTube offers automatic subtitling for all programmes with ver-
bal dialogue, these are not available for music programmes. Neither are
they for the increasing number of live streaming music platforms such as
Livelist or Aurora. Successful video-on-demand services by way of pay-
as-you-go (e.g. Apple itunes) or subscription (e.g. Netflix), offer multi-
lingual versions and subtitling databases such as Opensubtitles (for films)
and Seriessub (for series) allow the downloading of subtitling for streamed
audiovisual material, but this often excludes songs and is not available
for music programmes. Music lovers rely on applications such as
Musixmatch, which display original lyrics synchronised with the song as
it is played, or multilingual lyrics databases mentioned above, such as
Lyrics Translate.
Contemporary global (multi)media audiences, increasingly engaged in
the design and implementation of the products that they want to see, use
new technologies to ‘prosume’ songs. Fans and music enthusiasts can go
to extraordinary lengths to provide adaptations of songs in their language.
The French site run by Antoine Guillemain, ‘Le tradapteur’, for instance,
offers remarkable adaptations of pop songs such as Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker
Face’ or Sia’s ‘Chandelier’, not only adapting the lyrics into French but
visually reconceptualising the original video clips in fresh, imaginative
ways with different performers. These creative adaptations are of course
at the mercy of copyright restrictions.
234 L. Desblache
6.2.7 Cinema
Music in films plays an important narrative role, usually intended to pre-

empt events. It has also always played a strong emotional role, even in the
silent era. This has been discussed in depth (Chion, 1990/1994, 1995,
2003/2009), and any viewer hearing ‘scary’ music in a horror film will
expect the next scene to be dramatic; romantic sequences on the other
hand are accompanied by sweet lyrical music. Instrumental music is often
composed exclusively for a film, but existing songs have become more
popular as soundtracks since the 1970s. Songs in films have different
functions: they can just provide background sound—the radio may be
playing as action takes place; they can dictate the emotions of a sequence—
such as the song ‘Shadow on the Sun’ in Collateral (2004), played to
reflect the sense of alienation of the human characters who watch a coy-
ote, also entirely out of place, cross the streets of Los Angeles; they can
contribute crucially to the meaning of a film—in Almadóvar’s Volver
(2006), for instance, where the eponymous song drives the narration.
They can be diegetic—when performed by characters in the film—or
non-diegetic, but this choice does not determine how important they are
emotionally or narratively.
As Frederic Chaume has emphasised (2004, 2012, 2016), song trans-
lation can be challenging technically and culturally. Songs are often
culture-bound and can trigger connotations to mood or references in an
instant. The quality of the voices also contributes to the meaning of the
song, which explains why so many Hollywood actors have been dubbed
by singers in musical films (Bosseaux, 2015; Dyer, 2011), as we have seen
(Sect. 5.3). Films often use well-known songs and dubbing them for
international versions can be problematic. It includes the recording of
separate music sequences, copyrights—also an issue for subtitling—eco-
nomic cost and possible loss of reference to the established version of the
songs. In texts involving music, ‘[t]he process of transmission is not always
straightforward: some elements that constitute the message may be
implied rather than contained in the source text, and some may be hard
to trace and to define’ (Ó Cuilleanáin, 2011, p. 67). Moreover, as Chaume
(2004, p. 18) explains, ‘[s]ongs often work as narrative punctuation signs
and usually involve a take cut (the translator uses a new dubbing unit or
take for the song), or a subtitle change (the translator does not mingle
lyrics and dialogue in the same subtitle)’. Sadly, many songs are thus left
untranslated in otherwise dubbed or subtitled versions, as was discussed
in Chap. 5 (Sect. 5.2).
Discussing the special case of film musicals, Elena Di Giovanni (2008)
has shown that a range of translation modes was used across Europe in
the twentieth century, depending on budget availability: subtitling of
songs and dialogue, dubbing of dialogue and subtitling of songs or dub-
bing of the entire film. Today, a single version in English with subtitles in
the non-English speaking countries tends to be provided.
Songs, even when composed especially for a film and strongly linked
to it thematically, are not systematically translated when their translation
matters. In Call Me by Your Name (2017), for instance, key songs, includ-
ing ‘Mystery of Love’, a love song composed for the film by Sufjan Stevens
which received an Academy Award for Best Original Song, were left
untranslated in the non-English versions of the film. Such decisions are
made according to audience expectations. The twenty-first century non-
English speaking public is so accustomed to songs in English, that view-
ers do not demand lyrics translation. In addition there is a tendency for
films to rely more strongly on visual communication than on words. In
general, dialogues are notably spare in films today as Steven Zeitchik
(2017) has noted, and as will be discussed in Part III (Sect. 8.1) in rela-
tion to the analysis of the film Dunkirk.
6.3 Music and Accessibility

The growth of the audiovisual in global communication in the last hun-
dred years has changed what is expected of texts. Texts are no longer
cohesive and meaningful through the verbal exclusively. In most cases,
they are multimodal, using signs that may be lexical but also create mean-
ing through visual or auditory channels. They are produced through a
range of different literacies which translators have to get to know.
Understanding and knowledge are not only communicated intellectually
through concepts articulated in words but also experientially, through
sensorial information. At the end of the nineteenth century, poets such as
236 L. Desblache
Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire had pre-empted the importance

of creating bridges between different forms of perception, cognition and
representation. In his famous poem ‘Vowels’, written in 1871, Rimbaud
(2009, p. 135) establishes association as a principle of writing. He pres-
ents vowels not only as elements of the written alphabet, but as signs that
evoke colours and emotions, and that are part of other human alphabets
and offer other meanings across different ways of perception. The twenty-
first century has seen many developments in the understanding of synaes-
thesia, which allows signs to be perceived simultaneously in more than
one sensory or cognitive pathway, and which will be discussed in Part III.
For now, I want to highlight that a wider understanding of what a text
is, coupled with a broader awareness of how the world can be read and
engaged with thanks to different sensory or cognitive abilities, has trans-
formed views and expectations of translation. In most areas today, trans-
lations are not only intended to be intralinguistic and interlinguistic, but
also intersemiotic. The notion of intersemiotic translation, initially
defined by Jakobson as ‘an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs
of nonverbal sign systems’ (1951/2012, p. 127), opened up the way to a
broader comprehension of translation. Yet as many translation scholars
have discussed (Eco, 2004, p. 123; Marais & Kull, 2016), it is incomplete
since it leaves out many aspects of what is today acknowledged as transla-
tion, both beyond rewording and between two languages. An audio
description for instance, is the opposite of Jakobson’s description in that
it uses verbal signs to transfer non-verbal messages.
The concept of intersemiotic translation also excludes the notion of
intersensoriality: how a piece primarily intended to be deciphered
through one sense, say sight, can use translation to offer an equivalent in
other senses. Moreover, while in the mid-twentieth century, Jakobson’s
three categories were understood as discrete, in the twenty-first century,
they are assumed to be frequently combined, particularly in the area of
the arts. A song may be adapted from an existing piece based on a poem
written in another language, translated interlinguistically, but may also
be transferred intersemiotically for a specific type of performance, per-
former or audience. Jacques Brel’s Le moribond (1961) initially adapted
into English by Rod McKuen as ‘Seasons in the Sun’ (1964), inspired
dozens of adaptations and even parodies, in a wide range of languages
and countries. Brel’s tragic and sardonic ballad of a man on his death bed
in front of the priest and a few friends takes many guises, from sentimen-
tal pop song to detached acoustic guitar cover.
Some would argue that these adaptations are too far from the original
to be considered translations, but my point here is that an increasing
exposure to audiovisual texts has contributed to change the very concept
of translation. As audiences have been exposed to a range of texts, they
have welcomed interactions between different sensory languages. Daphne
Oram’s (Oram, 1972; Worby, 2008) pioneering attempts to ‘transduct’
visuals into sound led to the development of synthesisers and electronic
music. The ability to transduce what is beyond the sphere of physicality
and of words through ‘celetal’ properties is at the core of music. ‘Cele’, for
Oram, is what allows intangible music to come into being and become
meaningful, beyond the notes that transcribe it. Oram sees the gift of
composers as the ability to ‘transduce what is outside time into the realm
of material time’ (Ibid., p. 33). She was one of the first to believe that
electronic technology could broaden the spectrum of music and its
human perception. Her experiments not only pre-figured the essential
role that machines play in twenty-first century human lives, but reflected
the desire to enable mediations across different languages and demon-
strated how these mediations transform composition, performance and
reception. The success of the song ‘I Feel Love’ (Summer, 1977) in the
late twentieth century is a key example of how audiences were hungry for
music that crosses aesthetic and sensory bridges. Today for instance,
EDM (electronic dance music) is one of the most popular musical genres:
it is intended for live performance, is born of constant loops and remixes
of existing musical numbers to produce a seamless track that matches
visual continuity and is accompanied, even transmediated, by visuals in
order to broaden the spectrum of sensations. In EDM, DJs and VJs
(video jockeys) are equal partners in building the architecture of shows
across sensorial experiences.
The increasing weight that contemporary audiences put on co-creation
and their wish for music to be received and perceived multisensorially is
widening translation requirements as a desire for messages to be perceived
plurally is growing. In turn this widens human understanding of life. As
Louise Fryer (2016, p. 26) points out in her book on audio description
238 L. Desblache
‘we never see the same thing when we also hear; we do not hear the same
thing when we also see’, and in each case we perceive more. With refer-
ence to cognitive studies on the simultaneous perception of different
information streams, she concludes that ‘[w]hen presented with bimodal
(auditory and visual) stimuli, sighted people respond more quickly to the
visual component than the auditory one […but] each influences the
other’. Audiences today are keen to engage simultaneously with different
sensory languages. And members of the audience with a particular sen-
sory impairment have grown to appreciate and expect more support from
television provision.
Visuals can also impact on the creative process of music writing. While
most notation systems are based on abstract symbols representing sound,
composers can be inspired by more figurative graphics. Historically this
has been particularly notable during periods of intense experimentation.
In the Renaissance for instance, ars subtilior, was developed in France
during the fourteenth century with complex music notation contained in
expressive shapes such as hearts or harps. In the late twentieth century,
composers from Luciano Berio to John Cage and Brian Eno to György
Ligeti sought creativity through similar visual notation techniques
(Phillips, 2013).
In most cultures, music relates to and depends on another art form: for
example, music and poetry were inseparable in ancient and traditional
Persian music, while dance and music are inseparable in the majority of
African communities. In Western societies, since the advent of mass
media, communication has become increasingly visual. The emergence of
social media in the twenty-first century and the need to engage audiences
quickly and effectively have accelerated this trend. Because visual com-
munication is mostly free from verbal language, even if it can incorporate
it into its message, it has an immediate impact beyond linguistic borders.
‘Show rather than tell’ is the mantra of the creative industries, particu-
larly in advertising. While classical music still suffers to a degree from the
perception of being an absolute art of pure sound, disconnected from
social concerns and other forms of expression, this idea is now irrelevant
in popular music. Like most audiovisual products, a musical piece today
is likely to include, in addition to music, visuals, verbal language and
sometimes sound effects. Music can be meaningful independently of
these, as pointed out earlier (Blanning, 2008, p. 330). Yet increasingly,

popular music relies on non-musical components: spoken narrative,
urban sounds, dance and moving images. Pop music video clips tend to
be introduced by relatively long introductions of moving images and spo-
ken text, intended to set the scene and contextualise the lyrics to come.
In some of the songs from her album Lemonade, for instance, Beyoncé
(2016) offers spoken introductions which are nearly as long as the song
itself. These non-musical components are used to make the narrative of
the song more explicit, to contextualise it and anticipate its words. Layers
of extra-musical meanings are carefully built up before the music emerges.
Both visual and verbal messages manipulate the meaning of the song to
come. Music can be manipulated by extra-musical references but it can
also manipulate them, giving them new meanings. This is the case for so
many advertisements which use music to interpret visual images. A recent
television advertisement for the UK digital terrestrial television platform
Freeview set the unlikely idyllic scene of a cat in love with a budgie, but
it is the song that accompanies the clip which gives it its ironic twist:
‘You’re All I Need to Get By’, a hit in 1968 by Ashford and Simpson.
This leads to new approaches to accessibility, a term which has differ-
ent meanings in different contexts. In relation to music, the notion of
accessibility means primarily to break away from the idea that music can
only be made, fully understood and enjoyed by an elite with special,
often innate gifts. It can also refer to enlarging musical enjoyment to
people with various disabilities or requirements, which is a broader inter-
pretation, but the first meaning is more prevalent in the music arena. In
a Western cultural context, the understanding of accessibility has been
forged following social attitudes to music. As discussed in Part I (Sect.
3.2.2) sitting at a concert without taking part in a social activity while
listening to music is a European concept which emerged in the nine-
teenth century. Looking at old paintings such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s
Peasant wedding (1567) or Johann Georg Platzer’s eighteenth century
paintings of private concerts, twenty-first century viewers get a sense of
the extent to which music accompanied activities and life events. The fact
that, in the last hundred years, people have not had to make music to
enjoy it has also contributed to an ‘ivory tower’ idea of music that still
produces stereotypes. It encourages a sharp divide between the compe-
240 L. Desblache
tent music makers and the ignorant rest. Jochen Eisentraut’s book The
accessibility of music (2013), for instance, is written in this spirit, aiming
to bridge that gap and widen audiences.
Moreover, in music, the notion of disability has specific denotations.
Alex Lubet, a composer and guitar player whose right arm and hand are
only partially functional after a nerve injury, argues that more perhaps
than in any other field, in classical music, ‘culturally manifest disability
but also embodied impairment are socially constructed’ (2011, p. 5). For
instance, a hand injury may only be minor for day-to-day usage, and the
hand may not be considered as impaired, but its lack of optimal func-
tionality will prevent a pianist from playing professionally. Lubet (Ibid.,
pp. 1–3) has developed a theory of disability that is linked to what he
calls a theory of social confluence: individuals’ identities no longer depend
primarily on large entities such as a nation or a community; they are
linked to contextual events that can be fast changing and affect specific
individuals.
Classical music prioritises standardised idioms and conventions based
on high technicity. While a popular singer-songwriter may write specifi-
cally for Bob Dylan, a classical composer will write a piece for an uniden-
tified baritone. Performers with any deformity or dysfunctionality relating
to performance are excluded from the classical scene. A few exceptions
exist, such as Maurice Ravel’s piano concerto for the left hand, intended
for Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm during the
First World War, but they are rare. Generally, classical composers have
written with a sound, not a person in mind. In addition, the musician’s
disability, if it is not considered to be major, might not be recognised by
society, leaving him or her without any institutional or governmental
support. The refusal of classical values as regards what is not normalised
strips many musicians not only of rights, but of access to participation in
the musical sphere. Whether or not they are officially recognised as dis-
abled, they are excluded from their own artistic practice. This trend
towards standardisation and technicity, to some level, limited the creativ-
ity of classical music, as it excluded musicians whose profile did not fit
one of ‘normality’. As a result, it reduced innovation and exchanges in the
area of music.
The explosion of popular music in the second half of the twentieth

century as well as the global circulation and dissemination of music by
the creative industries propelled a new understanding of accessibility in
relation to music. Suddenly, in the 1950s, anyone could pick up spoons,
a couple of pans, a second-hand guitar and start a band. This led to spe-
cific genres such as skiffle, but also, more generally, reflected a much more
relaxed and inclusive attitude to music making. While ordinary people
had always sung and made music, the popular music movement was
driven by a spirit of transgression and freedom. This approach led to the
punk movement, whose musicians even made it a condition for their
music to be non-virtuosic and accessible to all in the 1970s. Groups who
had been entirely excluded from music revelled in opportunities to cre-
ate. As Pete Dale (2012) has shown, this led to a sense of novelty and
empowerment in and beyond the music sphere.
This sense of openness also started a change in attitudes towards dis-
ability. In spite of the development of media accessibility in mainstream
television and film, preconceptions regarding music and deafness have
been slow to disappear. Deaf and hard of hearing people suffered and still
suffer prejudices regarding their interest in music. The Deaf community
is also one of the most cohesive, but least listened to among the disabled
(Sacks, 1990/2012). In some respects, deaf people may contribute to per-
petuating this situation by being comfortable with their own signing lan-
guage, and not always willing or able to increase their fluency in or
comprehension of verbal language, a foreign language to them. As we all
know, it takes effort and motivation to learn a foreign language.
In the UK, an exceptional translator came along: Evelyn Glennie. A
percussionist who became deaf in her teens, she took upon herself to
show how deaf people can experience, create and enjoy music. For her,
listening takes place through touch, feeling and seeing as well as hearing.
In 2012, as part of the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games,
she led 1000 drummers to accompany a musical representation of the
industrial revolution to be seen, felt and heard. Musicians pulsed their
way through this ‘Pandemonium’ (Boyle & Glennie 2012: 19’ in) perfor-
mance and mediated the dynamism, the violence to nature and human-
kind, the creative and inexorable force that shaped modern Britain in
242 L. Desblache
ways that speak to all, beyond words. The sequence also demonstrated
inclusivity and creativity on a number of levels:
• It shows convincingly that a deaf person can be a musician, and one of

excellence;
• The combination of amateur musicians (1000 volunteer drummers)
making music on improvised instruments (dustbins and buckets) for
one of the most prestigious shows on the planet gives evidence that
anyone can make music, and goes against the obsessive display focused
on fame and technology consumption that is pervasive in contempo-
rary media;
• It presents music as a language fully connected to other forms of
expressions and interacting with them. It contributes to a spectacle
which is fully multisensorial and multimodal;
• Finally, it demonstrates that the mediation of what are considered
‘marginal voices’ for a general audience can be successful and inspiring.
For translators and people involved with supporting disability, accessibil-

ity has a more specific meaning. It involves providing certain goods or
services to all users, including some that may have a certain incapacity: a
route to a building for users with reduced mobility or subtitles for the
hard of hearing in a theatre, for instance. This understanding of the word
is linked to human rights. Yet as Gian Maria Greco (2016, p. 24) argues,
the notion of cultural accessibility has somewhat diverged from that
understood by most human rights scholars and institutions. While the
focus of the latter is on accessibility in relation to products and services
for disabled people, the notion of cultural accessibility, which includes
that of media accessibility, is more inclusive. Providers of cultural acces-
sibility feel that provision is best when benefitting all members of society,
including those with a specific disability. For example, in media, subti-
tling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing was intended for that specific
community, but also benefits a wide range of users such as learners of
languages and people who are required to watch a media platform with-
out any sound. The Media Accessibility Platform, created in 2016,
describes its vision as that of a ‘world where everyone, regardless of senso-
rial and linguistic barriers, is given access to media’.
Within the professional realm of translation, media accessibility

encompasses a number of forms of transfers, all of which can be used in
the context of music. Surtitling for opera and the theatre makes the play
script or libretto available on or above the stage either intra or interlin-
guistically. Subtitling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing offers the dia-
logue as well as information allowing the identification of characters,
paralinguistic sounds, such as laughter or breathing, and sound effects.
Audio description ‘conveys or summarises the visual information’ of a
programme or event orally (Fryer, 2016, p. 26). Audio subtitling offers
the spoken delivery of translated foreign dialogue. Sign language inter-
preting for the deaf may also be available for opera and musical theatre
performances. In addition, specific software or installations can be fitted
as part of media accessibility provision, such as sense floors and other
accessories that transform sound into vibrations and/or colours.
Music providers and broadcasters now understand both the impor-
tance of catering for audiences who do not fully benefit from the tradi-
tional concert arrangement of most classical music events, and the
potential of an open attitude to access. The Proms have thus started
‘relaxed’ concerts, as advertised on the website:
The BBC National Orchestra of Wales perform the first ever Relaxed Prom
[in 2017], a concert suitable for children and adults with autism, sensory
and communication impairments and learning disabilities, as well as indi-
viduals who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind and partially sighted. (BBC
Media Centre, 2017)
Moreover, for the first time in 2017, the Proms used the audio descrip-
tions of the events to be broadcast not just on screen for those members
who chose the service, but on radio for the general public. 2017 was the
123rd season of the Proms, and the BBC has been providing an audio
description service since 2004, yet the decision to use their description
more widely, made by professionals who describe visuals for those who
cannot see, and is, as such, precise and comprehensive, was only made
then by organisers and radio decision makers.
Many experimental events are taking place in music accessibility,
which aims for more inclusivity and more exchanges. For instance, the
244 L. Desblache
Macerata Opera Festival (2018), under the leadership of Elena Di

Giovanni, has led an innovative accessibility programme since 2008, not
only providing services for people with a specific impairment, but also
encouraging interaction between different groups, broadening the notion
of translation into one that drives social change. At Macerata, accessibil-
ity provision is integrated with an educational programme which brings
greater visibility to both opera and diverse abilities. In 2018, Bizet’s
Carmen was thus adapted for and performed by a young audience which
was inclusive as regards abilities. A total of 14 performances were given in
Italy and ten abroad. For this production of Carmen, blind and seeing
children were both involved in providing an audio description, which led
to a fruitful exchange between all participants. The special qualities of
each group were also highlighted: the seeing children could write easily,
but the blind children memorised text much more efficiently and had
more creative ideas on how to transmediate the visuals (Di Giovanni, 2018).
The variety of translation modes which is used to facilitate access to
music implies a wide range of translation approaches and strategies. Even
in the context of song, music translation goes beyond the interlingual
transfer of lyrics. The next section considers this array of approaches.
6.4 A
pproaches and Strategies in Vocal
Music Translation
The pages above have demonstrated that the translation of musical texts
covers a broad spectrum of textual genres and translation types. Based on
variation from both points of view of composition and performance,
music is intrinsically dependent on translation in its broadest sense.
Musicians and other creative artists also undertake forms of cultural or
intersemiotic translations. Equally, they collaborate with professional
translators in producing translations. For instance, the text of surtitles
will be written by translators, but in live performance, it will usually be
displayed by musicians who follow the conductor. Nevertheless, it is usu-
ally left to translators in the conventional understanding of the term, and
particularly if not solely, to audiovisual translators, to face the challenge
of translating words that are part of vocal music.
In what follows, the focus is on the main types of translation which

these transfers entail in vocal music, and on the main strategies suitable
for their completion, drawing on the existing literature on the topic.
This concerns most forms of vocal music, including popular and tradi-
tional songs, opera arias, vocal ensembles of all musical genres and
styles, a cappella pieces for one or several voices and instrumental music
with spoken or semi-spoken narration. We can recall that the transla-
tion of the words of a song is what most people understand the transla-
tion of music to be. As we have seen in Chap. 5, the transfer of vocal
music usually involves words but also takes place beyond them. A suc-
cessful cover literally and metaphorically takes a song from a given
place and a given time to another, and is transformed by its performer(s).
This involves a process of cultural and personal transfer that is crucial
to the success of the new song. Even when transferred interlingually,
lyrics exist in a multimodal and cultural context, and require different
types of translation. Johan Franzon (2008, 2015) and Peter Low (2016)
have outlined comprehensively the challenges of creating interlingual
translations for vocal music. They give particular attention to singing
or ‘singable’ translations as I have called them, focusing on the techni-
calities that these word transfers entail. They also aim to endow audio-
visual translators with the basic musical knowledge required to transfer
songs efficiently. Low’s practical guide, in his own words, focuses on
‘suggesting strategies and tactics for doing it well’ (Ibid., p. 3). The sec-
tion below will consider the broader socio-cultural context of these
strategies. While it is structured around the most common existing
translation strategies for convenience—transcription, intra/interlingual
translation, mediation…—the fact that transfers in music today often
happens multimodally needs to be acknowledged. For instance, since
the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, video making
involving a range of multimodal transfers has been extremely popular.
It has led to new media genres that connect visual and musical infor-
mation, and can transfer or reinterpret original lyrics. Lip dubs, music
videos which combine lip synching and audio dubbing, thus may
involve intralingual or interlingual, as well as transmedia a daptations.
In spite of these intersections and superimpositions, the following
types of translation can be identified:
246 L. Desblache
• A Transcription of Lyrics
This is an accurate record of the lyrics. Song transcriptions are com-

mon in media, particularly on linear and non-linear television where con-
tent providers are only allowed to subtitle songs verbatim for copyright
reasons. In Europe, this transcription is also part of media accessibility
requirements, although this varies from country to country: Finland, for
instance, has no obligation to transcribe music-related texts in media pro-
grammes, while the UK is bound by Ofcom, the national communica-
tions regulatory body, to treat them like any other texts.
Music identification applications are facilitating song transcriptions.
Increasingly, they are used in professional set-ups and texts are just
checked before broadcast. Such applications are also used by music lov-
ers. As we have seen, pop music is primarily sung in English but the
majority of listeners, although often proficient in English to various
degrees, are not English native speakers. For this reason, many favour a
faithful transcription of the original words. Song identification applica-
tions tend to not be available in lesser-used languages, but music ‘pro-
sumers’ (Toffler, 1980, p. 267) are encouraged to provide relevant data
such as original lyrics and their interlingual translations.
In live events and their retransmission, and particularly for musicals
and mainstream music festivals, surtitles may be provided for some per-
formances and in some cases, live-subtitled.
In printed sheet music, transcriptions can also take the form of trans-
literations for languages which are less commonly sung on the Western
scene. For instance, Indian or Hebrew scripts can be transliterated into
the Roman alphabet, as in the example below (Fig. 6.2).
In choir practices, a simple phonetic transliteration may also be given
by a choirmaster so that gross errors of pronunciation are avoided.
Fig. 6.2 Opening bars of Maurice Ravel’s ‘Kaddisch’ from Deux mélodies hébra-
ïques (1915)
Fig. 6.3 Opening bars of ‘Kalinka’, a Russian folk song by Ivan Larionov (1860)
with Russian transliteration
Transliterations are common in Russian song publications. See for

instance Rubin and Stilman (1989), who offer a volume of Russian folk
songs in Cyrillic script, Roman transliteration and English translation.
See also the example below of a folk song transliteration (Fig. 6.3).
As Brian Mossop (2013) has discussed in detail, sheet music for choirs
may contain a wide range of linguistic and phonetic guidance, essential
for singers who are neither familiar with the sounds and intonations of
the languages that they sing into nor with their meaning.
• An Intralingual Translation of Lyrics
This is more than a verbatim transcription and usually comprises the

intralingual rewording or rearranging of lyrics: it may for instance remove
original repetitions and give explanations on historical or cultural refer-
ences that audiences may not be aware of. Twenty-first century music
viewers and listeners have certain expectations in opera-houses, since they
have offered surtitled performances since the 1990s, even for those sung
in the language of the country in which they are taking place. In opera, a
translator usually translates the libretto for surtitling purposes, but it is a
musician who cues the surtitles live during the shows, in response to the
conductor (see Palmer (2013) and Page (2013)).
Song lyrics often undergo changes. For historical, ideological or cul-
tural reasons, reappropriating a familiar tune has always been widespread,
as the example of Martin Luther’s shift from a secular song to a hymn,
discussed above, illustrated. Famous songs often have long histories of
reappropriation, such as the tune of the nursery rhyme ‘Twinkle, Twinkle
248 L. Desblache
Little Star’, which has hosted many versions. Still popular today, this song
has a history of its own in several countries. It is listed as a popular French
song as far back as 1740 (Fuld, 1966/2000, pp. 483–484) and first
appeared in published form as an instrumental divertissement champêtre
(Bouin, 1761). Several sets of words were written to it in English, among
which ‘Mark my Alford’ (1794–1796); ‘The Delights of the Wedded
One’ (1795); ‘The Star’ (1806) and ‘The School-Master’ (1834). Once
established, the song inspired many parodies, most famously perhaps by
Lewis Carroll (1979, pp. 98–99) in 1865, in his ‘Mad Hatter’s tea
party’ song.
As far as lyrics are concerned, these ‘transcreations’ as they may be
called today, rarely involve a faithful translation as such. New words,
which are intended to fit an old tune, convey a fresh semantic and poetic
message, which may or may not be in line with the original text.
Sometimes, little or even no translation is carried out: a famous tune is
just used to be chanted by a crowd. The Welsh hymn ‘Cwm Rhondda’
composed by John Hughes in 1905 was originally written in Welsh but is
more usually sung in English translation. Initially, Welsh rugby fans used
the first verse of the song in its standard English translation (Hughes,
1906), but as crowds became less familiar with the hymn repertoire, the
original words were dropped. The words ‘You are not singing any more’
have been used by UK football fans when the opposing team stops their
chants. Similarly, ‘Amazing Grace’ is sung by Chelsea Football Club sup-
porters with just the word Chelsea. In countries where Church and State
are not separated, such as the UK, and even in legally secular countries
where references to God infuse public life, such as the USA where the
national motto is ‘In God we trust’, popular songs and hymns often cross
the secular/sacred divide. This will be discussed in Part III (Sect. 7.2) with
the case of the famous march, ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’.
• An Interlingual Translation of the Lyrics
Song translation across verbal languages is undertaken for three main

reasons: for listeners to read or hear them, either while they listen to the
song or at another time; for singers, so that they can be performed in a
language other than the original language, with the aim of being reason-
ably faithful to the message of the original text; or as adaptations into

another language which can fully depart from the original.
Translations intended for listeners or viewers vary. A summary of a
song, of the plot of an opera or musical can be recorded orally. This is
usually pre-recorded and made available to the public (on opera-house
and theatre websites for instance), but can be read or conveyed in a semi-
improvised manner on radio and television, or issued before live HD
cinema performances or before live concerts. A script or libretto may be
offered to the public. This was one of the main methods of translation
provision in opera and classical concerts until the post-Second World war
era. Going back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Lorenzo Da
Ponte, ‘the man who wrote Mozart’ (Holden, 2006), may be known as
the librettist of The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni, but he largely
earned a living by providing libretti translations sold as programmes for
live performances. In the early decades of the twentieth century, when
opera popularity was at its peak, and when musical skills were widespread,
before recorded music was available widely in homes, libretti comprising
the vocal line of the main characters and the text in singable translation,
if required, were sold before performances and most viewers read them in
performance with the help of a small light, as noted earlier. From full
libretti to programmes including plot summaries, various forms of trans-
lation were offered in opera houses and musical theatres until the 1980s,
when surtitles became prevalent. The success of surtitles led to the demise
of performances sung in translation, at least in opera. Most surtitles are
available in one language if projected above the stage, the language of the
country of performance, but they may be offered in multilingual format
on individual backseat displays: Vienna and Barcelona opera houses, for
instance, favour such a format. In Vienna’s Volksoper, where operettas are
mostly performed in German, English surtitles are also available for
international audiences. In some situations, stage surtitles display two
languages. This is the case in the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, for
instance, where French and Flemish both appear above the stage.
Today, while translations for live performances are mainly available in
the classical and musical theatre spheres, many, although not all (see Sect.
5.2) are subtitled in films or video programmes. When subtitled interlin-
gually, songs require awareness of constraints that are similar to those in
250 L. Desblache
dialogue: text needs to be concise and transferred meaningfully within

the multimodal context of the film. Songs are usually uttered at a slower
speed than speech and often include word repetition. From this point of
view, they are easier to translate for the screen. Nevertheless, the musical-
ity of the original pieces needs to be conveyed in translation, in particular
their rhymes and rhythms (Tortoriello, 2006). Unlike dialogue, songs
included in media programmes are frequently reversioned, intralingually,
but also, interlingually:
• New versions are created for a foreign-language version. For instance,

large companies such as Disney issue new vocal versions of films which
remain unchanged visually. Animation films are fully redubbed for dif-
ferent territories, songs and dialogue included. Classic animation films
also undergo reversionings. Disney’s films, including their songs, are
thus readapated: French versions of Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs
(1937), for instance, were recorded in 1938, 1962 and 2001. Recently,
songs have been recorded as cover by known singers in different cul-
tures. For instance, ‘Remember Me’, in the Pixar animation Coco
(2017), was sung by Mexican singer Carlos Rivera as ‘Recuérdame’ for
the film’s Spanish-language soundtrack album.
Dubbing technologies are fast developing in the second decade of the

twenty-first century. Much research has been taking place regarding auto-
matic dubbing techniques that are intended to make reversioning easier
and more natural. This is leading to more versions both intra and inter-
lingually. As the movement of lips becomes controllable to fit an existing
text, lyrics translation is no longer tightly dependent on the original
lip movement.
• A decision can also be made to ‘remediate’ a film (Deuze, 2006),

adapting existing material. This is not a new process. Mozart’s Magic
Flute, for instance, is one of the few operas that has been successful
internationally since its first performance on 30th September 1791 in
Vienna. It has been remediated many times in many countries, with
linguistic, musical and theatrical adaptations. Modifications often
entail more than intralingual changes. Disney’s current trend to reme-
diate classic animated films into live-action films, discussed earlier
with the example of Newsies (see Sect. 3.2.2), also implies many
changes regarding the music that is included in the original film: more
weight is given to instrumental music, and vocal numbers tend to be
few and remain sung in English. For instance, Kenneth Branagh’s
Cinderella (2015), unlike the original animation film (1950), is not a
musical: it only features ‘Lavender’s blue’, an English folk song that
had been adapted successfully in an earlier Disney film, So Dear to My
Heart (1949), as well as some singing of the songs from the original
film during the credits. These vocal items remain in English in foreign-
language versions, as is the trend today.
Vocal music has long been translated interlingually so that performances

could take place in the listeners’ language. Songs have always been sung
across countries, languages and cultures. Singable translations have been
particularly common in folk music, and were widespread in popular
music until English took over in popular music in the 1950s. As men-
tioned earlier, singers largely sang opera and art songs in the language of
the country of performance until the 1930s. Singable translations are
suitable for productions of pieces that do not change substantially and
are popular in children’s films. Peter Low’s ‘pentathlon principle’, which
highlights singability, sense, naturalness, rhythm and rhyme (Low,
2005) as key to a successful singable translation, gives a comprehensive
summary about constraints and principles to follow in the case of
such transfer.
In popular music, singable translations tend to take more distance
from the original, musically and semantically. In this sense, they are usu-
ally adpatations or ‘remediations’, to use the term mentioned above.
Cover songs involve social and aesthetic transfers implying substantial
changes to the original. Fruela Fernández (2015) has shown how they
emphasise both the role of translation in histories and cultures, and
the specificities of each culture. The Claude François song ‘Comme
d’habitude’ (François & Revaux, 1967), adapted as ‘My Way’ (1969),
which became Frank Sinatra’s signature song, and into many other covers
(see Lexilogos for a selection of lyrics in different languages) is one of the
most successful examples of how much pop songs change thematically as
their words are translated. The original story of love killed by daily rou-
tine, in English, becomes that of an older man looking back on his life.
252 L. Desblache
• An Intersensorial Mediation of the lyrics and of the musical show

in general:
Here, transfer operates across the senses. A message may be empha-

sised in different modes. Videos in pop music thus always highlight or
distort the message of songs. This takes place in all styles of music though.
For instance, a video excerpt may be projected to give a specific meaning
to a particular scene or piece: the 2015 Metropolitan Opera production
of Alban Berg’s Lulu featured projections and animated drawings by
William Kentridge which deepened the political perspective of this dark
tale of destruction. Fresh staging may also take place. In 2018, for
instance, the English National Opera staged Benjamin Britten’s War
Requiem, initially intended as a concert piece to be performed at the
opening of the newly rebuilt Coventry cathedral, destroyed during the
Second World War, in 1962. Adding different layers of interpretation was
undoubtedly intended for dramatic effect, an important feature at the
time of the centenary of the end of the First World War.
However, in music, intersensorial transfer primarily aims to make lyrics
and production meaningful for people of different abilities. It can take the
form of subtitling/surtitling, signing for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing,
as well as audio description or audio introduction for the Blind and the
Visually Impaired. In musical live performances and recordings, intra/
interlingual titles are usually provided for all members of the public,
regardless of different sensory abilities. Transcriptions, interlingual and
intralingual translations displayed as surtitles, subtitles, printed texts,
electronic texts and audio-recordings appear on television, all video and
web platforms, including mobile phones and other electronic devices and
at the cinema. In these forms of transfer, norms are not strictly estab-
lished, unlike in subtitling for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing on television
for instance, which follow national conventions. There are expectations
for each specific platform—for instance, repeated words or phrases in
songs are usually only titled once—, but translations can be used cre-
atively. Song translation for the stage can offer standard surtitles projected
above the stage, animated writing with special effects; they can play with
different speeds, letter spacing and kerning; they can be displayed in dif-
ferent directions, may be conceived aesthetically to mirror some aspects of

the production and to suit the physical place of staging. For instance, in
2013, the Macerata Opera Festival, staged Midsummer Night’s Dreams, a
hybrid piece made of music by both Felix Mendelssohn and Benjamin
Britten. For this production, surtitles were projected on the huge outdoor
wall of the 88-metre Sferisterio building, and were shaped as 1920s cin-
ema intertitles, which reflected a production set in the same period (see
Fig. 6.4).
In staged musical performances, particularly in opera, fonts, layouts,
colours, lighting levels vary in order to echo the mood of the show.
Surtitles can also be displayed in ways that reflect the position of the
characters on stage. While sung text is usually uttered at a slower pace
than spoken text, during vocal ensembles, all performers sing at the same
time. To avoid confusion, different segments sung simultaneously by
Fig. 6.4 Midsummer Night’s Dreams (August 2013, Macerata Opera Festival.
Production Francesco Micheli)
254 L. Desblache
several characters tend to mirror the position of the latter on the stage,
as happens at the end of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, when Figaro dis-
covers who his mother is:
–– Your mother? – His mother?

–– My mother? – Whose mother?
(the translation is mine)
International houses offer one performance with signing for the Deaf but
this is not standard practice everywhere. When it is taking place, an inter-
preter mediates rhythms, tempi and musical emotion with movement
from one hand, and uses sign language to sign-interpret the lyrics with
the other hand. While deaf people do attend shows which are accessible
for them, opera houses, who have seen cuts in their funding, specially
since 2008, often argue that the deaf population comprises less than 1%
of all spectators, and that it does not justify providing the resources neces-
sary for specialist sign interpreting.
Provision for blind people is usually more consistent in opera houses
and musical theatres: recorded audio introductions or audio descriptions
are available on request. Increasingly, theatres also offer pre-performance
touch tours in order to give blind or visually impaired members of the
audience an opportunity to touch costumes, props, talk to members of
the cast and get a sense of the performance staging.
Musical events which prioritise accessibility services are becoming
more common. They include festivals such as the Good Vibrations Music
and Arts Festival in South Texas, the Unlimited Festival in London, or
the Fest’Dif in Villeurbanne in Belgium, for example. Directories of
accessible festivals are now also appearing (for instance, European
Disability Arts Festivals), a clear sign that more inclusive events are
taking place.
• Song Translation Unrelated to Performance
Songs are often translated for comprehension outside of any perfor-

mance context. This includes songs inserted in non-musical pieces. These
can include volumes of lyrics with the original and their translations,
often accompanied by comments on the song’s history, the composer, the
performer and the musical context of the time. Songs are also often
included in literature, in poetry or in novels which are not only struc-
tured around songs or bands, but are steeped in culture-specific and time-
related references. From Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (1995) to Doug
Johnstone’s The Ossians (2008), songs play an important part in fiction
and non-fiction today. Their presence is referential and can play a struc-
tural, metaphorical, historical and aesthetic role. Their inclusion can be a
communication strategy in itself. Their meaning goes beyond the spoken
or written word and brings memories to those who know them. Their
strategic insertion has been key to creative uses of language for centuries,
particularly in literature which focuses on strengthening political, ethnic
or national identity. Their translation requires creative strategies, from
non-translation to entire transposition into another song.
Alexander Pushkin, for instance, was the first Russian author to com-
bine Russian as it was spoken by ordinary people with high Russian. He
used folk songs extensively, to give his texts a flavour of Russian country
life, but also as common ground between people of all social classes. His
historical novel, The Captain’s Daughter (Капитанская дочка, 1836),
thus starts each chapter with a Russian proverb or folk song as an epi-
graph. This inscribes the novel in its rural, remote setting, gives it unity
as a point of reference meaningful to all Russians, and mirrors the naïve
but genuine personality of the main protagonist, Pyotr Grinyov. A suc-
cessful rendering of the novel therefore largely depends on the renderings
of these songs. Pushkin’s literary work also had a large influence on the
development of Russian classical music: innumerable songs have been set
to his poems, and most canonical nineteenth century Russian operas,
from Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov to Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin or The
Queen of Spades, have been inspired by his work. This in turn poses the
problem of how libretto translators or surtitlers deal with intertextuality
when faced with exact quotations of a literary passage.
Songs are commonly used as a tool to express ethnicity and belong-
ings, or resistance of various kinds in literature. They can act as joint
between fragments, or be used to break a linear narrative. The translation
256 L. Desblache
of such pieces is delicate, as both the lyrics and the idea of songs must
permeate the writing and must be meaningful to a target readers who
generally do not know the source music. This is the case in Bruce
Chatwin’s fictionalised travelogue, The Songlines (1987), set in Australia,
where Aborigines’ singing of the land both consolidates memories of the
past and brings them to life.
A final example of lyrics which find their way into non-musical texts
and bring challenges to translators are song titles. Song titles are fre-
quently used in literature and journalism, and often placed in a promi-
nent position such as titles or headlines. They can denote irony, such as
in the economics headline ‘Somewhere over the rainbow there may be
something called a budget surplus’ (Warner, 2015); or they can be overtly
intertextual and subversive, as in the headline of a review of Shostakovich’s
quite obscure opera The Nose, alluding to the group Nirvana’s famous
hymn to adolescence, ‘Smells like teen spirit’ (Clements, 2016). Such
song allusions are, of course, mostly culture and/or generation specific,
and they can also be opaque to certain audiences who have no knowledge
of these musical references. They are therefore challenging to translators
who have to guess how able the target reader is to seize the allusion. Not
everyone, even if English-speaking, would decipher the song of hard rock
band Alice Cooper in Martin Amis’s novel Dead Babies. The rapport
between a satire of country-house mysteries and a song about child
neglect and drug abuse is perplexing in any language, which explains
perhaps why publishers took the decision to change the title of the novel
for its paperback edition to Dark Secrets. Song allusions in titles are often
more explicit. This is the case in many musicians’ biographies, such as
David Crosby’s Long Time Gone, inspired by the famous Bing Crosby
song. Nevertheless, song references rarely travel easily in another language
and require imaginative solutions in translation.
This second Part and its last section in particular has presented quite a
unidirectional view of how music is translated: attitudes, approaches, tra-
ditions, technologies and economic factors impact on whether the pro-
cesses of translation take place and how they take place. But as the next
Part demonstrates, music is not only translated. It also translates and this
opens the door to unrestrained creativity.
Note
1. The words deaf and blind have been capitalised when referring to Deaf or
Blind communities.
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Part III
Music Translates
Like translation, music brings both the familiar and the new into human
lives. Contemporary lifestyles require a range of literacy skills to decode
and engage with the world at different levels, and music is a powerful tool
to make sense of it beyond verbal referential meaning. Humans love re/
discovering sounds which they know, such as old melodies or rhythms,
evoking loved places or heart beats. Music is in fact the privileged instru-
ment of chronobiology, as it translates the rhythms of the living and
brings them to human ears. But humans are also excited by encounters
with the new. Musicians in all cultures are before anything curious about
different sounds and how they can enrich their work. Since the beginning
of the twentieth century, technologies have continuously offered oppor-
tunities for composing, performing, listening and sharing music with
evolving methods of recording, compilation, dissemination, as well as
with new instruments.
Music is no longer limited to following, playing with, deconstructing
or transgressing rules. Musicians have always struck, stroked, plucked,
rubbed bodies and things in order to create sound worlds; they have also
interpreted and refashioned the soundscapes around them as ways of
expressing what it means to be human. Now more than ever, music is
about discovering sounds and making them meaningful, mirroring but
also generating social events, as musicologists such as Nicholas Cook
(2001) have claimed for two decades in arguments that join those of
266 Music Translates
social theorists in translation studies. Music offers ways of being ‘one’

with the world by integrating elements of this world into a meaningful
production, but also ‘several’, because it requires a range of actions to be
embodied—creating, reading and/or interpreting sounds and their sym-
bols—and because it implies listening to and engaging with others. As
technology opened music to what Edgar Varèse called ‘The liberation of
sound’ (Varèse & Wen-chung, 1966), other forms of restrictions appeared:
commercial pressure to conform to expected or approved sounds, and
subservience of music to image in primarily visual societies are among
them. Nevertheless, how sounds and silence are modelled and contextu-
alised in music is left to music makers and listeners to invent. I argue that
music acts as translation for the following reasons: it is always anchored
in the familiar, in known references, but it moves away from these refer-
ences through the many variations offered by musical language. It is
essentially transformational. Yet it is also translational in that it does not
only depend on change, but also on how this change has used previous
knowledge or experience. Music cannot define in ways that verbal or
visual languages can, but thrives on fusion and cross-fertilisation. It also
changes the way people live, share their lives, feel, experience events, see
the world around them, and even taste food, according to recent research
(Reinoso Carvalho et al., 2017). How it impacts on lives and, above all,
its capacity for transformation and interrelation are discussed below.
Music’s power of transformation has certainly been increasingly
acknowledged in the last few decades. Philosophers, musicologists, psy-
chologists, neurologists and sociologists, from Simon Frith (1978, 1987)
to Michel Serres (2011) and Oliver Sacks (2007), have emphasised the
positive effect of music on the human mind, its role as a powerful agent
boosting the construction of identities and liberation from conformist
attitudes. More broadly, music allows us to make sense of the world
beyond verbal meaning, as it privileges ‘signifiance’ over ‘signification’, as
Roland Barthes (1972/1982) put it. Large music projects such as José
Abreu’s El Sistema in Venezuela, the more recent Big Noise in Scotland,
or the Alzheimer’s Music project, have demonstrated that music visibly
transforms lives. Its impact on human life is four fold: physiological—
individuals playing or listening to music can be directly affected with
changes in heart beats, tapping rhythms with their feet or hands, for
Music Translates 267
instance; psychological—music influences how we feel; cognitive—for

example, musical training in children is proven to have an effect on their
brain development (Habibi et al., 2018), and music can increase produc-
tivity and creativity (see Sect. 7.1); and behavioural—music affects how
we act and react, attracting or driving away customers from a shop for
instance, or changing a listener’s mood or perception.
Awareness of the transformative power of music is also demonstrated
in verbal representation. In Western cultures, music is most frequently
evoked in terms of how a listener is moved by it: it transports you, moves
you, swings and rocks, carries you on its wings, and so on. These meta-
phors suggest its power of agency. Steve Larson (2012) and Tia DeNora
(2000, p. 7) have emphasised how this perception is largely a post-
nineteenth century phenomenon and part of contemporary lives.
Etymologically, transport and translation, are synonyms and share a simi-
lar purpose: to get from here/there and now/then to new destinations and
understandings. Nevertheless, the broad metaphorical use of the term
translation, discussed in Chap. 3, is a slippery notion: it overlaps with
many others such as adaptation and mediation when transfer goes beyond
the realm of the interlingual translation of lyrics or writing about music.
The question of whether music can translate ideas, emotions and responses
is also linked to whether music is perceived as an autonomous form of
expression or not, also discussed in the same earlier section. With these
considerations in mind, I will envisage music’s ‘dynamic relation with
social life’ (DeNora, 2000, p. 20) and what I believe to be its transla-
tional ability.
References
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L’obvie et l’obtus. Essais critiques III (pp. 236–245). Paris: Seuil.
Cook, N. (2001). Between process and product: Music and/as performance.
Society for Music Theory, 7(2), 1–15.
DeNora, T. (2000). Music in everyday life. Riyadh: Cambridge-Obeikan.
Frith, S. (1978). The sociology of rock. London: Constable.
268 Music Translates
Frith, S. (1987). Towards an aesthetic of popular music. In R. Richard Lepperd

& S. McClary (Eds.), Music and society: The politics of composition, perfor-
mance and reception (pp. 133–149). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Habibi, A., et al. (2018). Childhood music training induces change in micro
and macroscopic brain structure. Results from a longitudinal study. Cerebral
Cortex, 28(12), 4336–4347.
Larson, S. (2012). Musical forces: Motion, metaphor and meaning in music.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Reinoso Carvalho, F., et al. (2017). “Smooth operator”: Music modulates the
perceived creaminess, sweetness, and bitterness of chocolate. Appetite, 108(1,
January), 383–390.
Sacks, O. (2007). Musicophilia: Tales of music and the brain. New York: Knopf.
Serres, M. (2011). Musique. Paris: Editions du Pommier.
Varèse, E., & Wen-chung, C. (1966). The liberation of sound. Perspectives of
New Music, 5(1, Autumn–Winter), 11–19.
7
Music and Human Activities
Traditionally in the West, music, at least since the nineteenth century, has
been perceived as either controlled by specialist agents (professional musi-
cians, composers and other music makers) or as a somewhat passive pur-
suit (music listeners will either do something else while listening or sit
down while the action happens on stage or elsewhere). The role of musical
instruments as fetishised objects of value and reverence has also contrib-
uted to an objectivisation of music for many people. This image changed
with the rise of popular culture, as discussed at the beginning of this
book. Within a hundred years, while for most people, playing and singing
has largely been replaced by listening, the nature of this listening has
evolved: in people’s daily lives, it is largely individual, with listeners choos-
ing where, how and what they listen to (see Sect. 6.2.3). When listening
is collective, it is generally associated with movement and interpersonal
exchanges: it is key to today’s participatory cultures and often integrated
multimodally, as is expected from audiences who not only listen to music
but also watch music videos and dance. Vocal music reigns supreme in
popular music while instrumental music is relatively marginal, with the
exception of Electronic Dance Music, which is one of the most popular

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54965-5_7
270 L. Desblache
genres but relies on digital technologies, not on musical instruments as

such. Contemporary popular music gives musical instruments and their
players a relatively minor background role. The focus has moved from
musical objects and the musicians who worked around them to perform-
ers and artists who create music in a multimodal and social landscape.
These factors lead to new perceptions of agency in the twenty first
century for which music is an ideal driver, since it is a flexible art form,
certainly the most disembodied, and can be associated with other forms
of expressions creatively. In fast-changing environments, artists need
adaptive tools, and music is exceptionally adaptive. The example of Pussy
Riot’s choice of music as the group’s primary form of expression even
though none of the members was originally trained in music was dis-
cussed in Part II (Sect. 4.2.1). Music was chosen by the collective as their
members felt that it was the best creative tool to disrupt conventions, to
surprise their audiences, to shake their beliefs and to stimulate their
imagination (Dunn, 2017).
The notion of agency has driven many strands of thought since the end
of the twentieth century. In the language service industry, it refers to an
organisation that trades on freelance translation professionals but does
not employ them in-house. In translation studies, most understand the
term as ‘the ability to exert power in an intentional way’ (Buzelin, 2010,
p. 6) in the professional or creative context of translation. Some transla-
tion scholars, such as Kristiina Abdallah (2012), have explored a view of
agency that gives prominence to interactions between human and non-
human actors, but where human professionals are the sole agents in net-
works which also include non-human entities. This view aims to give
more weight to the importance of production networks of translation
that include machines and systems.
For a philosopher like Jane Bennett (2010), nevertheless, agency can
also be driven by the non human. The work of thinkers such as Michel
Serres (1974, 1992/1995, 2001, 2010), followed by Bruno Latour (2005,
2014), and Martin Hewson (2010), to name a few, has remodelled its
principles beyond that of humans as unique actors in the shaping and
naming of existence. Bennett (2010, p. 31) summarises thoughts on
agency in the following terms:
7 Music and Human Activities 271
Humanity and nonhumanity have always performed an intricate dance

with each other. There was never a time when human agency was anything
other than an interfolding network of humanity and nonhumanity; today
this mingling has become harder to ignore.
Non-human beings and material forms, from electricity to rocks, from

computers to musical instruments, are no longer conceived as passive
objects or phenomena driving human creativity or being part of a divine
presence. They are agents that, along with humans, create and respond to
meaning. In Latour’s actor network theory (2005), they are even media-
tors. Most humans now recognise that things and living beings interact
through complex systems of communication, whether or not they call
them languages. New forms of translation need to be thought out in
order to make these voices meaningful. They are needed to decipher sig-
nals to be exchanged across species and information treated beyond the
human-machine divide. And because music is meaningful beyond the
verbal, it plays an important role in expanding the human understanding
of the networks that create meaning.
Verbal language, until the Early Modern period, was largely adequate
to express the realities perceived by human beings. But as humans
explored different forms of knowledge and experiences, words no longer
satisfied them to articulate meaning in relation to their actions, thoughts
and emotions, as George Steiner (1967) noted decades ago. Awareness of
this ‘agential realism’ (Barad, 2007) has not been examined to any extent
in music. Yet music’s ability to be meaningful both beyond words and in
multimodal contexts points to it as an ideal form of expression for mov-
ing beyond the discursive construction of reality that has prevailed until
the mid-twentieth century.
This contributes to explain music’s global expansion in the last hun-
dred years, a period during which the word has receded as the main
instrument of communication. Some, such as the philosopher and musi-
cologist Theodor Adorno, saw this phenomenon as a consequence of
‘regressive listening’ (Adorno, 1938/2002), which has grown as conform-
ist forms of cultures, especially in popular music, have taken over the
social landscape since the 1930s. Others have argued that the search for
common materiality in different beings and things also leads to exploring
272 L. Desblache
different languages and literacies which manifest a distribution of agen-

cies that is not exclusively human-driven. Verbal language, seen as an
exclusively human privilege until the last few decades, is now perceived as
part of a network of languages that complement each other and broaden
communication. Beyond traditional literacy and numeracy, millennials
now also need digital, media and information literacies (Koltay, 2011).
Translation between them is in its infancy, but recognised as essential for
humans to communicate efficiently between themselves as well as within
the larger semiotic framework of the world.
Music plays a large role in the mediation of these languages. For some,
although music may always be linked to humanity, non-human media-
tors, from wind to traffic noise and musical instruments to plants, play an
active role in unleashing human creativity (Brabec de Mori, 2017; Gell,
1998; Mrázek, 2008). Music thrives on the co-existence of human and
non-human sounds and gives significance to their interactions. Even
advocates of music as an absolute or autonomous art, such as Arthur
Schopenhauer, one of the most prominent philosophers of music, argue
that although music cannot express specific ideas or emotions, it indi-
rectly relates to them, evoking their essence:
[Music] does not therefore express this or that particular and definite joy,
this or that sorrow, or pain, or horror, or delight, or merriment, or peace of
mind; but joy, sorrow, pain, horror, delight, merriment, peace of mind
themselves, to a certain extent in the abstract, their essential nature, with-
out accessories, and therefore without their motives. (Schopenhauer, 1909,
vol. 1, p. 341)
This nature of music is particularly relevant today. Throughout most of

the twentieth century, divisions concerning different types of and
approaches to music were strengthened: between popular and classical
music, instrumental and vocal, between various functions (such as dance
music or religious music), and between composer and performer or pro-
ducer and consumer. This partitioning was not always so resilient in his-
tory, and the twenty first century, more wary of binary divisions, seems to
go back to perceiving music in more holistic ways.
The onset of ambient music, which first emerged with Brian Eno’s
Music for Airports (1978) and developed in many subgenres of internet
music in the twenty first century, reflected the desire to open up music to
a range of functions. It can be seen as a meaningful remediation of Musak,
offering ambient music as a space to think and feel, and allowing audi-
ences to choose how they listened. Musak had filled ‘non-places’ (Augé,
1992/1995) such as anonymous airports or shopping malls with neutral
soundtracks. Ambient music is intended to foster connections between
human beings and their environment. We have seen that what music can
express remains controversial: for some, as a symbolic system, it can carry
extra-musical content whereas for others it cannot. Yet all would agree
that although music cannot communicate specific beliefs or ideas, it can
be meaningful both on its own and in conjunction with other languages,
including verbal and visual languages.
In an era of information overload, of multifarious, at times confusing
ideologies, and of hybrid, shifting identities, music allows stillness in
informational storms, and provides meaning in adding sense to other
languages. It offers different ways of engaging with those languages. We
can use music to close the door on the world or to engage with it, as
technologies provide a spectacular spectrum of ‘musicking’ (Small,
1998/2011) opportunities. The ability of music to be meaningful in con-
junction with other activities or thought processes is of particular rele-
vance to fragmented twenty first century human life styles.
These features of music are not exclusive to the twenty first century of
course. Associations between the musical and the non musical exist in
cultures from all over the world which go back to the earliest times. For
instance, evidence of correspondences made between notes of the Chinese
pentatonic scale and what humans perceive on earth—colours, seasons
and even specific parts of the body—is found in writings from around
500 BC (Raisner, 1961). Beyond its own aesthetic role, which some see
as discrete, music has always engaged humans beyond musical contexts in
order to allow them to interpret the world and make sense of their lives.
Music can be ‘complete’ on its own but is essential to artistic cross-
pollination as it relates to and mediates other forms of expression. The
original singing of Homeric epics, for instance, was inseparable from
274 L. Desblache
poetry, and Greek music in general, in Antiquity, was used to give further
force to words. This echoes what happens in popular music today, which
is, as noted previously, primarily vocal, and in which the meaning of ver-
bal language is expanded through musical (and visual) language. Musical
sounds can also be given semantic and pragmatic meaning. Mothers nat-
urally translate verbal language for their babies into musical form in order
to communicate with them through songs and babbles before they are
able to understand the semantic meaning of words. Non-verbal languages
which carry both musical and semantic messages have also long been used
by humans to communicate across distances or inaccessible places for
instance. Today’s built up landscapes, disappearing isolated ways of life
and new technologies have made these forms of communication rare if
not redundant. Yet they are still used for their aesthetic and social qualities.
African talking drums are thus common in concerts nowadays, but
were initially used to communicate across long distances and were based
on natural languages. Such languages, which some have called ‘musilan-
guages’, remind us that sound needs to travel though different elements,
such as air and water, to exist. It can travel far across landscapes (around
5 miles, more in mountainous areas) and fast (100 miles per hour or
more) if the medium is continuous and depending on the initial volume.
Drums travelled to Europe during the Crusades and to America via the
slave trade in the sixteenth century. Drumming was banned by slave
owners, as slaves used it both as music and as code of transmission to
communicate across plantations, but it is only in the 1930s that white
researchers attempted to decode its meanings (Clarke, 1934, pp. 34–48).
Drums were adopted by the military for communication between com-
manders and their troops from the early Modern period, though, and
reminiscent signs of this are still found in military music.
Less known than talking drums, but as effective, are musical languages
that include semantic meaning through voice or whistling. Most famously
mentioned by Bruce Chatwin in his 1987 novel The Songlines, Australian
aboriginals do not only communicate through songs, but also outline
invisible borders through melodic contours that set territory limits. This
ability to define territories plays an important role in music today. As
Polezzi and Di Piazza (2012) and Taviano (2016a) have argued, today,
music, and songs in particular, play an important global role in reshaping
imaginary borders, which has consequences on how spaces are perceived.

In non-urban and traditional societies, melodicised speech is also used to
accompany some ceremonies and is most common as a language express-
ing mourning and grief associated with loss. In the industrialised world,
where the effects of death are mostly silenced and brushed over, these
traditions can inspire artistic ventures. The American artist Taryn Simon
thus made grief visible and audible in her installation ‘Occupation of
Loss’ in 2017, using the lamentations of mourners from fifteen different
countries and highlighting the importance of expressing grief vocally,
through and beyond words, and connecting past traditions with contem-
porary ways of living.
Similarly, whistling languages are musical but can also be effective
tools of communication. For instance, in Kusköy in Northern Turkey, a
long tradition of whistling across valleys as a mode of communication
between humans persists today. Around 70 whistled languages have been
observed in the world. They are threatened by the rarefication of rural
areas and modes of existence, but from Herodotus, who acknowledges
these in his Histories published in the fifth century BC, to mentions made
by literature Nobel prize-winner Jean-Marie Le Clézio in his novel Désert
(1980) and a wide range of scientific papers (Meyer, 2010), they are well
documented. Musilanguages can be hybrid. Silbo Gomero, which is
being preserved and taught at school by the local population, is a whis-
tled form of a dialect of Spanish used on the island of La Gomera in the
Canaries, and was declared a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible
Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2009. Closer to the twenty first
century is yodelling, initially used by herders in the central Alps to com-
municate with their animals and guide them safely through the transhu-
mance process as they moved from the valleys to the high mountain
pastures and back in different seasons. Yodelling was used in conjunction
with Alpine horns and was inserted in traditional songs, such as in Le
Ranz des vaches, traditionally sung in Switzerland by shepherds while they
travelled with their stock. It is still part of the Swiss folklore today.
Similarly, shepherds from the Auvergne communicated across valleys
singing baïleros. While the original function of these languages was to
communicate a verbal message, baïleros became hybrid, as their musical
value became more important than their message.
276 L. Desblache
These musical abilities to mediate meaning across languages will also

be discussed in Chap. 8 (Sect. 8.4.2) in relation to different senses, but
the examples above illustrate the breadth of ways in which music can
translate, and the long tradition it has in doing so. Most of these com-
municative functions of music were developed to facilitate work relations
between human beings. The rest of this section will examine the main
areas in which music can be considered as an instrument of translation in
relation to work, social activities and political or social engagement.
7.1 F rom Work Songs to Songs at Work

and for Leisure
Whether listened to consciously or used as background, music plays and
has always played an important role, accompanying human lives daily.
From drumming to singing, music has escorted and supported human
activities: work, leisure, sport, social, political and religious events. Before
technologies made music portable and while daily activities, including
those relating to work, were primarily manual, music was played and
sung to accompany those, as well as social events. Songs in particular
have long been used to maintain the pace and optimise the coordination
of physical labour, to alleviate boredom, but also, to make political and
social comments or to relate work conditions in countries affected by
rapid changes due to industrialisation. In the British Isles and in Ireland,
broadside ballads, between the 16th and the nineteenth century, give
well documented examples of how songs became diaries of the working
population and a way of voicing discontent with conditions of labour or
political situations, therefore driving change. This happened in most
countries as industrialisation grew. In France, for instance, the chansons
de colportage were mostly satires sung in the streets on well-known tunes.
Factory songs also reflected, sometimes with hidden references, the
working conditions of the employees (Marty, 1986/1996; Leterrier,
1999; Leclerc & Robert, 2002). Songs used to accompany work activi-
ties, at war as in peace time, but the extent to which singing was present
is largely forgotten. Below is a description made in 1861 by a member of

an infantry battalion from Massachusetts which illustrates its constant
presence and impact:
We had many good singers among us [… and] lustily sang all the popular
songs of the day, whether wielding the shovel, swinging the pick, trundling
the wheelbarrow, or rolling the heavy stones away. During our long eve-
nings in quarters, too, we sang almost constantly.
Religious hymns were as popular with us as secular songs. (Kimball,
1889, p. 371)
As people left rural or artisanal labour to work in factories on a massive

scale, attitudes to singing changed: noisy environments generally pre-
vented music-making. Some compositions reflect this change, often in
ironic pieces. Eric Satie, for instance, was the first to include the sound of
a typewriter in an orchestral work, in his 1917 ballet réaliste Parade. He
was followed by several: Arseny Avraamov composed what would be
called today a sound installation at the peak of Russian constructivism,
incorporating various sirens, whistles, the sounds of guns and machines
in his 1922 Symphony of Factory Sirens. Leroy Anderson (1953) brought
humour to work with his short piece, The Typewriter, used as a solo per-
cussion instrument.
Even when it was possible to make music at work, it was frequently
forbidden and was seen as a suspicious form of collective protest. Weaving,
for instance, had been casualised since the late Middle Ages (Linebaugh
& Rediker, 2012, p. 77), but after many social fights had become a
respectable and lucrative trade before the industrial revolution in Britain
and weavers sang as they worked, often at home. But as industrial looms
became the norm (Mokyr, 1994), songs uniting the workers against their
working conditions were printed and performed outside the factories.
The function of these songs changed dramatically from working compan-
ions to protest statements on working conditions. In the twentieth cen-
tury, trade unions became stronger, protests took less covered forms and
the tradition of singing at and then outside work dwindled from the
1930s. At the same time, music making in general declined as music
278 L. Desblache
listening was enabled through various technologies. There were a few

exceptions of course: in the Soviet Union, patriotic songs that praised
work ethics were encouraged as models for social realism in the 1940s
and 50s. And perhaps unexpectedly, conventional work songs could be a
form of resistance against the State in some countries: in China, for
instance, some popular genres, such as Xibeifeng, contributed to pro-
mote a sense of belonging to rural areas and the importance of hard work
as the only way to resist state urbanisation and centralisation. This hap-
pened well into the 1980s (Li, 2016). However, globally, music listening,
largely controlled by the State or by factory or office managers, replaced
music making.
Music listening certainly can function as a form of resistance against
social order, and lends itself to interpretation as much, if differently, as
music playing. Yet unlike collective singing or playing, it does not lead to
a sense of solidarity and common goal or to an in-depth sense of move-
ment coordination. With the move towards more listening than singing
at work, escapism from tedium became the dominant function of music,
and the sense of control and togetherness that came from collective sing-
ing and music making in pre-industrial eras disappeared. As the internet
developed, individual and collective participatory engagement emerged.
This not only demystified the notion of the musician as an unattainable
artist, but led to new forms of translation: fan translations of lyrics; cre-
ation of shared platforms of exchange about music; use and remodelling
of existing material through multimodal translation and/or refashioning
of various aspects of a musical recording or video. At work, though, par-
ticipatory engagement has remained restrained.
Social and psychological studies, as early as 1937 (Wyatt, Langdon,
& Stock), repeatedly provided—and still provides—evidence that play-
ing music at work generally improves workers’ performance, particu-
larly as regards repetitive tasks. This initial study actually led to the
creation of the company Muzak, provider of background music since
the 1930s. Although it was purchased by Mood Media in 2011, the
function of the company remains the same, even if it is rarely used in
work environments today. Its principles have been used in many popu-
lar twenty first century sub-genres of internet music, from lounge music
to elevator music, chillwave and vaporwave, as discussed in Sect. 7.2
below. While Musak became better known for soulless lift and shopping
mall recordings, in factories and offices, the radio became very present
in workers’ lives. In Britain, a programme entitled ‘Music while you
work’ started in June 1940. Intended to boost the morale of the popula-
tion and their productivity, it was broadcast by the BBC for 27 years
and reflected the start of a period when music was welcome again at
work in the form of listening to broadcasts produced for this purpose,
within strict rules: a steady volume level, a regular and moderately ani-
mated tempo and clear melodic lines were required. Although this pro-
gramme is long gone, music stations on the radio often accompany a
working day in factories today (Korczynski, 2014) while office workers
stream playlists: Spotify’s ‘Music for Concentration’, which offers to
‘declutter your mind and let the creativity flow with this mix of mini-
malism, electronic and modern classical recordings’ (Spotify), was one
of its most popular playlists in 2018.
Today, a large proportion of workers listen to music individually, as
they commute, and on headphones in offices although the radio can be
playing for all workers in open spaces. According to a survey of 13,300
professionals in 12 countries taken by Spotify, 92% of workers today lis-
ten to music at work in some capacity and 81% believe that it improves
their productivity (Faraz, 2017). In the twenty first century, the focus is
on balancing economic realities and work pressures. At times when
demand for attention is multifarious, when working hours are long, and
pressures to perform well high, music seems primarily valued for improv-
ing workers’ focus. But music listened to individually also offers a way to
create distance from an alienating work environment and to affirm indi-
viduality. The many studies on music listening in the workplace highlight
the double paradox that some listeners can focus better with music while
others are distracted by it, and that the effect of music can change accord-
ing to situations: most office workers seem to like music while doing
monotonous tasks, and prefer silence to focus on complex ones, but some
find that it helps them focus and think creatively (Bull, 2007, pp. 108–120;
Haake, 2011). This suggests that if music-making at work rarely takes
place and music about work is quite minimal, music listening, as a form
of ‘musicking’ (Small, 1998/2011), can have a strong impact on twenty
first century urban workers.
280 L. Desblache
First, in a social context that evidences fragmented ways of life and

multitasking, individual music at work can bring a sense of continuity
within the self. Research shows that ‘music listening at work mirrors
general listening trends outside the workplace’ (Haake, 2011, p. 114).
For an individual, bringing music to work therefore also means exposing
an important part of the ‘non-working’ self to his or her environment. At
times when barriers between work and leisure are thin, this can work
both ways of course, and associations with work in personal lives can also
be triggered through music. Second, the double paradox highlighted
above regarding the capacity to focus as music is playing may reveal con-
tradictions as regards work efficiency but it shows that music enhances
individuals’ choice on how to manage their work. Music listening can
give a sense a freedom, of ‘cognitive control’, as Michael Bull (2007,
p. 112) puts it. This is an important factor in working environments that
are increasingly constrained and controlled. Third, music listening in the
twenty first century has become increasingly diverse and this contributes
to rupturing uniformity and tedium. In the twentieth century, transmis-
sion companies controlled the playlists to be broadcast at work very
strictly, at least in Europe: music was to be joyful but uniform both as
regards rhythm and style. This has entirely changed. One of the trends of
twenty first century listening is that music lovers listen to a wide array of
genres. According to Spotify, ‘an explosion in listening diversity’ has hap-
pened since 2014, with a growth in listening hours, but more signifi-
cantly, a surge in the number of unique artists (on average around 40)
listened to every week (Erlandsson & Perez, 2017). Yet the music that is
listened to by workers, unlike that of their 19th and early twentieth cen-
tury predecessors, is rarely about work and few contemporary songs take
it as their theme in the Anglo-Saxon pop culture that dominates the uni-
verse of song, as Korczynski, Pickering & Robertson note (2013, p. 3).
This contrasts with the post-war era, when many songs had work as their
theme, such as the Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. As European welfare
states expanded and the landscape of work was transformed, popular
songs also documented disappearing professions (Juliette, 1993) and the
desire not to work at all (Salvador, 1965; The Clash, 1977). Henri
Salvador’s hook on preserving one’s health through idleness was still
opular enough in France in 2011 for trade-unions to use it in a cam-

p
paign against work on Sundays.
These recent trends have been observed in the general public and are
also echoed in the attitudes of translators to music. In 2014, curious to
investigate the role of music in the working lives of translators, I con-
ducted a survey involving 89 translators and interpreters, 64% of whom
(n = 57) worked for the European Commission in Brussels or Luxembourg.
After all, as Cormak Ó Cuilleánain (2011) noted, translation is, like
music, a performing art and translators are performers. Among the pro-
fessionals who took part in the survey, a few (5) were interpreters. A total
of 79% of the translators’ group mentioned that they were able to listen
to music at work but only 37% listened to music at work either regularly
or sometimes while 63% did not at all or very rarely. While the interpret-
ers clearly cannot listen to music while they listen and speak, some
answered that they listened during preparatory work.
These answers are in line with a poll conducted in 2013 by a member
of the online community forum for translators, ProZ.com, and which
gathered 1118 votes (Wilson, 2013). The poll included one question
only: ‘Do you listen to music while translating?’ The results are presented
in Table 7.1.
As regards more general studies in the same area, two other surveys
were looked at: a very large survey asking whether workers listened to
music at work (Coyier, 2012) and a much more comprehensive one
(Haake, 2011) that gathered information on office staff listening to music
at work. The large survey obtained 20,000 votes online: 45% of respon-
dents said that they listened to music at work, while 24% listened some-
times situationally and 23% listened sometimes randomly. Only 6%
never listened and 2% said that they had no choice, which means that
92% of respondents listened to music at work at least sometimes, a much
Table 7.1 ProZ.com poll (Wilson, 2013)

No, never 41.3%
Yes, sometimes 22.3%
Yes, but rarely 18. 4%
Yes, frequently 16.7%
Other/NA 1.3%
282 L. Desblache
higher proportion than the 37% of music listeners among translators.

Since no demographic details were included in this large 2012 survey, a
detailed comparison with the translators’ survey is not possible. Although
there is no indication on which professional positions respondents held,
the results suggest that workers were able to listen to music at work—
some posts, such as customer facing-ones for instance, make it impossi-
ble—, and that few worked in retail or areas where music is played
throughout.
The more thorough survey was conducted on nearly 300 office workers
in the UK (Haake, 2011). Since all participants listened to music at work,
at least during part of their working day, no comparison can be made on
the number who do/do not listen, or on why they do not listen. However,
it yields interesting comparative results on what, how and why they do
listen to music. An important difference between the two studies con-
cerned the respondents’ age, with an average of 45 for the translators,
with relatively few respondents in their 20s, while the office respondents’
majority age group was between 26 and 35. Another difference is that the
translators questioned did not work in open plan offices. European
Commission translators have their own office and freelance translators
usually work from home. Hence, they rarely stated one of the reasons for
listening to music as a shield against disturbance. On the contrary, some
of these translators mentioned that music created a ‘cosy’ atmosphere and
made them feel less lonely, a recurrent theme in the answers. But the
results of two surveys converge with respect to the role of music in gain-
ing or losing concentration. Among the translators who did not listen to
music at work, 39% said that they needed silence, 25% that they could
not concentrate with music and 21% found music disturbing. Those who
thought that music facilitated translation stated that it fosters energy
(29%), reduces stress (25%) and gives emotional/aesthetic pleasure
(24%) as their main reasons. For others, music also alleviates boredom.
These answers are not so dissimilar to those given by the office workers,
who found that music primarily improves their mood, helps them relax
and makes them happier as well as less bored. The two surveys also high-
light a strong paradox regarding music listening at work and its effect on
concentration. Not only do some respondents mention that music helps
them with their concentration while others say that music hinders their
concentration, but in different situations, listeners can be either dis-

tracted or helped in their concentration. Similarly, some translators men-
tioned that ‘[music] helps me be more creative with certain types of texts
(press releases, communications…)’ (35 year old), that ‘it focuses the
mind, gives greater control over creative energy’ (no age given), or that it
‘helps deliver focus prior to starting translation [but] once focused on the
translation, it is a distraction’ (53 year old). One statement comments
that ‘most of the time, I find that listening to music while translating
disturbs me. But if there is noise around, I find that listening to music
with headphones actually reduces stress and helps me to concentrate’
(49 year old). One feature seems characteristic of translators in their
responses to music listening at work. While most do not listen to music
while they translate, they think that music helps their work in general
and more specifically in heightening awareness of some features of the
texts they translate: ‘In general, I think that listening to various genres of
music helps me translating [sic] (even if I don’t listen to it while translat-
ing) because if helps me to hear the rhythm of the text’ (53 year old,
original emphasis). When listening to music, the translators tend to select
certain tasks and listen part of the time. Overall, in this survey, they men-
tion that lyrics interfere with their work on words and state their prefer-
ence for instrumental pieces or playlists. ‘If there are lyrics in a language
I understand, those lyrics become a distraction and may affect my work
and the text I’m producing. If the tempo is very fast, it is also potentially
distracting, especially if it changes’ (26 year old), writes a respondent
while for another, ‘vocal music might distract you in a subconscious way
aka the words you are hearing might end up in your translation, if you are
not careful’ (30 year old).
While for centuries, workers expressed their emotions and opinions on
work and life in general through songs, it seems that since the era of
broadcasting, music at work has become increasingly disconnected from
storytelling or opinion giving. As work becomes less physical, music lis-
tening replaces music making, and distancing from rather than connect-
ing with people seems a frequent musical function. Even if early twentieth
century workers could not or were not allowed to sing at work, music
making and singing still played a large role in their lives until the 1930s
and even later. Most large factories in the UK had brass bands and choral
284 L. Desblache
societies for instance. In a personal conversation, an ex-worker of the

Shorts factory in Belfast, born in 1935, who worked there in the 1950s,
recalled that several choral societies and brass bands existed and that
lunchtime saw hives of musical activities. Staff rehearsed at work and
performed outside working hours. By contrast, whether at work or not,
music today is a product to be consumed that may alleviate boredom and
stress or improve efficiency, mood and creativity. While music at work in
pre-industrial times was used primarily to encourage movement coordi-
nation and social connection with others, it is used today in ways that
usually cut the self off from others. One of its primary roles is also to give
a sense of psychological control to individuals and the ability to distance
themselves from a working environment where their freedom is usually
strongly restricted. In some respects, the opportunity given to twenty first
century individuals to listen to their own selection, gives them back a
sense of agency.
Music in twenty first century everyday lives, of course, is not limited to
work and interestingly, its function in leisure contexts can be strikingly
different. It can still be used by individuals to regulate mood, alleviate
stress and loneliness, or create a distance from others. Individual music
listening, often used to shield oneself from others and from the environ-
ment allows this distancing more than ever. Yet its primary functions are
to mediate emotion, create a sense of connection with others and bring
aesthetic pleasure to music listeners and makers. In fragmented societies
where meaning must often be deciphered beyond the verbal, as discussed
at the start of this third Part, the cohesive function of music is essential.
The last decade has seen a spectacular rise of live popular music in the
West, with record attendance at local, national and international festivals
(see Part II, Sect. 3.2.2). Sharing music at live events has become one of
the most valued leisure activities of the millennials who do not desire
material possessions as much as their parents, either because they are
unnecessary (why buy a CD when you can stream? an LP is only desirable
if it adds to experiential quality) or because they are out of reach (acquiring
property is seen as financially unattainable for most). For ‘Generation
Experience’, as it has been dubbed in the UK, borders of any kind can be
crossed and music, which is dematerialised, transcultural and ephemeral,
allows these young people to travel, in the largest sense of the term.
Since the last decade of the twentieth century, most translation studies
scholars have given translation a broader meaning than that of linguistic
or even cultural transfer between two texts. It has been defined as a trans-
formative principle, as a site of encounter and exchange but also
disruption, as it uncovers knowledge contradictions and social complexi-
ties. Looking at music in people’s activities and in particular, in their
working lives with this understanding of translation in mind highlights
its translational role: it transforms personal and social attitudes to work
and to others, fosters efficiency and creativity, allows both collaboration
and protest and perhaps more importantly, nourishes the sense of a voice
that can be expressed individually or collectively. This understanding of
translation as transformative and of music as a translational force is even
more potent when ideological content comes into play, as discussed in
the next section.
7.2 Music and Ideologies

Since the 1980s, translation scholars, led by figures such as André Lefevere
(1985, 1992) and Susan Bassnett (Bassnett & Lefevere, 1990), have
stressed the importance of translation as rewriting and as a strategy for
rethinking and transforming original material, rather than imitating it.
Keen to dissolve the persistent and erroneous idea that translation was
exclusively derivative, they emphasised its influential power and demon-
strated how translators rewrote texts across languages and cultures,
manipulating them ideologically. Important facts were unveiled: this
manipulation, intended and controlled by translators to a large degree,
can also be imposed from the individuals and institutions who commis-
sioned the translations. The recent work of translation scholars in the area
of narrative reframing has also been crucial in demonstrating how trans-
lators and interpreters reshape existing social narratives (Baker, 2006) and
use translation as an instrument of resistance (Tymoczko, 2010).
At the same time, musicologists no longer considered music only
within its own sphere but as a cultural catalyst for social and cultural
change. Ethnomusicologists have recently given much attention to the
transformative powers of music with regards to politics, ideology or vio-
286 L. Desblache
lence, often from a cross-cultural perspective (Urbain, 2008; O’Connell

& Castelo-Branco, 2010). The parallel made at the end of the previous
section between translation and music is also visible between the two
disciplines. While musicology stopped being apolitical, translation stud-
ies investigated the ideological input of translators into the cultural land-
scape and revealed the social impact of translation. Translation research is
still emergent in the area of music, and primarily confined to rap, but it
does reveal how music requires a wide spectrum of translation strategies
in order to have both a local and global impact (Taviano, 2013, 2016a,
2016b; Susam-Saraeva, 2018).
Music’s links to political and social movements have always been
strong, be they in local or global contexts. But the socially and politically
transformative power of music has only been explored in depth in the last
40 years, as music has gradually been examined within the sphere of
social histories and events. Musical innovation can be a rebellious state-
ment in itself. When rock appeared in the 1950s, it was both loved by
young people and rejected by establishments because of the ways in
which it shook social structures through the dismantling of established
musical forms. Its cross-cultural content allowed it to be re-written and
performed transnationally but reappropriated nationally or locally. Even
though its message was not always political, it was banned as a genre in
many countries such as those of the Eastern block and considered as a
threatening instrument of deconstruction of public order and moral val-
ues. Music can be considered so threatening to a society that it can be
nearly entirely banned, as is seen in Iran where non-religious music has
been forbidden since 2005 (Siamdoust, 2017). These are extreme cases,
but music censorship exists in all countries today. In 2017 for instance,
Spain imprisoned 13 rappers, more than in any other country (Freemuse,
2018, p. 55). Music is not only the most ubiquitous form of human
entertainment, in a world where 900 million people still cannot read and
write, it relays information and is essential for people to express or share
their emotions and identities. Overall, however, repression has always
been primarily linked to words and their content. In classical and folk
music, it is the choice of verbal language that has tended to be the object
of censorship. While Janaček’s opera Jenůfa was premiered in Czech in
Brno in 1904, and first published in that language in 1908, the composer
yielded to the pressure of a performance in German in the Viennese

Court Theatre, a decision that endeared him to the German authorities
but not to his compatriots. Caught in the challenge of having his music
performed in the language of an oppressive regime or not at all, he
compromised. He also used resistance, writing folk songs and religious
music in ancient local languages such as old Slavonic, which were dis-
tanced from contemporary use and expressed nationalism more subver-
sively in genres of lesser prestige.
The paragraphs below take the example of race in music to stress the
original and sometimes paradoxical paths that this transformative urge
takes. They go back to the twentieth century to establish the contempo-
rary roots of music’s links to fights for social justice and its ability to voice
diversity while creating common ground for all listeners.
150 years ago, Europe and America had strong legal control over peo-
ple of colour. Although slavery was abolished in all USA states in 1865,
it would take another 100 years for African-Americans to have equal
rights to white Americans and, globally, the practice of slavery was still
widespread until the end of the nineteenth century. Large European
countries were at the height of their colonial expansion at that time, and
smaller countries such as Poland for instance, which banished serfdom in
1864, were only just passing laws granting fundamental rights of freedom
within their state. Manifestos such as the first Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, initially published in France in 1789, had limited practi-
cal effects on racial and social discrimination. Thousands of anti-racist
publications and many words have been written and spoken since. Yet
racial prejudice, among other prejudices, is still common in most coun-
tries now. Recent research in another field has in fact shown that preju-
dice is better reduced through empathy than logic (Broockman & Kalla,
2016). The abolition of slavery has not abolished racial prejudice. Racism
based on colour is not the only form of racism, but it remains one of the
most mainstream prejudices and is historically well-documented. My
point here is that verbal discourse is not always the most efficient form of
interaction for inducing change regarding beliefs and behaviours.
Sport and music have been vital in influencing opinion positively
regarding race: giving media prominence to athletes and musicians of
different races and promoting a positive image of them encouraged social
288 L. Desblache
cohesion. In the case of music, sharing emotions and aesthetic pleasure

across boundaries also leads to new attitudes. This is controversial in
many respects. First, even today, social recognition is not always forth-
coming for talented black musicians (Legendre, 2015). Moreover,
typecasting a section of a population can reinforce prejudice and make it
challenging for those people to be recognised outside the areas in which
they can be accepted and reach excellence.
Paul Robeson, one of the key black figures of the Civil Rights move-
ment, was a qualified lawyer who, after many instances of discrimination,
finally renounced his career when his white secretary refused to type let-
ters for him (Horne, 2016, p. 22), accepting that he would not be able to
function efficiently in such a toxic environment. He embraced music
professionally instead and remains known as a politically and socially
engaged singer, and to a lesser degree, as an athlete.
Music also has a history of associations with racist ideologies. Lyrics, of
course, play a large part in expressing them or in just mirroring racist
behaviours. For instance, the original publication—and recordings—of
the American composer Stephen Foster’s blackface minstrel ballad, ‘Oh!
Susanna’ (1848), well-known in the USA even today—with a different
verse—, included the following second verse:
I jumped aboard the telegraph and traveled down the river,

Electric fluid magnified, and killed five hundred Nigger.
The bullgine bust, the horse ran off, I really thought I’d die;
I shut my eyes to hold my breath—Susanna, don’t you cry.
Such verses would no longer be published today, but racism can be medi-
ated more insidiously, woven through and beyond lyrics. Musical genres,
for instance, have a long history of setting the scene for racism: the coon
songs of the 1920s, which parodied Afro-American music and carica-
tured black people, may be gone, but some white punk, rock and metal
groups still deliberately use music to build exclusion today, and promote
ideas of white superiority (Chastagner, 2012).
Racism is also very present in music circles, albeit more subtly, in the
ways global music institutions are run, or black male artists are systemati-
cally associated with violent rap for instance. Nevertheless, music offers
unparalleled opportunities for integration and exchange between races

and cultures. The development of jazz in the early twentieth century is
the first global example of this and one of the most spectacular: it gave
visibility, and in some cases, social mobility, to gifted black musicians
worldwide; it evidenced how creativity thrives on cross-fertilisation; it
broke some of the barriers between Blacks and Whites, particularly in the
USA, thus undermining segregation and fuelling the development of the
Civil Rights movement; it gave unexpected models to challenge tradi-
tions imaginatively and peacefully, albeit in a spirit of resistance; it did
not dissolve racism but brought it up as an ugly human trait and demon-
strated how talent can emerge in spite of trauma and subjugation.
A good cause does not necessarily make good music though. Ethel
Smyth’s hymn ‘The March of the Women’ became the anthem to the
women’s suffrage movement in the early twentieth century. In 2018, in
the UK, it was often heard for historical reasons, as part of the centenary
celebrations of the right to vote given to women, but its musical value is
limited. Creativity, in music and elsewhere, can be stifled by the need to
put convincing causes first. This explains why many politically engaged
songs borrow existing music for new words: Julia Howe’s ‘Battle Hymn
of the Republic’ (1862), originally inspired by a southern American
camp-meeting song, itself probably a variation on a spiritual or other
slave song (Fuld, 1966/2000, pp. 112–115, 132), offers the most famous
lyrics, but many other versions exist, mostly linked to abolitionist or civil
rights movements. An existing and memorable tune is often the vehicle
for new lyrics, as it guarantees a beautiful melody and the familiarity of
the audience with it. It was on this principle that ballads and folk songs
thrived throughout the world. Football anthems are still based on famous
themes today, and remain one of the few examples of singing as part of a
crowd. Indeed, the scarcity of collective singing and music making reflects
once again the lack of cohesion and the fragmentation of contemporary
ways of life.
Not all ideologically driven pieces suffer from a lack of musical inspira-
tion of course. Oscar Peterson’s ‘Hymn to Freedom’, one of the most
moving musical pieces targeted at racism, worked ideologically, emotion-
ally and aesthetically as a symbol of the American fight for civil rights in
the 1960s and beyond. Interestingly, the piece was initially composed
290 L. Desblache
without words. Harriette Hamilton wrote some lyrics on Oscar Peterson’s

request a few months after the initial composition and a choir adaptation
was created, but it is the instrumental version, written by Peterson for his
trio, which has been most impactful, an illustration that a powerful
anthem can be wordless. Like all black musicians of his generation,
Peterson endured the most hateful and humiliating bouts of racism. He
recalls for instance a man from Georgia coming to Montreal year after
year to hear him play. When the man requested to meet him one year,
Peterson held his hand out to greet him, to hear the following reply: ‘I
love your playing but I could never shake hands with a nigger’ (Garvey,
1992: 27’ 17”). Peterson knew that musical meaning is not tied to ideas
but can be associated with actions and can even drive them. He also testi-
fied that oppression threatens but does not kill autonomy, and he used
musical agency to fight for social justice. This controversial example of
how music has accompanied, mirrored or denounced racial injustice in
America illustrates how, as Tia DeNora (2000) argued, music has become
an increasingly powerful feature of human agency. Musicians still use
music to fight racism. A recent ethnographic study has shown that hip-
hop artists in the Ukraine have used hybrid songs mixing different lan-
guages and musical styles in order to fight escalating racial violence, and
have done so with some level of success (Helbig, 2011).
Oscar Peterson’s music may not express directly the feelings of oppres-
sion which gave rise to the Civil Rights movement, but it does express the
suffering and oppression of humankind. In this sense, it illustrates
Schopenhauer’s views discussed at the start of this chapter. Links to extra
musical elements also give music more specific hues and meanings. In the
case of ‘Hymn to Freedom’, many of these gave clues to the listeners: the
title associates the piece with the genre of ‘freedom songs’ sung by the
participants of the Civil Rights movement which was used as a way of life
to unite members of the black community during that period. An
unadorned tune, simple rhythm and chord progression as the core of the
piece also evoke the desire to use a sacred but all-encompassing genre.
Inspired by early Baptist hymns, with a melody reminiscent of ‘Abide
with Me’, it is not written in the tradition of spirituals or gospels, directly
associated with the black community. Beyond a reference to Peterson’s
personal background—for Peterson’s father, a keen music lover, music
was limited to hymns and the classics (see Batten, 2012)—, the wish to
be inclusive of all humankind as his listeners, regardless of colour or
creed, and to establish common ground between listeners, can perhaps be
read in this choice. So much so that when the white singer Joan Baez sang
the spiritual ‘O Freedom’ at the 1963 March on Washington, alongside
black and white performers, on the same day as Martin Luther King
delivered his famous speech, this marching song, which dates back to the
1860s Civil War, instantly became a symbol of engaged support for the
Civil Rights movement and for a truly United States of America.
The performance of a racially-loaded musical piece can provoke very
opposite reactions of course. The revival of George and Ira Gershwin’s
Porgy and Bess by the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest in February
2018, thus had a very controversial reception: the opera used a primarily
white cast and transferred the story from segregated South Carolina in
1920s to a European refugee centre a hundred years later. Contemporary
opera, steeped in a repertoire mostly ranging from the 17th to the early
twentieth century, thrives on adaptations and narrative reframings
intended to give fresh meaning to old plots and myths. But in this case,
the original racial context of the opera is crucial to its musical and narra-
tive meaning. Although some songs written by George Gershwin such as
‘Swanee’ had been performed by white singer Al Jolson, who popularised
jazz and blues at a time when the majority of white Americans were reluc-
tant to listen to black artists, the composer reacted strongly to involving
white actors with blacked-up faces in his opera. In this twenty first cen-
tury production, the transformation was largely perceived as offensive
and as driven by Hungarian governmental agents to stage political
propaganda.
Audience and reception studies today are maturing into a main field of
study in music, cultural and translation studies, and meanings in music
are constructed not only by composers, lyricists, film makers and per-
formers but also by their recipients. In the twenty first century, musical
engagement against racism has grown from the silent engagement of the
1960s to a much more direct one. This engagement involves horizontal
forms of exchange and communication that challenge relationships
driven by hierarchical powers and universalist ideologies. With the rise of
social networks, boundaries between life and art have also become
292 L. Desblache
blurred, and visual content in popular music contextualises music.

Singers in particular, share their own male, female or binary experience
much more personally in their music and express their social engagement
through their individual image. This means that songs in translation or
adaptation can play a role in bridging gaps across cultures, as Şebnem
Susam-Saraeva (2015) showed with the example of rembetika Turkish-
Greek songs contributing towards a rapprochement between the two
neighbouring but historically conflicted nations. This also means that
musicians, and particularly singers, can choose to give an extra-musical
message to their work with increased impact and visibility. For instance,
in her visual album Lemonade (2016), initially conceived as a continuous
film, Beyoncé chooses to release the lead single ‘Formation’ sitting on a
sinking New Orleans police car with background footage from the
Katrina hurricane disaster. The song, and the whole album, which draw
on the theme of black solidarity, however, were interpreted differently a
few months later in the aftermath of the shooting of black people by
police in the Autumn 2017, when she used two pieces from this album,
‘Freedom’ and ‘Formation’, on social networks to show her support to the
Black Lives Matter movement and the black community in general.
Such social network connections seem to have emerged within a cou-
ple of decades, and highlight the unpredictable, unstable nature of com-
munication, in spite of its facility for dissemination. However, they
undoubtedly have roots in forms of public protest which have long relied
on music, particularly on songs. Demonstrations which include scanting
continue to be an expected tool of protest. The tradition of more sophis-
ticated street songs in Europe only disappeared at the beginning of the
twentieth century, and in countries slower to industrialise, well into the
twentieth century. In Homage to Catalonia, for instance, George Orwell
(1938, p. 3, 88) witnessed the regular singing of political songs in
Barcelona during the Civil War, even at a time when music was already
recorded and broadcast:
Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of
people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing
revolutionary songs all day and far into the night.
[…]
The militiamen shouted revolutionary songs [and…] waved red and

black handkerchiefs to every pretty girl along the line.
What we might call today ‘street performance’ was nowhere more popu-
lar than in Britain, Ireland and the USA, where all social and political
events were commented upon by ‘professional’ singers and musicians
who performed in the street but had a status barely higher than that of
vagrant, and by those who bought prints of these pieces. Songs were
sometimes created by entertainers who performed them in a theatre
before they were released as printed sheets. Although their themes told
of the urbanisation movement, songs were bought and sung both in
towns and in the country. They covered subjects as different as wife-
selling—which went on in England until the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury—to the opening of a railway or an agricultural show (Palmer,
1974) and are important, sometimes unique, testimonies of past ways
of life which laid some of the foundations of contemporary musical
performance.
Music-making has also had a strong role inside homes and in enter-
tainment public spaces such as pubs and bars, when music had to be
made to be heard and forms of entertainment were limited. The piano
appeared in many working class homes at the beginning of the twentieth
century in North America and Europe. Before then, it tended to be too
expensive and the fiddle or the flute were more common. More portable
instruments could be used to accompany singers, such as the harmonica
and the accordion, and became popular virtually everywhere in the
Northern hemisphere in the nineteenth century.
Music still plays an active role in defining specific situations and
accompanying social events such as parties, dances, weddings, funerals,
or even corporate brand videos. It has been present in most public and
virtual places from shopping malls to the media for close to a century.
However, two essential functions of music seem to have largely disap-
peared since technology allowed its reproduction and dissemination: its
performing function, as most people listen to music without making it
themselves, and its role regarding collective expression of protest and
commentary. Some music genres have protest at the heart of their
294 L. Desblache
roduction. This was, and still is at the core of the punk movement, by
p
contrast with mainstream popular music. It also permeates hip-hop, the
main genre of protest of the twenty first century. It is fair to say though
that, unlike punk, hip-hop relies primarily on lyrics as tools of protest.
Musically, it is based on samples of existing music and is becoming
increasingly hybrid, borrowing from genres such as gospel or funk. Its
originality is driven by the inventiveness of the appropriation and combi-
nation of borrowed pieces but it is still driven by lyrics and visuals
(Taviano, 2016a).
Subjugation and y earning for freedom have also long been present in
the music of classical composers. In the twentieth century, Benjamin
Britten—Peter Grimes and Billy Budd—and Dimitri Shostakovich—
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and the Fifth Symphony—had oppression at
the centre of their work, even if their political criticism is covert and
needs to be deciphered. Moreover, in the digital age, while social net-
works allow music listeners to share ideas and performances instanta-
neously, protest can be catalysed around a handful of performers, as the
Arab Spring musical performances have shown, for instance. Yet singing
as an instrument for social comment among ordinary people, which had
existed for centuries, has disappeared on a mass scale. Instead, singers
make their individual voice heard, and some bring political agendas to
their work. While critiques are outspoken in hip-hop, pop music, on the
whole, is more toned-down in its political and social comments—
Paloma Faith’s anti-Brexit messages in her album The Architect are
noticeable but restrained. The tradition of street performance has not
disappeared: busking is alive in most countries (the World Street Music
video blog evidences this), and the flurry of flash mobs that appeared in
the first decade of the twenty first century calling for active engagement
from the public has now stopped. Today, such engagement is rarely
manifested in collective street performances. Faint traces of participa-
tion can still be seen in some countries such as South Africa, which has
maintained singing and dancing as a form of collective expression for all
people. However, the protests of factory or office workers who listen to
the radio or to playlists on their headphones are no longer heard through
their singing voices.
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8
In and Beyond the Material
In the twenty first century, music has been increasingly dematerialised

from the point of view of technology but has developed different rela-
tionships with the material world. Music has been traditionally associated
with musical instruments, printed scores and recorded objects such as
LPs or CDs. These are still essential to music of course, but as was dis-
cussed earlier, they are not fetishised to the same degree. Nor do they play
an exclusive role in how music takes place. On the other hand, music has
developed a progressively interdependent relationship with visual and
material cultures. Musicians have always favoured involvement with
other modes of expression, most commonly with dance, but also with
words. In an era where visual messages dominate, music interacts power-
fully with visual content, giving it meaning directly, for example in a film
sequence, or indirectly, as musical references enforce new interpretations
of images.
To publicise their ‘On the Run II’ 2018 world tour, for instance,
Beyoncé and Jay-Z used intertextuality across the arts, paying tribute to
a reasonably obscure film. The world’s most famous pop music couple of
the second decade of the twenty first century knows that every text they
publish is going to be scrutinised and interpreted by both fans and critics.

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54965-5_8
302 L. Desblache
For this reason, the choice of a reference which is cryptic to some degree
is intended to be more original than inaccessible. This is not the first time
that their advertisements use such tactics. To announce her pregnancy in
2016, Beyoncé released a series of pictures inspired from Renaissance
paintings of Venus. Some, such as Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ were
famous, others, such as Guido Reni’s 1693 ‘Reclining Venus with Cupid’,
were not. ‘On the Run II’ borrows visual ideas from the poster of a 1973
African film by Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty, Touki-Bouki
(Journey of the hyena), discussed below in Sect. 8.3 with regard to its
music. It re- or transcreates the image of two adventurous Senegalese
youngsters planning their escape from Africa, as Jay-Z and Beyoncé take
a similar pose on a motorbike, leaving viewers to interpret it: do they
wish to point to the adventures of their tour? To its moving nature? To
the African ancestry of their twenty-first century music? To their black
identity? To the visibility of marginalised characters? To the fact that the
married singers may separate in the end after all, as do the protagonists in
the film? Neither their music, nor their tour relates directly to Africa, so
it can be assumed that references are not narrowly cultural. Given the
fame of the singers, they are also seen as embodiments of music itself, the
motorbike evoking its movements. This example shows that although
music is produced and disseminated in increasingly dematerialised ways,
it entertains complex relationships with the material which shapes its
meaning in a figurative manner.
This section explores the power of agency of music in twenty-first
century cultures that entertain complex and paradoxical relationships
with the material and the measurable. In societies addicted to quantifi-
cation which equate meaning to figures (Sorente, 2011), music itself is
becoming increasingly data-centric, from the way it is composed to the
way it is rated. However, music also moves people and shapes their
frame of mind (Hansen & Melzner, 2014) in ways that cannot always
be predicted and calculated. It also offers unparalleled ways of encoun-
tering others through the mediation of past or recent traditions from all
over the world. We shall explore below its power of agency and transfor-
mation with regards to emotion, time and space, as well as interartistic
and intersensorial practices.
8 In and Beyond the Material 303
8.1 Music and Emotion

The emotional function of music is one of the most celebrated if contro-
versial issues regarding music, as was discussed in Part one: for some,
particularly in the classical world, music is self-contained and cannot
embody emotion, while others ascertain that it expresses cognitive atti-
tudes and ideas. While for some, music does not convey emotion, no one
would disagree that music has an emotional effect on listeners. This is a
field of research in itself which is only touched upon here within the
transcultural angle that is at the heart of this book.1
All musics are capable of arousing emotion, although they may have
different effects on people of different ages, and social and cultural back-
grounds. Researchers have demonstrated that some basic emotions such
as sadness or anger can be perceived cross-culturally (Balkwill &
Thompson, 1999; Fritz et al., 2009), even though the perception of
music is generally associated with a specific culture. The rising interest in
the relationship between music and emotion is no surprise in an era when
rewards are expected to happen instantly, as music can offer emotion ‘on
demand’. Scientists have proved that listeners release dopamine at the
peak time of music listening, when a piece reaches its emotional climax
(Salimpoor, Benovoy, Larcher, Dagher, & Zatorre, 2011); indeed, explor-
ing how and why we are moved by music is an expanding field of study
(Ball, 2010; Bencivelli, 2011). The use of music in texts that are not
exclusively musical is complex as regards the emotions it triggers in audi-
ences, and a source of disagreements among musicologists and psycholo-
gists. Yet as film makers and composers know, music prompts emotions
much more quickly than images (Douek, 2013). Music has come to play
an increasingly powerful role in all visual platforms as audiences
‘audio-view’ (Chion, 1990/1994; 2003/2009) media texts. Whether
music pre-empts or accompanies a scene expressively, or whether it acts as
a contrasting agent to visual and verbal narratives, it generates emotions.
The creative methods through which these emotions are conveyed are
diverse and widespread. Today, music is expected to contribute to the
emotional meaning and the identity of a programme. As twenty first cen-
tury feature films tend to rely less on spoken dialogue, using a rich palette
304 L. Desblache
of languages based on sound and visual effects, music is becoming increas-

ingly influential. Music can prompt emotion with the awareness of the
listener in mind or with the intention of influencing its audiences. For
instance, when Robert Schumann gave a bound copy of the song cycle
Myrthen to his bride Clara Wieck on their wedding day on the 12th of
September 1840, it was intended as a musical expression of love and was
received as such, as their common diary attests (Schumann & Schumann,
1993). Nearly two centuries later, the song cycle is still perceived in simi-
lar ways, albeit through the cipher of German Romanticism. Such trans-
lation of emotions is still at the heart of much music. The theme of sexual
attraction may dominate over that of romance today in popular music,
but love and ‘healing songs’ as Ted Gioia (2006) calls them, are still key
to human living: a large proportion of music listeners seek them out in
their playlist.
Music can both punctuate media content and accompany it in ways
that highlight or transform its emotional meaning. Spoken programmes
are thus introduced by a signature tune that pitches them emotionally
and establishes their identity. The comedy panel game ‘Just a minute’,
transmitted on British radio since 1967, is introduced by Chopin’s ‘Minute
Waltz’, a ‘mistranslated’ title since ‘minute’, in the case of the waltz, refers
to a miniature piece and not to its timing. Nevertheless, the pun as well
as the playful tune immediately evoke the cheerful spirit of the pro-
gramme in which contenders have to speak following certain rules for
one minute. In non-musical programmes, music also acts as a cohesive
device, linking two contrasting sections or leading to and from a com-
mercial break. And of course, it transforms a programme by either reflect-
ing its content and/or anticipating its moods. Audiences are generally not
fully aware of such musical manipulations. Nowhere is this more evident
than in film music, which brings viewers to the emotional place that
directors want them to inhabit at a certain point in a film. From Alfred
Hitchcock’s thrillers to M. Night Shyamalan’s supernatural suspense sto-
ries, music brings viewers to emotional climaxes at given points. Leitmotifs
are also used to build portraits of the protagonists and associate them
with emotion in anticipation. For instance in the BBC series Little Dorrit
(2008), the villain’s theme is used as a musical cataphor referring to the
evil French rogue Rigaud, preceding the character (see Falchi, 2017 for
an in-depth analysis). A traditional French song, ‘Compagnons de la

Marjolaine’, a watch keepers’ round intended to keep people safe at night,
is eerily distorted through speech, whistling and instrumental variations
to this effect, and creates a sense of unease before each of Rigaud’s
appearances.
Today, immersive sound design technologies are sufficiently sophisti-
cated for music and sound to be a major agent in the suspension of dis-
belief of films as they induce specific emotion in viewers and listeners and
strengthen their illusory journey. Soundtracks include musical scores,
sounds used as music, and sounds directly related to the film. Pioneers of
musique concrète in the post Second World War era such as Pierre Henry
and Pierre Schaeffer attempted to compose with raw sound, deliberately
ignoring new developments in avant-garde classical music or electronic
popular music. They saw their venture as the most innovative, but at the
end of his life, Schaeffer felt that they had failed. He and his followers did
not live long enough to see how revolutionary their work was. Twenty
first century music, and particularly music used in visual media such as
films and video games, depends increasingly on the deconstruction and
transformation of sounds, used as sampling in electronic genres and
essential to dance or film music, and this fusion between music and
sounds is mainstream. The use of sound superimposed over a music track
is common in popular music genres of course: reggae is defined by dub
mixes, with an instrumental track often used as a base on which to sing,
speak and improvise while heavy metal incorporates ambient sounds,
hisses and screams. Yet in the mainstream scene, it is in film music that
fusion effects are particularly spectacular. Film makers routinely use the
inaudible bass vibrations of infrasound, documented as having a disqui-
eting effect on listeners, in order to build an atmosphere of fear and
anxiety for instance. A soundtrack now implies a coordinated use of
sound effects, sound design and a score.
The film Dunkirk (2017) is an excellent example of this fusion. It tells
the story of the 1940 rescue of British and French soldiers from the three
points of view of air, land and sea, using sparse dialogue. While visuals
and verbal content tell the story, the soundscape, which includes sound
effects, silence and music, weaves it all together. Hans Zimmer’s score
merges the three to evoke this turning point in the history of the Second
306 L. Desblache
World War. Silence punctuates the movie, which starts with inaudible,
but nevertheless perceptible, infra-sound before bombing takes place. It
occurs throughout the movie to punctuate the different narratives from
air to land and sea. It also acts as the backdrop of the moments filmed in
a beached ship, in which some soldiers are trapped and unable to leave for
fear of being killed. This tale of survival shows how rescuing the defeated
can give the hope of a potential victory. It is the film’s music which sug-
gests this best. Over time, Zimmer, a largely self-taught composer who
has become a, if not the dominant figure in film music of the first decades
of the twenty first century, has gradually deserted the classic parameters
of the musical language: first he deconstructed or neglected melody,
favouring rhythmic patterns and including sampling techniques bor-
rowed from popular music, mixing recognisable pieces, melodies and
rhythms to create an original recording. In Dunkirk, rhythms do not
primarily arise from the score but from sound effects, mainly the ticking
of a clock—given to Zimmer by the film maker Christopher Nolan—and
the energetic pulses of spitfire engines. Fragments of Elgar’s Nimrod vari-
ation emerge very slowly from and are drowned out by an anxious osti-
nato of strings. It creates a sense of unresolved disquiet, from which a few
clouds of hope surface. Zimmer uses the technique of the Shepard tone,
by which notes separated by octaves give the impression that they go
higher although they never do. This auditory illusion is analogous to
Penrose’s stairs in visual terms, an object which inspired Escher’s 1960
lithograph Klimmen en dalen, and leads to the unsettled feeling of impos-
sible achievement. Eventually, Elgar’s theme is fully, although not hero-
ically, stated in the only climax of the film, when Commander Bolton
(Kenneth Branagh) sights a fleet of boats coming to his soldiers’ rescue.
The adaptation of the Nimrod theme from Elgar’s Enigma Variations cho-
sen as the core of the soundtrack gives it unity and identity.
Music may not be referential in the ways that verbal language is, but it
is still very strongly referential, and this film’s soundtrack, based on the
skillful de/reconstruction of existing musical fragments, demonstrates it
well. The fact that the music is adapted from a past repertoire rather than
composed for the film is significant: when music is borrowed, its associa-
tions are borrowed with it. For British audiences at least, this hair-raising
theme evokes annual performances in front of the Cenotaph on
Remembrance Sunday, but also alludes to the enigma decoding machine,

named after Elgar’s piece. It became a symbol of the inventiveness that
allowed Britain and its allies to eventually defeat the Nazis against all
odds. Each of Elgar’s fourteen variations is a musical sketch of one of his
close friends and each title shows the composer’s taste for cryptic puns.
The Nimrod variation depicts Elgar’s only German friend, Augustus
Jaeger, a music publisher who lived in Britain most of his life. He died in
1909 but his family members stayed in Britain and changed their name
to Hunter during the First World War. Elgar portrayed Jaeger as a ‘spiri-
tual’ hunter, since Nimrod, a figure from the Old Testament, was a hunter
and Jaeger means ‘hunter’ in German. As a film, Dunkirk also brushes
individual portraits of those involved in the operation. This justifies why
Benjamin Wallfisch, who composed the section which fully states the
Nimrod theme, titled it ‘Variation XV’, not just with reference to Elgar’s
score, but to his musical portraying techniques.
Music’s transformative powers are so strong that they can undermine—
some might say mistranslate—the narrative or performance that it
accompanies. Actors and film makers remain wary of this potential for
emotional domination. In Dark Victory (1939), Bette Davis famously
refused to play in a scene when she climbs stairs leading to her bedroom,
where the protagonist that she embodied later died, unless Max Steiner’s
music was removed. She felt that the suggestive score upstaged her per-
formance and gave away the final scene. She is reported in many sources
to have said that either Max Steiner would climb the stairs, or her, but
not the two of them together (see, for instance, Chandler, 2007, p. 130).
The music remained and both artists obtained an Oscar for their work,
but the point made by Davis touches on a sensitive and relevant area.
In the previous chapter (Sect. 7.1), we discussed how important music
is in the context of people’s work, and how it allows many workers,
including translators, to deal with the pressures of their professional envi-
ronment. We saw that for many office workers, using music as a shield
against disturbance, unlike the translators taking part in the survey which
I conducted, since they all had their own offices. The reasons for listening
to music mentioned by the translators were combatting stress or bore-
dom, unleashing energy and for the emotional and aesthetic pleasure it
brought them.
308 L. Desblache
In a volume of translation, it is relevant to consider how translators

might be affected by music and what emotional role it might play in their
professional lives. Séverine Hubscher-Davidson (2017), researching the
links between translation and emotion, draws on research in psychology
to highlight the impact of awareness, regulation and expression of emo-
tions on human actions and performances, as well as on her own empiri-
cal study of 155 translators, aiming to show how emotions impact on
their work and training. She argues that, as communicators regularly
confronted with emotional content, most translators develop an aware-
ness and acute perception of emotions as they become more experienced.
She also contends that, in view of this emotionally-charged work, most
translators need to be particularly apt at regulating their emotions. It can
be argued that all human beings benefit from regulating their emotions
and that not all translators transfer emotionally-charged texts of course.
Hubscher-Davidson does not give details on the specialism of the transla-
tors who participated in her study. However, even translators who are
dealing with ‘dry’ texts such as manuals seem to actively seek emotional
wellbeing in order to perform their professional activities efficiently. The
translators whom I surveyed write legal, political, institutional or techni-
cal texts under extreme time pressure. All mentioned listening to music
in their spare time, some stressing that this was indispensable to their
work-life balance, and over a third of them stated that they listen to music
as they work, primarily for inspirational, motivational and emotional rea-
sons. At a time when workers are judged professionally by how much
they can achieve, and translators, often, by how many words they can
translate efficiently, music allows listeners to redress the balance, to trigger
emotional memories, to shut down the quantified systems that define
twenty first century living.
8.2 Time and Space

Parts 1 and 2 have illustrated abundantly how time and space are trans-
lated through music. They have shown that musicians both identify with
and keep their distance from those boundaries; how hybridity, which is
extensive across all aspects of music from style to genre, from timbre to
rhythm, is at the heart of all national or ethnic identity. We saw how the
translation of a number of components, from the transfer of lyrics to style
adaptation, plays a vital role in ensuring that pieces are meaningful at
personal, ethnic, local or national, and global levels. The example of
Tropicália’s ‘Miserere Nobis’ discussed earlier (Part I, Sect. 3.1.4) showed
that this now iconic album not only gave a sense of identity to the
Brazilian population, but that it introduced Brazilian culture to non-
Brazilian audiences. This was achieved in a number of ways, involving the
translation and adaptation of tunes, rhythms, styles as well as the use of
Latin as a foil to the Brazilian language so that Brazil could become tan-
gible to non-Brazilian audiences.
Rather than examining how various elements of music are translated,
this section aims to consider music as translation with regards to time and
space. Although contemporary societies tend to be dominated by the
visual, especially in countries which use digital technologies widely, an
awareness that the ways in which listening, and more precisely appreciat-
ing music, depends on specific cultures is growing. For instance, acousti-
cians study how differently physical and virtual spaces impact on music
and how it is perceived (Blesser & Salter, 2009); twenty first century
music archeologists are attempting to reconstruct music of the past which
can give important clues on the social and cultural life of its time (EMAP).
Referring back to ideas relating to cosmopolitanism discussed in Part I
(Sect. 2.2), I argue that music plays a translational role in offering ‘post-
universalist’ experiences of the foreign, fostering awareness of coexisting
voices and interrelations of cultures, both in space and time. While trans-
lation is primarily seen as an interlingual tool that historically, has allowed
the internationalisation of universalist values and cultures, translation in
music also enhances differences and facilitates their interactions. It makes
universal values and references meaningful locally as I have discussed in
relation to opera (Desblache, 2013, pp. 9–19) and Stefania Taviano has
argued concerning hip-hop (Taviano, 2016a, 2016b).
Musak and repetitive music constructed on standardised systems may
not require translation, as they thrive on the reproduction of schemes and
patterns. However, its twenty first century variations, such as vaporwave,
and similar genres of internet music based on the remixing of existing music,
can be perceived as a form of translation. Vaporwave, a portemanteau word
310 L. Desblache
derived from ‘vaporware’, refers to consumer products which are announced

but never released, and ‘wave’, which alludes to a trend but also to spatial,
immaterial ideas perpetually repeated. Vaporwave uses slow repetition to
establish a distance from reality. It thus undertakes a veiled critique of a
society in which everything is reused, reassembled, rebranded and redistrib-
uted across cultures, and sometimes languages as the genre is steeped in
Japanese and Hong Kong influences. Translation, in music, sees not only
the unravelling of stereotypes but its resampling across different languages,
increasingly for a global internet audience. Music may favour common sys-
tems of language writing or recording, but does thrive on the interrelation
of languages and ideas as common, constantly shifting, creative languages
evolve into the ‘third space’, in the Homi Bhabha (1994/2004) sense of a
place where fusion and interactions lead to creativity.
The second decade of the twenty first century has also seen a growing
interest in cultural cosmopolitanism, defined by the value given to inter-
connected but different cultures. In the wake of the 2008 economic and
immigration crises, the rise of post-liberalism also saw the political and
cultural revival of nationalisms from central Europe to America. Yet the
latter differ from what they were in the 19th or early twentieth century
when many nations where forming and needed to establish their voice,
mostly against threatening hegemonic powers. There are similarities
between these eras linked to discontent of course, but the cultural front
of twenty first century populist nationalisms is different. While economic
issues of discontent are important, populism is primarily about the notion
of reappropriating’s one’s country, as Pipa Norris has argued (2018). By
contrast, cultural cosmopolitanism, first articulated most strongly by
Martha Nussbaum (1994), still voices liberal ideals against populist
nationalism or regionalism.
While cultural (Collins & Gooley, 2016) and even musical (Regev,
2013) cosmopolitanisms are being debated and while translation scholars
investigate relationships between translation and cosmopolitanism
(Bielsa, 2016), the translational role of music has received little attention
in this respect (Stokes, 2007). The area which has drawn most attention
is that of hip-hop. Alastair Pennycook (2007) has shown how hip artists
have reappropriated English into local language variations and Stefania
Taviano (2012) argues that this reappropriation is a necessary tool for
negotiating new identities, particularly when artists do not live in their

country of origin. Rap and hip-hop illustrate abundantly how English is
a point of reference against which local meanings, world cultures and art-
ists themselves are at times being built in a constant flow of transforma-
tion. Increasingly, translation is no longer a strategy involving decoding
in a language and recoding into another, but creating meaning across
languages which involves the construction of identities and commonali-
ties (Wolf, 2008). Because hip-hop is primarily based on words, and
sometimes dance and visuals, one of its key element, rhythm, also belongs
to poetry. This is why perhaps it has been the focus of a number of inves-
tigations by linguists and translation researchers. In other areas of music
such as popular song, translation scholars are more silent. This may be
due to remnants of the long intellectual tradition that discouraged musi-
cians and musicologists from thinking music as other than as a musical
language, as an aesthetic object or within historical studies.
Philosophers, musicologists and some composers of the 19th and 20th
centuries had issues accepting that music expressed anything but itself
and could be represented by way of another language. Yet even the most
conservative of thinkers, such as Arthur Schopenhauer or Eduard
Hanslick, affirmed that music does generate ideas and emotions, and that
‘[t]he essence of music is sound and motion’ (Hanslick, 1854/1891,
p. 67). Naming motion as a key component of music unambiguously
points to music’s transforming nature and to its translational capacity.
This is where an important distinction needs to be made. As discussed in
Part I, traditionally, translators and translation scholars have expected the
process of translation to depend on two codes embodied by source and
target texts. In the context of music, the notion of translation refers to a
wide array of transfers, from score transcriptions to lyrics adaptation and
genre transformation. It can also refer, by extension, to performance
interpretation. Surprisingly, the more common abstract meaning of cul-
tural translation as a tool for exploring and engaging with the world has
hardly been considered in music. Yet I believe that what early music crit-
ics such as Hanslick meant when discussing music as motion, referred to
the translational capacity of music. While rejecting the notion of music
as a translated product or represented object, they pre-empted the idea of
musical translation as a cultural tool, as an imaginative space, a critical
312 L. Desblache
instrument of enquiry that can lead to new ways of listening and

understanding.
This ability to transform goes beyond the emotional sphere. New
music composed for an existing film, for instance, can change the out-
look of the film. For many decades, silent films have been rescored with
the aim of producing hybrid products, faithful to the original as regards
the film itself but remediated and musically ‘curated’ for a new genera-
tion of viewers who had different expectations of sound from early twen-
tieth century audiences. Traditionally though, the remakes of classic
films have tended to keep the original soundtrack, as a statement of
authenticity. For example, in Gus Van Sant’s remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s
Psycho (1960, 1998) Danny Elfman rearranges Bernard Herrmann’s
original score, which is then recorded in stereo. Twenty first century
viewers enjoy what I would call ‘familiar novelty’, compositions based on
existing works but given a fresh texture. Films are thus frequently reme-
diated in a subtle form of translation which involves rescoring. Initially,
this technique was quite experimental: live rescoring was used to refresh
and remarket classic or cult movies, but it is presently used to introduce
an audience to an unknown film. The Barbican in London, for instance,
has offered a range of rescored silent films that had fallen into oblivion,
with the aim of introducing them to new audiences, with live music.
This was the case of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s La passion de Jeanne d’Arc
(1928) rescored with a live sound track of 14th and fifteenth century
music sung by the Orlando Consort in a church in 2016, which was
intended to echo Jeanne’s experience of voices and transport viewers into
medieval France.
In the professional sphere, this practice of rescoring a film to give it a
new lease of life remains unusual, but is becoming more mainstream. The
BBC Radio 1 producer Zane Lowe, for instance, curated a new soundtrack
involving 13 contemporary artists for the film Drive (2011) in 2014. The
film has sparse dialogue and was strongly defined by its electropop 1980s
style of music, which, although contemporary, sounded deliberately
dated. It also echoed a revival of electropop at the end of the second
decade of the twenty first century and a hint of nostalgia for that period.
Zane Lowe’s controversial substitution for contemporary sounding tracks
gave the film an entirely different identity.
In the context of literature, translation from the past into the present
is often seen as a way to make canonical or established works accessible to
new audiences. It is primarily an instrument of what Itamar Even-Zohar
(1978/1990) identified as a polysystem, that is, a structure made of inter-
acting systems that contributes to determining how well recognised a
publication is within specific cultural systems. It is this aspect of transla-
tion which allows translators to use an existing text as a spring board
towards a new creation, and it is indispensable to musical creation.
Translating the past, in music, does not only mean making a text from a
particular period understandable to an audience of another. It means
interrelating the two eras. No one did this more eloquently than Igor
Stravinsky, the Russian rebel turned European neoclassicist.
In 1919, Igor Stravinsky’s earliest patron, Sergei Diaghilev, asked the
composer to ‘arrange’ recently discovered fragments of Pergolesi and
other less known early eighteenth century composers. Stravinsky was
originally unsure about his ability to create a meaningful work from frag-
ments, and concerned about acting as just a ‘translator’. Yet this encoun-
ter with the past was, in his own words ‘an epiphany through which the
whole of [his] work became possible’ (Stravinsky & Craft, 1962/1981,
p. 113). Stravinsky, as discussed in Part I (Sect. 3.1.3), always juxtaposed
past and new elements in his music, and established bridges between
them. In this, he is the composer who ended Romanticism most spec-
tacularly and most abruptly through the de/reconstruction of the famil-
iar. Folk songs, in particular, were quoted, rhythmically dislocated,
arranged bitonally and appropriated musically as well as narratively. His
fondness for the stage, and particularly for ballet,—he composed no
fewer than 18 pieces for the stage over a span of half a century—also
means than his music was written within a multimodal context and in
collaboration with other artists: choreographers, librettists and producers.
The focus of Romantic composers was on the original voice of their
genius and on striving for an unattainable ideal. This striving involved
in-depth knowledge of and love for past works, of course. The writing of
Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (1865) is for instance stylistically very marked,
not only by old legends but also by the reading that his contemporaries
made of them, such as Berlioz’s Romeo et Juliette (1839). Peter Szendy
(2009, pp. 60–66), in his exploration of the role of translation and
314 L. Desblache
transcription in musicians’ lives, also argues that Robert Schumann, col-

lectively perceived as quintessentially romantic—for some, unjustifiably
(Worthen, 2007),—sees transcribing and arranging works of the past as
a critical tool that empowers him to pursue this ideal, to forge links
between past and present, to infinitely defer the final work and to accept
the creative process as ongoing. However, in the nineteenth century, the
main focus was on the talent of the individual as a primarily spontaneous
creative spirit. Stravinsky, who, in the course of his life, was accused of
both decadent avant-gardism—the first performance of The Rite of Spring
in 1913 remains the best documented protest in twentieth century
music—and reactionary neo-classicism as regards his later compositions,
brutally punctured the myth of the lone genius.
The ballet Pulcinella was the turning point which allowed him to see
that creativity was not only dependent on the reshaping of existing pieces
but on a dialogue between past and present as well as between cultural
identities. Stravinsky loved Pergolesi and his contemporaries, as their
music offered a harmonious mix of Italian and Spanish influences, of
local Neapolitan voices and classical forms, of the genteel elegance of
chamber orchestras and the simplicity of urban songs of the early eigh-
teenth century. He interrelated the 18th and the 20th centuries so that
both could be seen from a distance. He brought forth their commonali-
ties, making them his own. Stravinsky was alone among his major musi-
cal contemporaries in spurning the future as the only window to open in
order to create a new musical language. While he left behind the archaic
rituals of Russia favoured in his youth, he incorporated them creatively in
the most discreet of cannibalistic translation processes. Although he
started no school and suggested no dogmas, he influenced all musicians:
he foregrounded rhythm as the most vital component of musical change
and exchange in ways that can be found in all musical genres today; he
experimented across styles from neo-classicism to serialism, from his
native Russia to Japan, establishing bridges between them; he incorpo-
rated visual, and kinetic languages to his work while always letting music
lead the dance; finally, he loved words primarily for their musical value
and favoured light narratives that could be driven by music, such as
Pulcinella’s, a story which is more of a frame on which to draw notes. In
this, he is a unique cosmopolitan translator of music. He resisted the use
of new language for the sake of the new. He showed that originality could
be drawn from existing works, and could provide a vital and continu-
ously evolving link between different eras and areas. Paradoxically per-
haps for a creator who wanted to keep strong control on how his music
was interpreted, as Ben Van Wyke (2014) has argued, he opened ways to
reinventing the past through the most transformative translation process.
8.3 M
usic and Other Art Forms:
Performativity and Intertextuality
Interart practices, which are born of dialogues between different media
and art forms, seem to dominate contemporary art scenes today. Sound
art for instance, exists across visual arts and experimental music; hybrid
arts across technologies, science and the arts. The medium of installation
which involves fusion with the environment, and possibly with other art
forms, has been the preferred practice for decades. Models that belong to
one art form are frequently borrowed by another, and popular music is
based on intersections with poetry, dance and visual arts. Yet even though
interdisciplinarity is key in a world depending on tackling different
strands of information simultaneously, interartistic practices of the twenty
first century seem to clash with each other more than they smoothly bor-
row features from each other. The borrowing of an art form by another is
often seen as a form of submission and the relationship between artistic
forms more productive if confrontational, as David Cecchetto, Nancy
Cuthbert, Julie Lassonde and Dylan Robinson argue in the introduction
to their book (2008, pp. xiii–xxv). Their main objection to interrelations
of the arts is the dominance of one art form when it is borrowed into
another. This is not exclusively true of contemporary practices, and there
is a long tradition of artists keen to keep their art form within its own
sphere. Poets have been notably reluctant to see their work ‘translated’
into other media. Goethe’s suspicion of Schubert’s setting of his texts,
even if it has been exaggerated and sometimes questioned, reflects the
desire of many authors to preserve their texts unmediated. As for com-
posers, we have seen that the mainstream musical tradition from the mid-
18th to the end of the twentieth century protects music’s irreducible
316 L. Desblache
essence as incomparable to any other art form. Eduard Hanslick

(1854/1891: fn 16), one of the first and most influential musicologists,
illustrates this in his condemnation of German romantic philosophers’
views on different arts being essentially one, such as Novalis’s, who
thought that different art forms should be perceived synaesthetically.
More precisely, he criticised Robert Schumann’s belief that enriching cor-
respondences exist between the arts, in those terms: ‘Robert Schumann
has done a great deal of mischief by his proposition (Collected Works I,
43): “The aesthetic principles of one art are those of the others, the mate-
rial alone being different”’.
Contemporary artists tend to follow Schumann’s view that much cre-
ativity comes from contrast rather than contact, particularly in a multi-
modal context. Michel Chion (1984/1999, p. 87) has discussed how
music used in opposition to visual messages in film is an effective strategy
to both enrich and confuse perception: contrasting sounds and images
give each other different significances. Their conflicting interactions
make the viewers/listeners question expected meanings, allowing the
reconstruction of prevailing patterns. For example, Djibril Diop
Mambéty’s Touki-Bouki (Journey of the Hyena), mentioned earlier, relates
the dreams of two young Africans to emigrate to Paris. Paris is seen, and
sung by Josephine Baker’s optimistic ‘Paris, Paris’ (1949), as an elusive
ideal. Is Paris an illusion? Or a reality so contrasting with Africa’s that it
is more desirable? Baker’s joyful leitmotivs and richly textured voice pen-
etrate the film in contrast with the challenging adventures of the protago-
nists and stark images of rural Africa. Yet borrowing methods and
platforms from other disciplines need not imply collision to be creative.
In the same film, at the very end, ‘anempathetic’ (Chion, 1990/1994,
p. 221), detached cool jazz suggests indifference. Yet this very sense of
disconnection intensifies the drama of their separation and the hazards of
their fragile destinies.
When music started to be considered more openly and multimodally
in the popular sphere in the second half of the twentieth century, new
forms of creativity emerged, often dependent on different technologies
but less focused on performers’ technicity. Today, popular culture is
driven by intersemiotic events: images are used to mediate music and
music gives different hues to visual content. Spoken introductions often
contextualise songs, which also come to life with dance and filming. Rap
is often mixed with melodic songs or their harmony. For instance,
Rihanna opens Kanye West’s ‘Famous’ (2016) with a gospel song most
famously performed by Nina Simone, ‘Do What You Gotta Do’ (Webb
& Simone, 1968). But as the rap starts, the melody stops and the chord
progression of the song appears over the sample of the reggae song Bam
Bam (Sister Nancy, 1982), while at the end of ‘Famous’, the reverse hap-
pens, as Nina Simone’s voice distantly closes the piece. Meanwhile, visu-
als portray the naked bodies of 12 celebrities, in a new take of the
American painter Vincent Desiderio’s ‘Sleep’ (2008), which exposes 12
anonymous bodies, asleep or unconscious. This frequency of interrela-
tions between different languages, so prominent in feature films and
advertising, is also key to music creativity itself today. Within the frame-
work of translation, two forces are instrumental in considering these
interrelations and the changes that they bring forth: performativity and
intertextuality.
8.3.1 Performativity
The notion of performativity emerged in the context of verbal language,

to point to the ways in which social change happens through language
and sometimes beyond the verbal language. The term is interpreted dif-
ferently whether in the context of cultural performance translations, or
other translations. The meaning of performance itself varies considerably
within the field of translation. Social theorists in translation studies
understand it as anthropologists do, as a tool for reinventing ways of
being and acting in the world, rather than referring to the accomplish-
ment of actions relating to entertainment and communication. As
Michaela Wolf (2017) points out, practice-oriented scholars see it in rela-
tion to quality (in interpreting in particular) or within the context of
theatre, in relation to what Cristina Marinetti (2013, 2018) names ‘trans-
lation zones’, physical and metaphorical spaces where languages and cul-
tures are shared and hybridised in performance.
In the context of the performing arts, performativity evokes the trans-
formative process ending in a performance, more frequently, but not
318 L. Desblache
exclusively in the context of theatre and poetry.2 It considers how linguis-

tic, cultural and stage-related changes contribute to a new play or show.
By contrast, an increasing number of translation studies scholars define
performativity more broadly as a feature that allows translation to pro-
mote social change, as Michaela Wolf (2017) discusses. Wolf alerts her
readers to the fact that this complex concept needs to be understood dif-
ferently in varied contexts, but that a broad understanding which goes
beyond that of an activity based on transfer between languages or cul-
tures can be empowering for both the discipline of translation and the
translators which are its main agents.
Yet in both cases, performativity no longer means putting words and
texts at the heart of the translation process, and translation is considered
as transformative rather than derivative. The second part of this book
illustrated abundantly how the complex and varied levels at which music
is translated, from the words of cover songs to the genre of traditional
dances, are transformative. Chapter 2, taking Teddy Afro as an example,
also emphasised that music has not only embraced but pioneered differ-
ent ways to translate, in particular, volunteer translation. It examined
how many of these translation spaces were designed around cultural
exchange rather than linguistic transfer. Twenty first century music leads
the way in providing translations that are performative as a tool for per-
forming arts, but also for social change. This happens in all musical genres
and styles, and in vocal as well as instrumental music.
To illustrate the breadth of this transformative dimension, I shall take
two examples from musical theatre. Helen Chadwick is a songwriter and
in her own words, ‘performance creator’, who composes unaccompanied
songs for both solo and group voices. Her works engage the communities
that she lives in both as regards the participation of local choirs for some
of her performances, and interviews that she conducts and puts at the
core of her compositions. Dalston Songs (2008) are based on such inter-
views and snippets of conversation heard on local buses or in places near
her home, a very ethnically and socially diverse part of London. The
‘opera’, as this piece involving music and theatre may be called, is in
English and transduces the messages selected from her corpus into music.
The composition uses contrasts between familiarity and discovery of the
new, and evokes both commonalities and differences in people. Dalston
Songs creates word-sound clouds set in sneezes, interjections and other

semi-verbal forms of expression which performance brings to life. The
piece highlights the banality of stereotypical language exchange between
strangers, which is used by all, but somehow seems even more futile when
spoken by people of very different backgrounds who strive and struggle
in their interactions. The stereotyped exchanges that all human beings
enact on a daily basis feel so profoundly void in music translation and
theatrical performance that it calls for a change, for more meaningful
interactions.
By contrast, fragments of statements based on extreme human experi-
ences are also part of the composition. They include an individual recall-
ing being tortured and a man making an emotional call to his unknown
parents hoping to convince them that he is their son, and change the tone
of the piece. The mediation process continues when the composition is
hosted in a different setting. It can then be rewritten (Dalston Songs
evolved into Songs for the Way Home, a trio concert version of the former)
or set with different performers: when Dalston Songs was performed at the
Royal Opera House’s Linbury studio in 2010, the show was choreo-
graphed; when a fresh version, entitled The Singing Circle, was commis-
sioned by and performed on the main stage of the Royal Opera House,
more performers were included. Helen Chadwick also collaborates with
foreign companies such as Marseille’s Voix polyphoniques whose reper-
toire, mostly in French, is derived from traditional songs and performed
a cappella. Chadwick’s work is unusual in that it is performed in a very
wide range of venues, from prestigious opera houses to obscure theatres
or local cafes, on radio and in recordings as well as live. The portability of
the voice and the fact that most of her performers are also actors allow
exceptional adaptability and outreach with very different audiences.
Music and theatre respond to each other, giving new meaning to the
voices collected, relying on each other in weaving their aesthetic and per-
formative content. The piece keeps being translated in new contexts, new
performances, new productions, occasionally involving a new verbal lan-
guage when collaborating abroad.
Performativity can also lead to mistranslation or misinterpretation,
particularly when music intersects with other performing arts. In 2018,
the renowned Canadian director Robert Lepage created a show about
320 L. Desblache
slavery. Entitled SLĀV, it was thought out in a multidisciplinary and

multi-ethnic context, as is the case with all Lepage’s ventures. The piece
included elements of codes used by slaves, and some improvisation, but
depended primarily on slave songs, performed by Betty Bonifassi and six
choristers. All main performers in the show were white. The songs used
as a starting point for variations and improvisation were collected in the
1930s by American folklorists John and Alan Lomax, who were also
white. The majority of the songs were African American but some had
Serbian, Bulgarian or mixed origins, as the intention was to place black
slavery into a wider context, with allusions to slavery in Europe in the
Middle Ages for instance.
In an interview with Nick Duncalf (2018, 5’30”) which took place a
few days before the opening night, Bonifassi confidently states that unlike
actors who perform a spoken text, singers and musicians cannot be
accused of appropriation, as music knows no racial or other boundaries.
She mentions that any music can be borrowed and transformed, suggest-
ing that this can be done even by people of another culture who may have
a history of domination of that culture without any particular consider-
ation. This was an astonishing statement to make, considering that the
show, as is specified on the international jazz festival of Montréal website,
was intended to be ‘a theatrical odyssey based on slave songs’ and ‘a highly
visual music-theatre show, a tribute to music as a tool for resilience and
emancipation’ (Festival de Jazz de Montréal, 2018). It was also surprising
in view of Bonifassi’s extensive experience as a performer of multi-ethnic
music. The rock-punk audio album ‘Chill’em all’, conceived by DJ
Champion and partially based on African American chain-gang songs
interpreted by Bonifassi, launched her career in 2004. She has since
issued three albums based on African-American slave songs (Betty
Bonifassi, 2014; Lomax, 2016a; Lomax Deluxe, 2016b) and performed
live concerts on the same theme. Offence was clearly not intended, and
she states on her album sleeves and in interviews that her work on slave
songs is a tribute to the African-Americans, their resilience and the beauty
they brought to all through their music (Bonifassi, n.d.). In SLĀV, the
music was also chosen, amended and staged to probe the history of slav-
ery from a broad perspective, including several manifestations of human
slavery that were not linked to African-American slavery. Yet it was per-
ceived as a trivialisation of the darkest and most significant pages of

African-American history. Obliterating race from the narrative of slavery
also caused offence. The predominance of white performers acting as
black slaves on stage was interpreted as the silencing of black voices on
their history. Public outcry and protests accusing producers and perform-
ers of cultural appropriation and racial insensitivity ensued, and the show
was cancelled after three performances.
The SLĀV show illustrates potently how persistent the image of music
as ahistorical and ‘acultural’ remains. Even open-minded, avant-garde
artists such as Lepage and Bonifassi, known for taking risks in their cre-
ations, for constantly exploring margins and pushing boundaries, mis-
judged the impact of the overall performance of the show. They wished
to offer an inventive, multidisciplinary and broad interpretation that
would take the representation of slavery beyond its original context. For
them, the point of theatre is to step into others’ lives, imagine them from
other perspectives. They felt that ‘translation’ could have opened a new
dialogue on oppression and racism. In some respects, it did, as this event
led to both tense and fruitful exchanges and discussions. Yet this perfor-
mative translation of slavery that was offered with music at its roots was
stopped because it was also shaped by its audience, and particularly its
black audience, who felt excluded and ‘translated’ in the Homi Bhabha
(1994/2004) sense. As many contemporary thinkers have argued, from
Attali (1977/1985) to Serres (2011), music can reflect the past and pres-
ent but is at its best when imagining the future. This musical ability has
played a very large role in black communities who have not had many
reasons to be nostalgic about the past, and are often the object of social
injustice in the present. Perhaps, Lepage and Bonifassi were also per-
ceived as depriving them of that creative opportunity.
8.3.2 Intertextuality
The second instrumental force of translation identified in relation to

music when combined with other arts is intertextuality. In an age when
cultural recycling is at the core of artistic processes and products, it is
important to revisit the notion of intertextuality as a tool which generates
intersection and references across artistic practices.
322 L. Desblache
In his analysis of Lydia Davis’ translations, Jonathan Evans states that

Davis, a contemporary novelist and translator, uses a form of intertextu-
ality that can be dubbed ‘translation as composition’ (Evans, 2016,
p. 126). We might reverse this phrase in relation to Stravinsky, stating
that he uses ‘composition as translation’. While formalists such as
Stravinsky believe that music cannot be translated, as music can only
remain music and express itself, they do acknowledge its translational
power as a medium able to transform itself and be inspired by other
forms of expression, mediated into music (see Chap. 4). In this sense,
intertextuality is one of their most essential creative tools.
Stravinsky, for instance, takes as a ‘start text’ (Pym, 2014, p. 1) William
Hogarth’s mid-eighteenth century eight sketches of ‘Marriage à la mode’.
As discussed in Part II with regard to The Rake’s Progress (Sect. 3.2.2), he
uses and subverts the model of Mozart’s number operas,3 and in particu-
lar Don Giovanni, with reference to the pictures inspiring his only
full-scale opera. W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, his librettists, relied
on a similar strategy, choosing seventeenth century poets, Alexander Pope
and John Dryden, and their heroic couplets as models. In that, they not
only matched Stravinsky’s allegiance to the past, but also ensured that
their input was not limited to parody and offered a true connection to
the present.
Music, reliant on variations on existing content and often combined
with another art form, is essentially intertextual. Intertextuality is a com-
plex and controversial notion that has divided twenty first century schol-
ars, particularly in the field of media. However, in relation to music, most
consider that it can have different functions which are not mutually
exclusive as they can be conflated. The first three relate to what compos-
ers and performers do, and the fourth to how audiences interpret texts
using their own knowledge.
First, intertextuality can be centred on one or several references: a mel-
ody, a leitmotiv, a chord progression or a rhythm sequence, or even a
whole piece that is alluded to. In the last 20 years, sampling and remix-
ing, facilitated by technologies, have been at the core of song composi-
tion and production: any song today depends on borrowing, shapeshifting
and recontextualising. Because sampling requires snatching fragments of
existing recordings, borrowing is in general more blatant than when com-
posers or performers seized a tune or a rhythm on which they grafted

their own work. The current borrowing trend started with the popularity
of cover songs from the 1920s onwards, a good example of how transla-
tions can become more canonical than the original text. For instance,
Jimi Hendrix’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’ was initially written and per-
formed by Bob Dylan, but only took off after Hendrix’s interpretation.
Dylan himself eventually adopted Hendrix’s interpretation. As discussed
in the previous section, the full linguistic and extra-linguistic translation
of a musical text also depends on performance and certainly on recep-
tion: in a given context, a musician will interpret an existing song in
certain ways and it will be understood by a given public.
This use of existing music is often deliberately imitative and aims at
tributes, parodies, pastiches or satires. Transformations of, or variations
on existing musical elements require the desire to be referential to the
past. For instance, Arnold Schoenberg (1926) wrote three satires for
chorus in an attempt to protest against his contemporaries rooted in
tonal tradition, such as Stravinsky. However, his use of a twelve tone
musical language, which prevents the repetition of notes or sequences,
abolished any possibility of satire before it could start, and it could only
be traced in the paratexts that he wrote such as the title of the piece and
an explanatory preface.
Second, intertextuality can take place in conjunction with another art
form, introduced to enhance or displace meaning. Most commonly, this
happens with visuals or words accompanying the music. In Benjamin
Britten’s (1936) cycle Our Hunting Fathers, the composer sets a poem by
W. H. Auden entitled ‘Rats Away’. Auden modernises an old anonymous
incantation intended to drive rats away from a town. Given the political
context of the late 1930s, rats are equated to Jews, a common cultural
representation in Nazi propaganda, although not known to all at the time
perhaps. Other songs of the cycle which are focused on the relationship
of men and beasts also allude to a pejorative and anthropomorphic repre-
sentation of animals. Yet in ‘Rats Away’, it is the music that gives the
words of this prayer its parodic but frightening meaning. The voice, with
its violent bouts of virtuosity, is treated instrumentally. It requires a stri-
dent and aggressive interpretation to suggest that the rats that need to be
exterminated are not the Jews but the fascists conquering Europe. The
324 L. Desblache
raging vocalises4 surround an incantatory prayer hovering over one note

and harmonised in an archaic mode. But the pernicious return of the
vocalises lacerate the prayer which is given sardonic tones. There is no
doubt at the end that the rats have not been eliminated.
Our Hunting Fathers was Britten’s first important commission, for the
Festival of Norwich. The promising but unassuming composer stunned
both members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, whom he con-
ducted, and a British public who did not forgive him easily for being so
unexpectedly brazen. One of Britten’s most visionary song cycles, and
certainly the one which most visibly gives new meanings to words, Our
Hunting Fathers was one of the last of his major works to be recorded, in
1999, and is still one of the most controversial and least performed.
Third, music can be used as a creative tool to highlight equivalences
with another or other art form(s) or discipline(s). For instance, in her
2011 album Biophilia, Björk uses the translation principle of equivalence
in a venture aiming to connect music and nature. The album is presented
as a galaxy in which each song is a constellation. The project is artistic but
also educational, and an application is provided along with the album,
which encourages the discovery of natural elements in musical transla-
tion. Songs can be accessed interactively, displayed as conventional scores
or as visual representations of their sounds that can guide your interpreta-
tion of the music intersensorially. The song ‘Thunderbolt’, for example,
evokes lightening with arpeggios, and the application associated with it
gives the opportunity to ‘play’ a lightning, to imagine what it can be
musically and how differently it can be understood or perceived in musi-
cal form. In Björk’s own words, Biophilia aims to ‘build bridges between
things that have not been connected before’ (Ultimate Björk, 2013, 20’ in).
Fourth, in a post-structuralist era which has established for decades
that texts only live through those who read, listen and interpret them,
intertextuality relates to how audiences interpret texts and create mean-
ings. It is no longer understood as in the exclusive control of the artists
who are ‘seeing words and music as a painter might’ (Dayan, 2011a).
While authors may manipulate their audience to construct certain inter-
pretations, using intertextuality as a strategy, the readers, viewers and
listeners give new meanings to a piece each time they read view or listen
to it. What matters most is that the experience is meaningful to the
audience. Their interpretation may be triggered unconsciously by their

memory, self-construed or engineered by the composer, and/or within
the piece itself or through suggestions made aside such as conversations
with members of the public in pre- or post-concert sessions, internet
support sites or social network interactions.
Since the end of the twentieth century, contemporary audiences have
been increasingly literate multimodally and have become used to deci-
phering allusions across media. When she devised and recorded ‘Material
Girl’ in 1985, Madonna knew that her viewers would read it as a pastiche
of Marilyn Monroe’s ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’, a key number
in the iconic film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes produced 30 years earlier.
Madonna, who had come to fame only a couple of years earlier and was
regularly compared to Marilyn Monroe, also used the song to refer to
these comments, establishing differences between her and the film star,
seen, unlike her, as a victim of the system that brought her success.
‘Material Girl’ propelled the idea of manipulative narrative in pop videos
in ways that had not been done before, especially by female artists. It led
the way to new forms of defiance and provocation, shocking all, from
church goers to feminists. While the visuals and semantic themes ensure
references to memory, the music expresses a steady toughness and inter-
connected energy which can be read in many ways, from rebellious to
erotic. It is perhaps through, rather than in spite of, the simplistic and
formulaic musical structure of the song, that Madonna allows the differ-
ence to be constructed. As often in pop music, the music itself tends to
be neglected by critics. When mentioned, Madonna’s music is often
judged as trivial, particularly in the case of ‘Material Girl’, considered
visually and thematically provocative but musically unimaginative. I
would argue that the song set a deliberately simple framework for inter-
pretations that could bring the listeners beyond the visual parody.
Even when verbal language is foreign to audiences, then, non-semantic
textual forms allow meaningful transfer. Musical experiences, even those
relating to vocal music, are never entirely verbal. As the use of convergence
in material tools has spread, the expectation to understand and engage
with several types of texts simultaneously has also grown, particularly in
music video and live performance. Young audiences expect musical expe-
riences to include multimodal content and engage through this multimo-
326 L. Desblache
dality physically, with shared movement and dance, as the growth of live
music festivals since the beginning of the twenty first century attests. In
these pop creations, music is often the least referential element, opening
the door to interpretations for listeners and viewers and to a spectrum of
imaginings. ‘Material Girl’ also inspired a new trend of electronic remixes
that departs from the traditional cover song principle controlled by sing-
ers, in that DJs or electronic music composers mediate the song and shape
it into a style or for a particular context. In today’s era of streamed music,
this trend is accentuated as the music industry aims to adapt successful
tracks to different playlists for commercial purposes. The 2017 song
‘Despacito’, for instance, was remixed for salsa, pop, urban, reggaeton and
more, as well as well as in multiple remixes as soon as it came out. In the
sophisticated sphere of twenty first century music, the imagination of the
audience is not necessarily manipulated by ‘the author’ that we expect.
8.4 Music, Marginality and the Senses

In the twenty first century, when so much information is quantified, so
many encounters reduced to data exchanges, identities reduced to num-
bers or to specific roles, there are relatively few areas in which human
beings can step into the experience of being other, an essential experience
for empathic, artistic and intellectual development. In media, inter and
intralinguistic translations largely happen from a dominant language into
a lesser-used language. Typically, American feature films are translated all
over the world. Since the beginning of the twenty first century, media
accessibility provision has also been widely available on mainstream televi-
sion, particularly in Europe. The situation is similar to what takes place in
interlingual translation: the usual pathway is from major to minor. Media
companies hence translate programmes for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
and for the Blind and the Visually Impaired, but very few events created
or enacted by the latter are offered for the hearing and the sighted. Voices
that are considered to be minor have gained the right to see and hear, but
not to be seen or heard. To use a musical metaphor, which is also a reality
since a larger proportion of musical pieces are in the major mode, com-
mercial translation largely moves from major to minor. We established in
the previous section that translation, beyond its linguistic and cultural
role, acts as agent of social and cultural change. This major to minor
movement discussed in relation to media products echoes the social trend
of exclusion that denies a voice to the vulnerable or those on the periphery
of the main sphere. Yet translation can also build trends, and encouraging
movement from minor to major is a way to do so. These movements hap-
pen increasingly, particularly in the musical sphere. One could argue that
contemporary popular music, in spite of its global nature, is largely part of
a minor into major process of transfer and exchange, with African rhythms
at the root of most songs and styles. Moreover, music is not only present,
but indispensable to most forms of mainstream entertainment and in this,
contributes to how they evolve and are created. While the visual language
is the predominant language today in communication, it is often the
sound and/or music that make(s) it meaningful. Music has a relatively
minor presence in verbal language too, hence its marginal status in aca-
demia for instance. The verbal narration of a film will be incomplete of
course, but aspects of its story, as well as visual content will be mediated
through words with reasonable accuracy. This will not be the case with
music which can only be ‘translated’ by words with extreme approxima-
tion and with no relation to a traditional narrative. The composer Felix
Mendelssohn wrote, in response to a query about the meaning of his Songs
Without Words, that unlike the received idea, music was too precise, rather
than too vague to be translated (Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, 1863, p. 299).
While verbal languages can be translated, musical idioms cannot: a piece
in atonal language cannot be transferred into an equivalent one in tonal
language. Yet ideas can and are translated across the arts, and music thrives
on doing so. This section examines two essential aspects of interactions in
music today: how music translates other art forms and how it mediates
different sensorial languages through a range of senses.
8.4.1 Music Across the Arts
I will start with the former point. It is clear from its presence everywhere
today that music, in all its styles and on all its platforms, cannot be con-
sidered without reference to visuals and verbal forms of expressions. The
328 L. Desblache
multiplicity of communicative modes and their constantly shifting bal-

ance and increasing intersection between the verbal, visual, mathematical
and musical, exponential since the end of the twentieth century, have led
to the development of various theories of intermediality. Yet as Mats
Arvidson (2012) points out, the study of interarts is largely dominated by
literary and media studies; besides, it is generally examined from the dis-
ciplinary perspective of each scholar who explores it, which leads to an
imbalance in the ways in which the different art forms are considered. To
counter this issue, some have chosen to not specify specific art form and
propose intermediality as a bridge of commonalities across the different
artistic art forms or media (Elleström, 2010). Surprisingly though, over-
all, neither translation nor adaptation is mentioned in these investiga-
tions, unless they concern music as the predominant form, in the context
of opera, for instance. When translation principles are mentioned, it is
within the premise that intermediality would benefit translation and
adaptation studies (Elleström, 2017). While this may be true, I argue that
considering exchanges and transfers between the arts would primarily
benefit from the ‘soft’ bridges (Serres, 2008) of translation.
Attempts to consider music as a language in the context of and in inter-
action with other languages have largely failed. Music semiotics which
examines the relationship between music understood as language and
other languages, primarily verbal, was not successful in proposing models
considering their transfers and transformations from an interdisciplinary
perspective. Philip Tagg (2012, pp. 145–146) has discussed how, rather
than leading to considering music beyond its own sphere, within the
socio-cultural fields that produced or performed it, musical semiotic has
tended to emphasise music’s internal syntax and structures in ways that
preserved absolute views of music as discrete and impenetrable. Music’s
increasingly cosmopolitan features, its major role as a global player and
changes in linguistics, which no longer analysed different aspects of deno-
tative and connotative language in isolation opened up the static model
of music semiology. More important still, artists’ desires to communicate
across the arts, became stronger. Interrelations between the arts were re-
imagined and redefined. Peter Dayan’s (2011b) premises of an interart
aesthetics, discussed in Part II (Sect. 4.1), carefully considers the condi-
tions under which poets can invite their readers to see music, or painters
can equate their work to a song. Peter Dayan’s aesthetics are elegant and
convincing. However, it is discussed in the context of the early twentieth

century in Paris where and when notions of universality were taken for
granted, and formalist views of music were the norm. A century later,
‘universal’ and ‘timeless’ notions have been largely redefined as expressing
the views of dominant cultures. Although the need for artistic expression
seems truly universal in all human societies, and although human biology
defines some features of perception that are common to all, music, among
other arts, is intended, composed, performed and interpreted by audi-
ences very differently in different cultures. Music that is meaningful to a
culture is not necessarily meaningful to another. The example of SLĀV
considered in the previous chapter illustrated this potently.
Yet what is very relevant in Peter Dayan’s analysis, and largely over-
looked, is the notion of ‘incalculability’. As mentioned at the beginning
of this section, the quantification of communication, from recording
health and wealth information to face visualisation, the reduction of
beings to ‘data subjects’, and things and ideas to ‘data objects’, hinder
human capacity for empathy. Music, of course, is not impervious to the
demands or influence of big data. Individual devices and streaming ser-
vices collect people’s musical habits, tag their reactions and map trends
and behaviours, primarily for scientific and commercial purposes, per-
haps more easily than with any other human activities (Greenberg &
Rentfrow, 2017). However, artistic practices are about imagining and
being curious of other beings, things and environments. As Peter Dayan
might say, they are based on ‘incalculable’ aspects of communication and
value transformative elements of the living.
Those for whom music is a first language frequently and naturally want
to express in music what has been evoked with words or images. This is
not specific to the twenty first century. Jakobson’s (1951) seminal defini-
tion of intersemiotic translation already included transfer between media
that we know today, for the most part. Musicals and operas have long
shown how successful the translation and the intersection of different art
forms into and with music could be and how it relies on their incalculable
dimension. Benjamin Britten and Myfanwy Piper’s interpretation of
Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw is thus successful because of Britten’s
talent of course, but, in the first instance, because James’s writing pos-
sessed this ‘incalculable’ quality. Based on genre hybridity—it drifts
between detective novella, ghost and horror story, and autobiographical
330 L. Desblache
tale—and narrative ambiguity—the reader will never be sure of whether

the governess imagined the story or related facts for instance—, the
libretto, closely adapted from the original, gives music the freedom it
requires to be central to the story while libretto and production support
it, as I have discussed elsewhere (Desblache, 2008).
Rather than focusing on music as a discrete form of expression, twenty
first century musicians, used to multimodal texts, have embraced the
notion of movement, inseparable from music, to explore creativity in a
socio-cultural context. New disciplines have emerged, such as music archae-
ology, which attempts to reconstruct music from the past from objects and
sites, and aural architecture, which intends to create the best conditions for
listening, and viewing, for specific social purposes. Musical language no
longer needs to be noted down in the traditional score form and composers
do not have to put technical virtuosity at the forefront of their priorities.
Using syntax borrowed from other art forms, mediating other languages, is
part of an exciting creative process. A good example of invention created in
this context is Walter Thompson’s Soundpainting, which uses sign language
for creating music in real time and in semi-improvised mode. In a sphere
which has been defined and judged so strongly by technical abilities,
Soundpainting allows flexibility with a musical syntax that is more interac-
tive than the traditional one and makes room for spontaneous expression.
Thompson’s musical language, which is also based on interactions across
the arts, broadens perspectives for expression and perception. Performers,
who can be singers and instrumentalists, respond to a composer-conductor
with gestures and sounds through an interpretative process which Helen
Julia Minors has examined in detail (Julia Minors, 2012, 2013). It allows
parallels and transformations to be made through music but across differ-
ent art forms and within fresh structures. It also warrants transfers across
senses, which is the topic of the next section.
8.4.2 Music Across the Senses
Musicians are not only curious to use sound plurally, but in convergent
ways, taking advantage of the synchronising capacity of music to unite
people. This move towards convergence between old/new and creators/
audiences has been famously examined by Jenkins (2006/2008) in media

and technology. In artistic spheres, it is established that processes and
products are co-created by DJs, technical teams, producers, artists and
audiences in convergence rather than isolation. In the last few decades,
musical convergence has happened compositionally, as popular and clas-
sical idioms as well as different cultural styles have collided, merged and
evolved with each other, as was discussed in Part II. It is happening sen-
sorially as music is performed and perceived in non-musical contexts,
particularly visual ones. This process of convergence has led to more
inclusivity: a growing awareness of audiences with special abilities and
disabilities has led to the development of media accessibility for instance.
It has, however, moved largely unilaterally, giving access for programmes
to people with sensorial impairment but rarely making the perspective of
the impaired people available in mainstream programmes, as mentioned
at the beginning of this chapter. Music, as an art form, has outstanding
abilities to give voices to minorities, through a process that could be
called, after Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1980, p. 367), ‘becoming
music’, which allows the creative transformation of the familiar. It also
can be an art of convergence, with an exceptional capacity for variation
and fusion. This capacity for convergence while making the voice of the
minority heard is unique.
I will illustrate this, taking two sets of examples. The first relates to
performing music and how using senses which are unexpected not only
does not impair the quality of the musical output but is key to dynamic,
ever-changing attitudes to music that promote inclusivity and creativity.
The second discusses music and synaethesia, considering the experience
of musicians who are synaesthetes and viewing music as inherently syn-
aesthetic and as a model for creativity and translation.
I shall start with the story of how derailing expectations can bring forth
transformative ideas of music. In the 1980s, a most remarkable orchestra
was formed in Cairo: the Al-Nour Wal Amal orchestra. Formed of blind
women, it focuses on the Western classical repertoire, which makes
extreme demands on blind and partially sighted-musicians since its scores
have to be read. Now established, the orchestra has two strands. It com-
prises a group of trainee musicians, and one of seasoned performers which
tours all over the world. So far, this could be taken as an example of
332 L. Desblache
counter-convergence in fact: the musicians are all from a country, Egypt,

where women are still professionally at a disadvantage from men, and
where Western classical music has patchy traditions; they all suffer from
the same impairment; and their repertoire is established and relatively
narrow (each performer knows her part for about 45 pieces).
Yet music, in this context, is a perfect tool of deterritorialisation of
conventions, to use Deleuze and Guattari’s terminology once more, as it
deconstructs expectations, and in particular, expectations about senso-
rial ability, building on convergences. For Deleuze and Guattari, the
process of de- and reterritorialization of music is voiced in relation to
composition, to the ways in which composers transfer, displace and
transform existing conventions to bring forth creativity and ‘become’, so
that they do not just imitate. But this ‘becoming’ also happens at the
level of the performers’ perceived abilities, bringing social and artistic
changes in its wake. Elements relating to gender and culture crucially
add to the weight of these expectations of course. Performing a well-
known repertoire that normally requires sight to read printed scores, in
the sphere of the competitive and regulated classical music world is a
powerful political statement in itself. It is strengthened when the music
is performed by an exclusively female orchestra, still unheard of in the
West, and interpreted by non-Western players. These women meet the
professional demands required for such repertoire, and show that they
can perform to the highest standards with physical and cognitive skills
that are different from those usually drawn on: they learn their parts in
Braille and memorise them, a feat that would unsettle most sighted
musicians; they are synchronised by ear rather than kinetically, as their
conductor prepares them with verbal interaction and indicates tempi
with sound. As far as their audiences are concerned, nothing needs
explaining, everything happens in performance. Yet these players do
more to question the discrimination they suffer from and to bring a
message to both blind and sighted communities that any music making
is possible than any verbal message could. They open up music to cre-
ative ways of listening using what Clive Scott (2011) identifies as the
centrifugal power of translation which propels readers and audiences
away from familiar expectations so that they can think texts and, in this
case, music differently.
For music to happen, the determination to play and the appropriate

cognitive skills and senses just need to be used. Their success has inspired
many ventures brought to life in a similar spirit. Here are a few examples
and the list is non exhaustive: an all blind multi-ethnic chamber orchestra
active since 2010, The Inner Vision Orchestra, led by Baluji Shrivastav,
one of the most renowned sitar players; the Thai Blind Orchestra, whose
members gave their first performance in 2015; a blind conductor, Jean-
Louis Houry leading sighted musicians and choristers in a concert in
France in 2016; and beyond issues of sensorial marginality, the first all-
female Afghan orchestra performing for the first time abroad in front of
world leaders at the 2017 annual World Economic Forum in Davos to
showcase a session on feminism. The texts are of course transformed with
each performance and interpretation, but so are the performers and their
audiences.
Confronting and changing discriminatory attitudes is even more chal-
lenging for deaf musicians. The high-profile case of Evelyn Glennie was
discussed in Part II (Sect. 5.1.2). Even more encouraging perhaps is the
emergence of small ventures intended to promote popular music for the
Deaf. In the UK for instance, the project Musical Vibrations aims to
research how music can be perceived through vibrations; the association
Deaf Rave organises music events intended to optimise deaf people’s
musical experiences, offers music making and production classes for the
deaf, and promotes deaf musicians such as McGeezer or Signkid on the
musical scene.
Intersensorial perception can be encouraged and acquired, but can also
be innate as is the case for synaesthesia. Until recently, synaesthesia, a
condition in which the senses, normally processed independently, are
interlinked, and which results in the merging of two or more senses, such
as tasting sounds or hearing colours, was perceived as an abnormality of
relatively little interest to science. By contrast, in the nineteenth century,
such interest in correspondences between the senses grew exponentially.
How creative works involving intersensorial processes and content were
composed and how they were accounted for in reviews and other verbal
texts were both well documented. This happened to such an extent that
nineteenth century art, and particularly poetry and music, could now be
described as synaesthetic, as Simon Shaw-Miller (2010, pp. xx–xxiv)
334 L. Desblache
noted. Alexander Scriabin, a synaesthete, was the first composer to base

his art on a theory of universal correspondences. Jean Sibelius (see for
instance his correspondence in Ross Bullock, 2011, and his website) and
Olivier Messiaen (1994, 2005, vol. 7, chap. 3) followed him in discussing
the vital relationship of their music to colours. Messiaen’s account of his
early experience of synaesthesia and how it affected him personally and as
a musician, in particular, gives unique insights into this phenomenon.
In the twenty first century, synaesthesia has regained visibility, thanks
to popular music performers, from Lady Gaga to Pharrell Williams, who
have emphasised their condition in interviews. More interestingly, equiv-
alences between sensorial modes have become a favourite theme in popu-
lar music, from Williams’ (2008) Seeing Sounds to Lorde’s colour-coded
album Melodrama. Materialising the two sensory mode cross-equivalences
is facilitated by today’s technologies. Some musicians such as Dev Hynes
even explicitly describe their compositional methods as determined by
their synaesthetic condition (Hynes, 2014). While in the hyped realm of
pop music, this could be interpreted as a marketing ploy in some cases, it
also reveals how to make sense of the world in finding equivalences. This
is visible both in attitudes to the arts and science.
While few consider music within the exclusive realm of sound and
hearing today, particularly in popular music, scientific attitudes have
changed. The borders between the five traditional senses are not under-
stood to be as tight as once thought, and twenty first century scientists are
keen to study their intersections, the bridges that they offer in different
but also equivalent readings of and interactions with the world. Aristotle’s
belief in a sixth sense, sensus communis, which coordinated other senses is
in fact in fashion again. For many scientists today, synaesthesia opens a
door to understanding how meaning can be mediated across different
senses and how they relate to cognitive abilities. What is considered to be
a ‘sense’ is also constantly reassessed as new discoveries are made.
Infrasonic communication, for instance, was only discovered in some
animals in the late twentieth century.
Music can be created with a focus on one sense: the example of infra-
sound, not heard but perceived by human beings and how it is used in
film was discussed in the analysis of Dunkirk’s soundtrack and will be
considered in the next chapter in relation to the natural world. But music’s
capacity to be meaningful across the senses is the most impressive. Some

scientists advance that a latent level of synaethesia is present in most peo-
ple, which they keep from babyhood perhaps and which is particularly
observable in their perception of and interaction with music. Researchers
suggest that musical meaning might be constructed through a synaes-
thetic process, by which music is meaningfully translated through sensory
associations activated by the brain (Bragança, Fonseca, & Caramelli,
2015). One of the arguments for this hypothesis is the capacity to talk
about music ekphrastically and primarily, though not exclusively, through
visual metaphors: music is described as light, bright, sweet, ponderous,
colourful…; its genres include heavy metal, blues, hip-hop and more.
Synaesthetic experiences vary in different individuals, but music can
give it meaning beyond those differences. Music is often portrayed as a
medium which can provide common understanding. This is why it
appears so frequently as a language of translation that allows communica-
tion when all understanding fails. Always visionary, science fiction writ-
ers, from Arthur C. Clarke’s Songs of Distant Earth to Steven Spielberg’s
classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, most commonly evoke music as
a tool of communication between species unable to interconnect. In
Sheri Tepper’s (1987/1989) The Enigma Score for instance, the silence
between giant crystal structures, The Presences, and humans is broken
through music, and decoded by a translator. Sheri Tepper does not forget
that a translator is always needed in the end, in this case, in order to make
sense of journeys across the senses. As many thinkers and translation
scholars have noted, from Tommaso Marinetti (1912/2006) to Clive
Scott (2011, p. 40) and Ben Van Wyke (2014, pp. 245–246), to under-
take these journeys, a translator is best equipped if he or she acts as a
conductor, bringing out the colours and differences of the orchestra in a
truly synaesthetic translation.
Notes
1. Three very lucid texts discuss these issues for the reader keen to explore
them further. First, Patrick G. Hunter and E. Glenn Schellenberg (2010,
pp. 129–146) offer a review of existing research on the links between
336 L. Desblache
music and emotion. Second, Martha Nussbaum’s chapter entitled ‘Music

and emotion’ (2001, pp. 249–296) focuses on the emotions of the lis-
tener, the intention of the composer to express emotion and capacity of
music to bring forth emotional connections. Third, the chapter, ‘Emotion
in culture and history’ (Cook & Dibben, 2011, pp. 45–69) gives a com-
prehensive overview of musicological approaches to emotion both histori-
cally and methodologically. It succeeds in doing so succinctly and clearly
within a book which is one of the main interdisciplinary references on the
topic (Juslin & Sloboda, 2011).
2. For this reason, I prefer the term ‘performativity’ to the equally controver-
sial term of ‘performability’, used by drama translation scholars such as
Bassnett and Espasa (see in particular Espasa, 2000). It also seems to me
that the suffix -ability points to the possibility of performance while the
suffix -ativity points to its certainty. I am grateful to Marta Mateo for
alerting me to this definitional issue.
3. Until the nineteenth century, operas were structured as a succession of
distinct pieces such as arias or vocal ensembles which were interspaced
with recitative or spoken dialogue. For this reason, they were named
‘number operas’. Later operas were composed in a more continuous way
with the aim of giving unity to the work.
4. A vocalise refers to a musical passage sung on a vowel only.
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9
Music and the Natural World
Music seems to translate nothing as easily as the non-human world,1

from planets to animals and landscapes to seascapes. For most musicians,
since music is a non-verbal form of communication, it necessarily links
humans from and to the non human. Tagg (1982) sees music as an area
that allows reconnections between humans and the rest of their environ-
ments through connotations with human moods, such as joy or sadness.
This has happened as far back as evidence can be provided, each culture
filtering the natural world in specific ways. Scientists today tend to belong
to the (post) Darwinian tradition which asserts that music preceded lan-
guage in humans: puzzled by the fact that it did not seem to play an
adaptive role in human development (Pinker, 1997), anthropologists,
palaeontologists, evolutionary historians and psychologists have recently
suggested that music might have been the main tool of communication
among humanoid primates, before articulated language became domi-
nant. Steven Mithen (2005) thus argues that Neanderthals used music to
communicate and that musical interactions prioritised social bonds in
communities much more powerfully than verbal language, which became
the main instrument of communication in humans and favoured intel-

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54965-5_9
344 L. Desblache
lectual development. This social function would explain why music still
plays an important role in human societies.
Unlike the visual arts, for which substantial evidence dating back
40,000 years can be found in caves and interpreted, little remains of pre-
historic musical life. Some flutes, contemporary of the Neanderthals,
were found, although specialists think that the earliest music was princi-
pally vocal and percussive, from comprehensive studies of modern
hunter-gatherer communities and pictorial evidence on the walls of caves
(Blades, 2005; Morley, 2013). Unlike flutes, generally made of bone,
early percussive instruments were primarily made of skin and wood, and
have not survived. Bodies were used to clap and stamp rhythms, with or
without the use of wood and stone. Scientists can only hypothesise as to
the functions music may have played in pre-human and early human
lives and those of their descendants. They agree that prehistorical beings
were musical and that the sounds of their natural environment were the
building blocks of their music. David Hendy (2013) has summarised and
discussed research showing that the development of a musical sound-
scape was used both as pre-verbal utterances between similar species and
as a way of interacting with the environment, mimicking and improvis-
ing on the sounds of the natural world.
While information is necessarily patchy, this evidence reminds us that
animals were crucial in making us human biologically and culturally.
Tracing back music to prehistoric times also makes it possible to understand
how musical mediations of the natural world have contributed to shaping
human comprehension and perception of it, not only aesthetically but also
socially. Much music has been derived from variations on sounds produced
by non-human animals, which acquire meaning in a specific cultural con-
text. As human beings’ relationships with their environment became more
destructive in the twentieth century, musical evocations of what was per-
ceived as increasingly fragile and threatened have been complex and held
paradoxical links with the notion of an ‘authentic’ nature. The choice of
media and the purpose of each musical piece shape this notion of authentic-
ity to a large degree. Below are two examples showing how the very notion
of music has been stretched in this cultural context: the first considers
recorded natural sounds dis/replaced by music; the second discusses com-
positions intended to accompany wildlife documentaries.
9 Music and the Natural World 345
Composers or ethnomusicologists who focus on the voice of the natu-

ral world tend to ‘over-authenticise’. For instance, the American ethno-
musicologist Steven Feld has worked most of his life with the Papua New
Guinea Kaluli tribe. He considers the soundscapes of that area as ‘endan-
gered music’ for two main reasons: first, the decline in wildlife may lead
to the extinction of sounds that can enhance music making; second, this
decline is accompanied by a decline in the local music which incorporates
such sounds. For example, in Europe, the songs of nightingales and sky-
larks are increasingly rare. They used to be quoted in popular and classical
music until the mid-twentieth century but are no longer referred to in
contemporary musical compositions, other than as a voice from the past.
Moreover, human sounds such as chainsaws and radios, typically resonate
through even the wildest of spaces such as rainforests and have done for
decades. Yet these human-made sounds are generally filtered out of
recordings and, in the case of Feld’s work, have been removed. Do these
recordings, with albums such as Voices of the Rainforest (1991), provide
idealised portraits of a bygone age that fail to muster awareness of the real
destruction of soundscapes and landscapes? Feld has long been aware of
issues of cultural politics but felt that the ecological fight must take part
outside the music. The profits of the album sales went to the Kaluli peo-
ple, and Feld and his research team encouraged them to strengthen their
musical traditions, which incorporated the natural sounds surrounding
them. Yet the ‘authentic’ sounds of the forests did not reflect the reality of
life in their environment and increasingly became museum pieces that no
longer accompanied daily life. As David Ingram (2010) has highlighted,
the multiple ways in which music fosters environmental care can backfire.
By contrast, in filmed wildlife documentaries, the search for authentic-
ity has become increasingly visual, with a soundtrack added in post-
production, and primarily made of Foley effects, which recreate natural
sounds, pre-recorded animal sounds, or music, which evokes moods,
anticipates dramatic moments or rhythmically fits the movements of the
filmed creatures or natural phenomena. Music, so naturally linked to
corporal movements, is, in wildlife programmes, essentially disconnected
or only superficially connected to them during a brief moment of action.
In both cases, the sounds of animals or phenomena themselves are lost or
only briefly available, through pre-recorded sound more commonly than
346 L. Desblache
on-site recordings, due to the challenge of obtaining sound—unlike cam-

era lenses, microphones cannot zoom in for close recording—and syn-
chronising sound/sight recordings. As a result, scores are intended to
situate the action—using local music or instruments—, and guiding the
viewer emotionally. Documentaries about birds have been the exception,
since revealing their songs was always prioritised, but animal sounds,
expensive to obtain, were, and still are, neglected overall.
While the budget for mainstream documentary music has increased in
the twenty first century, the scores of the music stars of documentaries
such as George Fenton or Hans Zimmer essentially evoke human narra-
tives, while non-human creatures get lost in translation (Desblache,
Forthcoming). This is the case in spite of the fact that more recordings of
animals or environmental sounds are included in scores. In the Heart of
the Sea (2015) a film based on the sinking in 1820 of the Essex whaling
ship which inspired the story of Moby Dick, the composer Roque Baños
López uses percussions such as sails, harpoons and other implements
from the ship, and integrates whale clicks and songs into his score. The
score is thus pieced together with ‘authentic’ natural sounds, but it is
impossible for the average listener to identify them. The music, com-
posed for and played by a 100 musician-orchestra sounds epic, very full
most of the time, and by the admission of the film maker himself (Laufer
Krebs, 2015), is focused on the human story of greed fuelled by the
exploitation of nature, rather than on the fate of the whale or the envi-
ronment. The story telling is supported by visuals intended for 3D large
screens that bring viewers to the heart of the tragic events. In spite of its
engaging score, this film, like most mainstream features, relies on visual
media to relate its story. And those visuals reflect human perspectives of
the world most powerfully: the NASA pictures of the earth as blue mar-
ble, taken by the crew of the final Apollo mission in 1972, struck imagi-
nations more directly than the title of Rachel Carson’s (1962/2000)
account of the destruction of the planet through human intervention,
Silent spring, and the Google Earth programmes that allows billions to
explore the globe remain mute.
This is why many musicians see their role as interpreters of earthly
sounds. This engagement is more urgent today perhaps, but they have
always aimed to translate ‘raw’ sounds from the landscapes and elements
that surround them. They made instruments to capture these sounds and
played them directly to human ears. Eolian harps, for instance, have
existed since antiquity and their sounds are still considered to be music.
Although the instruments themselves are human built, there is no human
composition or playing in the process. The acceleration and diversifica-
tion of technologies, from the 1930s onwards, offered more opportuni-
ties to capture environmental sounds. The question of what was music
and what was nature, as well as what the role that technologies could play
in mediating one into the other loomed large in a context where creative
products were increasingly considered as ‘open works’ in the Umberto
Eco (1979/1989) sense of works defined by listeners, as well as by shifting
norms and forms.
As the twentieth century drew to a close, audiences and music makers
broke the strict mould of Western music through technologies that made
the listening to and the hearing of elements of the earth possible. ‘Natural
radio’ was heard, for instance, as the waves of lightning and other envi-
ronmental phenomena produced in very low frequency were transducted
through receivers. It inspired new generations of composers who were
aiming to connect experimental music and earth sounds (Kahn, 2013).
Awareness of the complexity and beauty of non-human animal sounds
beyond bird songs was also made possible through technologies. The dis-
covery of whale music in the 1990s stunned the world, for instance, and
also had a direct impact on many composers. While it was recouped by
the music industry as a lucrative fad and was adopted as an accessory of
New Age thinking, it nevertheless changed the ways in which humans
considered and treated whales. In 1986, the International Whaling
Committee banned killing whales for profit. Three countries—Iceland,
Japan and Norway—still refuse to end whaling operations, arguing that
eating whales is part of their way of life. However, other countries respect
the ban. While the knowledge that modern weapons can kill whale at a
rate that endangers their survival has alerted the world to their possible
extinction, awareness of whale songs has also contributed to humans
valuing these giant mammals as intelligent, sensitive creatures, as David
Rothenberg contends (2008, p. 240).
In spite of the open doors offered by technologies, the relationship
between technology and media in general, and an aesthetic and empathic
348 L. Desblache
musical evocation of the natural world, is fraught with difficulties. As

Jussi Parrika (2015) has potently argued, the development of technology
and media has been driven by corporate and violent forces that have led
and still lead to toxic and exploitative environments.
Keeping the focus on how music translates the natural world, I would
identify four ways in which music and sounds from the natural world
interrelate today, and which can also be combined with each other:
• Recording voices from the natural world and producing them as

music. This includes whale music, bird song anthologies, soundscapes
and sound installations recorded in specific habitats. Soundscape and
sound art ecologists such as Bernie Krause and Chris Watson have led
the way in producing recordings with joint ecological and aes-
thetic purposes.
• Transcribing and interpreting natural sounds as human musical lan-
guage: this is the case for Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux (1959/1964),
in which 13 pieces are each associated with a region from France.
Although each piece focuses primarily on a specific bird typical of that
region, such as the tawny owl or the black-eared wheatear, it includes
other sound evocations, of other birds, local landscape, habitat, and
atmospheres at particular times of day.
• Incorporating sounds from the natural world into electronic or non-
electronic music composed by humans. This happened as soon as
wildlife recordings were of good enough quality to isolate specific
sounds or songs; the first known example is the symphonic tone poem
of Ottorino Respighi (1924), The Pines of Rome, which depicts pine
trees in different parts of Rome at different moments in the day, and
which includes recorded nightingale songs in the third movement. The
most acclaimed piece of this style is probably Cantus Articus (1972), by
Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara, a concerto for birds and
orchestra: the first movement interweaves marsh birds such as gadwalls
or sedge warblers from northern Finland in springtime with the melo-
dies of flutes and woodwinds; the second begins and ends on varia-
tions of the song of shore larks, electronically manipulated; the final
movement showcases the sounds of whooper swans against the full
orchestra, fading in the end on a gentle instrumental background. This

pioneering piece has influenced many composers in the second decade
of the twenty first century: The Great Animal Orchestra: Symphony for
Orchestra and Wild Soundscapes, a collaboration between Richard
Blackford and Bernie Krause (2014), is one example of its legacy.
• Borrowing creative elements from the natural world that resonate in
human beings, such as cycles and activities, in order to structure com-
positions and inspire them beyond the spheres of human lives: for
example, a sense of holistic belonging, birth, growth, collaboration,
competition and extinction. The idea that art imitates nature goes
back to Aristotle’s Physics and is found in many works of Antiquity and
the Middle Ages from Marcus Aurelius’s Mediations to Thomas
Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae. It is at the core of modern European aes-
thetics. Late twentieth century composers, John Cage in particular,
borrows this idea in translation through the Indian philosopher
Ananda Coomaraswamy (1934), displacing the concept of imitation
of nature, and giving it a fresh outlook which had a large aesthetic
influence on late twentieth century composers. François-Bernard
Mâche (1972), for instance, considers music as a ‘biological function’
that needs to be anchored in models from the natural world. These
models can allow humans to both appropriate nature and be part of it.
Unlike Messiaen, who primarily aims to transcribe bird songs for
human ears in his bird centred pieces, Mâche is more interested in
incorporating different syntaxes and superimposing them, so that
human, animal or broader natural phenomena, such as sounds from
the ocean waves, can interact and enter into dialogue. In classical
music, this strategy was key to renewing a musical language that was
increasingly perceived as thin in originality or conceived too abstractly.
The structure of Eridan (1986) for string quartet is thus largely based
on borrowing and expanding the syntaxes of different bird songs. This
broader notion of appropriation led the French composer to develop
the concept of zoomusicology (1983/1992; 2001), which stretches
music’s functions beyond animal representation, and opened the doors
to musical interspecies and environmental exchanges in the twenty
first century.
350 L. Desblache
These four strategies are broadly used for three main purposes in music:
• First, to evoke certain surroundings or emotional states, through allu-

sions to non-human sounds. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending
(1914/1925) for instance, does not attempt in any way to translate the
song of the lark, but transforms the violinist into a ‘human’ bird who
expresses communion with nature.
• Second, to render the foreignness and urgency of natural world sounds
meaningful to human ears.
• Third, to elaborate aesthetic, ethical, spiritual or philosophical dia-
logues between species, human beings and their terrestrial or cosmic
environments. Among those three aspects, the last two are most promi-
nent in the twenty first century, in an era which, as Terry Gifford (1999,
pp. 146–174) argued in relation to literature, has seen the borders
between nature and culture merge and human awareness of responsibil-
ity grow, leaving idealism or nostalgia of a past natural world behind.
While it is inappropriate to generalise, as the twentieth century drew

to an end, musicians tended to desert the pastoral language of composers
such as Vaughan Williams’ and focused more visibly on the last two pur-
poses, which I’ll explore in the sections below. I shall examine why trans-
lating the sound of animals is important to many composers today, and
how some musicians prioritise interspecies dialogues through music. As
has been discussed above, music concerned with the natural world goes
beyond the exploration of the animal world, but focusing on the latter
will allow more concrete and discrete examples of musical engagement
beyond the human. These examples are also more relevant to twenty first
century human attempts to engage with the non human.
9.1 M
usic as Mediating Agent of the Non
Human
9.1.1 Music and Animal Sounds
In many respects, musicians have been victims of the same accusation as

translators, at least musicians whose works have been openly inspired
from the natural world. They are suspected of sinning by imitation. And
imitation there is. But imitation does not imply lack of imagination.
Imitating a wolf also means imagining it, and not necessarily through the
reproduction of its howl, as Prokofiev (1936) famously showed with Peter
and the Wolf. It also emphasises the closeness and inseparability of wolf
and human. Rather than imitate, it therefore mediates the voice of a spe-
cies for another. Prokofiev, in fact, used a theme to characterise the wolf
that is also associated with humans, a noble, dignified theme played by
the French horns, instruments which immediately evoke hunting. In
human imaginations, the wolf cannot be disconnected from the humans
who hunt him and who brought him to near extinction in Western
Europe by the 1930s. The composer chooses to mediate the animal
anthropocentrically, evoking what s/he means for humans. Animal sounds
are often used more literally, though, and also play a strong role in musi-
cal imagination as such. The fascination of young children for such
sounds, even in today’s urban environments, is a testimony of their imme-
diate appeal and their educational value, as animal cries both introduce
children to a diverse soundscape and provide excellent imitative platforms
on the way to the acquisition of articulate language (Melson, 2003).
Animal sounds are imitated by humans to communicate with, or, more
frequently, to just attract animals without any musical intent. This mostly
devious appropriation of a ‘foreign’ language is intended to control beings,
most frequently with the aim of killing or capturing them, and it has been
key to catching animals for consumption and later, domesticating them,
from around 32,000 years ago (Mourer-Chauviré, 1979). The use of
decoy calls by hunters to attract birds of a particular species dates back
centuries if not millennia, and some of the first instruments found repro-
duced animal cries (Clodoré-Tissot, Le Gonidec, Ramseyer, & Anderes,
2009). Bird song imitation has been used musically in Western music
since the Middle Ages, as the examples below illustrate, and still is by
some contemporary composers (Francesco Filidei for instance). A primar-
ily descriptive music may have been sought by composers until the mid-
twentieth century, from the anonymous thirteenth century round in
Middle English ‘Sumer Is Icumen In’ featuring the cuckoo—one of the
oldest six part polyphonic pieces preserved—to Claude Janequin (Le chant
des oiseaux) or Béla Bartók (‘The Diary of a Fly’). Yet the very distance
352 L. Desblache
c reated between the memory of the animal sound itself and its representa-
tion has long generated humour, irony or satire. As far as representation of
animals is concerned, there seems to be a tendency to think that both
anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism are accentuated in the past,
and that present evocations are less human- centred. Louis-Claude
Daquin’s ‘Cuckoo’ (1735) for keyboard thus seems naïvely pastoral to
twenty first century ears. Whether it is more anthropocentric and anthro-
pomorphic than Richard Ayres’s chamber opera The Cricket Recovers
(2005), which follows the journey of self-discovery of a cricket in a forest,
is a matter of opinion. Music, in any case, can no more imitate sounds
than translation of any kind can imitate an original. No one could mistake
Daquin’s cuckoo music for the sound of a real one. Claude Debussy
thought, however, that over-describing sounds in attempts to imitate
them made music derivative. He points out that the generation preceding
his represented nature in a dated way and reflected ‘an era when [it] could
only be seen through books’ (Debussy, 1921, p. 84. My translation).
The French composer, in whose work the natural world is quasi ubiq-
uitous, stresses that representations of nature can only be uninspiring if
they remain factual or anecdotal. If they are too imitative, they will lead
to mechanical replicas that exclude imaginative interpretation. This
reveals a different perspective from twenty first century attitudes to art
and science, where collaborations are often based on collected data: Chris
Watson, for instance, a natural sound recordist who also creates musical
installations such as Whispering in the Leaves (2013), inspired by rainfor-
est soundscapes, bases such installations on his recording archives, a pro-
cedure Debussy, who advocated emotional interpretation of sound and
landscapes, may have disapproved of. Discussing Beethoven’s occasional
clichéd figurations of a bucolic world, Debussy points to the German
composer’s success when he relies on musical imagination for a
transposition:
The popularity of the Pastoral Symphony comes from the prevailing misun-
derstanding between nature and men. Take the scene by the brook! The
oxen are supposed to drink from it. At least, the voice of the bassoons
invites me to believe this. As for the wooden nightingale and the Swiss
cuckoo-clock, they belong to Mr Vaucanson’s art rather than to proper
nature. All this is useless imitation or purely arbitrary interpretation.
Yet some of the old Master’s pages convey a beautiful landscape with the
deepest expression when imitation is not direct but emotionally transposed
into what is ‘invisible’ in nature. Can the mystery of a forest be conveyed
by the measuring of its trees? Is imagination not triggered through its
unfathomable depth? (Ibid.)
Often judgmental in his journalistic writings, Debussy was quick to con-

demn an imitative process that he used himself on occasions, and which
can be perceived as reductive. Most musicians are aware of how this imi-
tative process can not only impact on the music but also on how it is
interpreted by listeners. The late Romantic composer Gustav Mahler, for
instance, who found so much inspiration in the natural world, had sub-
titled movements of his Third Symphony (1896/1910) with headings such
as ‘What the flowers of the field tell me’ and ‘What the animals of the
forest tell me’, but decided to withdraw them from the programme notes
for fear that they would be distracting to the listeners (Bauer-Lechner,
2013, p. 41).In spite of this wariness of over-description, many compos-
ers highlight music’s ability to transcribe or translate. Debussy, while the
most severe of critics as regards representational music, asserts firmly
music’s capacity to mediate the natural world beyond a specific time and
given circumstances:
While they claim to be certified translators, painters and sculptors can only
interpret the beauty of the universe in a free and fragmentary manner. They
only capture one of its aspects, one of its instants: musicians alone have the
ability to seize the entire poetry of night and day, of heaven and earth, to
reconstruct its atmosphere and make its immense palpitation rhythmic.
(Debussy, 1913, p. 42. My translation)
He may not have approved of the use of pure imitation, but Debussy
relied on transforming and imagining sounds from the natural world.
Also at the beginning of the twentieth century, his near contemporary
Maurice Ravel directly used the image of translation to describe his musi-
cal creative process. He tries to convince the writer Jules Renard to attend
a performance of songs set on his Histoires naturelles. Suspicious, Renard
asked Ravel what the composer could possibly add to his animal cameos,
and obtained the following answer:
354 L. Desblache
My aim was not to add but to interpret […]. To say with music what you
say with words when you are in front of a tree for instance. I think and I
feel in music, and I would like to think and feel the same things as you.
Some music, such as mine, is instinctive, driven by feeling. Of course you
need to be musically skilled. And there is intellectual music: d’Indy. Tonight
is a concert of d’Indys I am afraid. (Renard, 1925, pp. 161–162. My
translation)
Musical translation is seen by Ravel as the tool that prevents the creative
process from any ‘unnecessary’ imitation, to draw on Debussy’s phrase.
As the twentieth century progressed, intellectual thought increasingly
portrayed human identity as linked to the rest of the natural world. In
spite of the questioning of a binary perception of human vs non-human
creatures and systems, humans contributed substantially to the destruc-
tion of their environment. The growth in human life expectancy and
economic gains have been secured through more global models of exploi-
tation of vulnerable beings and natural resources. This happened at a
speed which left most people bereft of their histories and disconnected
from their environments. As always, music pre-empted the displacements
of old powers and hierarchies, their painful consequences and the birth of
new monopolies driven by large-scale profits. It is no coincidence that
Arnold Schoenberg’s (1914) Pierrot lunaire, which epitomises the dis-
mantling of the tonal system of composition used by European musicians
universally for three hundred years, at least in the classical spheres, was
first performed in 1912, two years before its publication, before the First
World War was declared. Keen to categorise free atonality, which emerged
as an aesthetic act of rebellion against the old orders, some composers
such as Schoenberg and Webern moved on to serialism. Serialism not
only aimed to organise this chaos into a system, but pre-figured the dys-
functional era to come, highlighting subjective disconnections and a
drive towards quantification in production and consumption. It also her-
alded a new palette of musical systems to be offered.
Not all musicians subscribed to serialism of course, although it
impacted importantly on musical developments and it reflected key artis-
tic and social trends. As new global realities emerged in the second half of
the twentieth century, musicians rebelled against old and new dogmas,
including serialism, as did other thinkers and artists. While new systems
were explored, the isolating experience of serialism made composers wary
of them. For most, borrowing became the most flexible strategy for mov-
ing forward while not starting at ground zero. Borrowing took place at all
levels—genres, styles, structures, melodies, rhythms or timbres—, as was
discussed in Part II. Some musicians felt they were caught uncomfortably
between the cerebral inventions of the avant-garde and the development
of popular music which used tonality, beat and rhythm conventionally;
nor did they wish to take the ‘fusion’ route that implied borrowing across
various musical parameters. Increasingly, they turned to natural sounds
for inspiration.
In the classical sphere, Olivier Messiaen is the twentieth century com-
poser who borrowed from the sounds of the natural world most spectacu-
larly throughout his career. In most respects, Messiaen was extremely
conservative in his approach to life. Deeply religious, he endorsed the
view that music echoes and expresses the divine, unlike the majority of
his contemporaries, for whom music afforded ways to be in touch with
human feelings. At a time when most composers were struggling to find
their voice and oscillated between rebellion and formalism, he was unique
in inventing an original musical language based on borrowing and trans-
lation techniques. He did not shy from mentioning translation in his
writing, admitting to translating poems (Messiaen, 1994, p. 15), colours
(ibid., p. 41), and animal or environmental sounds from the natural
world, in particular what he called bird vocalisations, which included
songs, calls and cries (ibid., p. 94) into music.
His religious beliefs drove him to use voices from nature, to conceive
music both as a hymn to nature and a hymn from nature, and he described
himself as the first composer to focus on birds (ibid., p. 97), whom he
favoured as a musical source of inspiration because they are the most
immediately available one. He was also perhaps one of the first to benefit
from the technology that allows nature recordings. Messiaen did not only
attempt to mediate the natural world into music all his life, he wrote
substantial critical works, discussing the borrowing techniques which are
at the source of his compositions, particularly in the posthumously pub-
lished seven volumes of his Traité de rythme, de couleur et d’ornithologie
(2005), of which the fifth volume is dedicated to bird song. In his early
356 L. Desblache
theoretical volume, Technique of my musical language (1944/1956), he

laid down the principles of borrowing and transcribing as key to his
music writing and to his creative process.
In any case, for any composer, sounds and songs from birds could not
be imitated: in most cases, they are too fast or too high to be transcribed
accurately. Besides, their melodic contours cannot be written out musi-
cally in semi-tones. Finally, bird songs and calls, apart from the cuckoo’s,
with its imitable minor third—and sometimes major third or fourth—
are rarely based on regular intervals. As a composer and ornithologist,
Messiaen knew that very few bird songs or calls are melodically imitable.
Yet it is the very challenge of this imitation that triggered the French
composer’s interest. Following Debussy’s ideas, he considers music’s
capacity to translate the sounds of the natural world as key to a compos-
er’s creativity. Messiaen’s borrowing techniques happen primarily though
transcription and combination. The terms that are most recurrent in his
writings are those of ‘transcription’ (listening to sounds and noting them
down musically), ‘transformation’ and interpretation. He also uses the
term ‘transposition’, but in relation to his use of musical modes and
scales, as is generally the case in musical terminology.
Musicologists such as David Kraft (2013), Gareth Healy (2013),
Balmer, Lacôte, and Murray (2018) have considered in detail how
Messiaen’s music was codified through a system of melodic, harmonic,
rhythmic, textural (relating to different ways of attacking notes such as
staccato, legato…) and structural borrowings. Kraft, in particular, focused
on the strategies used by Messiaen in order to create the musical suspen-
sion of disbelief that would make it possible for bird songs, calls and cries
to become human music. Messiaen’s compositional techniques and aes-
thetic creed are driven by the desire to transcribe, transform and interpret
the sounds of the natural world into music, as his many compositional
writings attest.
These transfers take a number of forms, and can be inscribed in the
score or just be part of the composition. He could, for instance, note a
bird’s onomatopoeia, as used by French ornithologists, on the score above
the musical notation of the sound, informing the performer of the effect
required. This would be in addition to naming the specific species and
occasionally indicating mood or describing a scene. These tactics are fre-
quent, for instance in Réveil des oiseaux (1953) for piano solo and orches-
tra, dedicated to the ornithologist who taught Messiaen. The very title of
the piece may be an allusion to Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Rappel des oiseaux
(1724) and to the eighteenth century composer’s views that the sounds of
the natural world must be recreated through analytical work and scien-
tific knowledge, a view that Messiaen ascribed to, in spite of his mystical
beliefs. His bird sounds are transcribed melodically and rhythmically, and
used in combination with other musical elements, such as harmonies and
rhythms, in order to recreate the timbre, texture and specific qualities of
each bird sound or call. The motifs are repeated, permutated or partially
eliminated, in order to create different effects. Musicologists such as
Madeleine Hsu (1996) and David Kraft (2013) have included glossaries
of these transformative strategies, all named by Messiaen, such as ‘har-
monic litany’, in which a melodic fragment is repeated but harmonised
differently.
These borrowing techniques take place at the level of musical frag-
ments, but also much more holistically. Messiaen’s opera Saint François
d’Assise (1983) relied on birdsong conceptually, and the characters of the
piece are all associated with specific birds. Many of his works use different
bird songs structurally, as pillars that hold a building together. Christopher
Dingle (2016, 83–112) has shown how this is particularly noticeable in
the composer’s later instrumental compositions: Un vitrail et des oiseaux
(1986) and La ville d’en haut (1987) are thus structured like a song
around its theme, using recurrent bird motifs as a framework for a
whole piece.
Messiaen’s unique language is particularly interesting from the point of
view of the ‘translation’ of the natural world. Like his post-First World
War contemporaries, he was brought up with the following composi-
tional choices: using existing traditions; adopting serialism; exploring
emergent electronic technologies; manipulating or incorporating sound
recordings. With the exception of recordings, which he used to support
his creative process, but not in final compositions, Messiaen combined
these practices together, in a desire to reject conservatism and dogma-
tism, and as instruments that allow him to translate what Walter Benjamin
(1923/2012) might have called the essential poetic substance of the
sounds of nature, beyond their informative value. As an ornithologist,
358 L. Desblache
Messiaen was interested in this information value and in how birds com-
municate with each other, but as a musician, he knew that it could not be
conveyed though music. His aim was to translate what he understood to
be essential, and his philosophy drove him to create a spiritual bridge
between the human and the non human that brought the divine closer.
Using bird sound patterns as the basis for his compositions allowed him
to distance himself not only from the main compositional trends and
methods of his time, but also more generally from human dogmas. He
understood that translation was an indispensable tool for transforming
apparent repetition into difference. He used it to defy the transmission of
memes, those cultural replicators that exclude original transformation. In
this, he was pre-empting twenty first century ideas that translation is
indispensable to making the unknown familiar, but also to ensuring that
the familiar is normalised through quantification and categorisation.
Messiaen was a not only an outstandingly original composer and pro-
lific writer, he was also one of the most inspiring teachers of his genera-
tion. Between 1934 and 1978, he taught in a wide number of institutions
in France and abroad, although primarily in the Paris Conservatoire,
forming an impressive array of composers who became established in
their own right, from Pierre Boulez to Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis
Xenakis to George Benjamin. He taught this generation of artists that the
best way to be inimitable was to seek imitation through creative
translation.
Relatively few composers openly state their influence from Messiaen
today, perhaps because his music is not the most accessible, or because it
is still associated with a conservative Catholicism. Many of the ‘nature-
inspired’ composers, particularly those driven by soundscape recordings
seem to ignore his music, or find his borrowing strategies over-technical,
sometimes over-repetitive. They prefer to interact directly with natural
word recordings. Yet it is interesting that his music is used or incorpo-
rated into a wide range of contexts which are not the expected ones.
While, since the dawn of the twenty first century, classical music per-
formers have been noticeably including more popular music in their rep-
ertoire, this is not so common the other way round. But Messiaen’s organ
piece, ‘Les bergers’, has found its way in the music of Björk (1995/2011)
in a cover of ‘Cover Me’ arranged by keyboard player Jónas Sen. It also
appears as film music, for instance, in the soundtrack of The Revenant

(2015), directed by composer Keiji Haino, which includes ‘Oraison’
(1937), one of the first pieces written for electronic instruments. These
incursions into more popular music are all the more surprising since
Messiaen’s compositions deny any beat to their rhythm, which is another
reason for his lack of influence on the musical scene today. This explains
why his pieces have been introduced in atmospheric, sometimes
eerie contexts.
The issue of beat is indeed important with regards to the introduction
of natural sounds into popular music. Popular music works with dance,
not against it or separately from it. There are musical rhythms to the gait
or flow of beasts, and insects can scan their song very rhythmically, but
no animal marches or dances in step the ways humans do. At least on
streaming platforms, hip-hop is the most dominant genre in popular
music, closely followed by rock and pop. All these musics are urban in
style, structured around strong beats. Many songs, of course, bear strong
associations with sounds from the natural world and some websites are
even dedicated to them (i.e. L’écologie en chansons), but singer-songwriters
are rarely mainstream, and overall, urban style music does not have any
remotely pastoral or wildlife connotations. Yet there is an increasing
interest in marrying regular beat with the flexible movements found out-
doors, be it in the wild or in populated areas.
Ben Mirin (n.d.) offers good examples of these changes. A successful
beatboxer based in New York, he calls himself a wild DJ. A passionate
bird watcher and listener since childhood, he also became a National
Geographic explorer. Aware that the natural world was mostly brought to
people through visuals, and thinking that soundscapes were too unfamil-
iar to most popular music listeners, he decided to create sound art that
integrates sounds from the natural world to hip-hop style music, employ-
ing standard sampling techniques. Initially mixing samples from his bird
recordings to his own voice and/or to electronic beat, he has widened his
collection, using existing animal recordings from recorded zoological col-
lections, and from his own, since he now travels all over the world as part
of his work for National Geographic. His intentions are both artistic and
educational. He has devised television and interactive programmes,
including a series entitled Wild Beats, aimed at engaging children with
360 L. Desblache
the discovery of animals through their sounds. Children are encouraged

to create musical pieces that incorporate beat, melody and animal sounds.
As they compose their piece, they discover the animals that they place at
the centre of it, be they farm or wild creatures. Mirin also uses natural
recordings to reconnect listeners to a disappearing world around them.
This can be introducing city dwellers to birds or insects that are close to
them but that they are unaware of. Mirin can work in more exotic envi-
ronments: for instance, he collaborates with local Madagascan musicians,
and incorporates recording of animals such as lemur calls to this music.
As these local musicians interact with the sounds of their animal neigh-
bours, they engage with their endangered environment and this encour-
ages them to celebrate their heritage. Musically, Mirin’s sound art thrives
on superimposing and alternating different musical languages, manmade,
electronic and animal-based, which bring untold stories from the envi-
ronment to the ears of a wide range of humans. Music is used here as a
tool enhancing human beings’ awareness of their environment and their
capacity to listen. The next stage, of course, is dialogue.
9.1.2 Music and Interspecies Dialogues
Removing borders between human-made music and animal sounds sends

us back to the definitional issues discussed in the first part of this volume
(Sect. 3.1.1). Is bird song music? For whom? Human and/or the birds?
Can animals be considered to make music when they produce sounds
linked to the expression of shared or individual pleasure (feline purring),
or leading to social cohesion (from cricket songs to chimpanzee calls), as
Björn Merker and some of his biomusicology colleagues have suggested
(Wallin, Merker, & Brown, 2000)? Can these sounds be meaningful to
other species? These questions go beyond the scope of this book of course,
but their answers depend to a large degree on rethinking the role of trans-
lation beyond the verbal and beyond the human.
The growing body of work exploring music and the natural world is
large and tends to cover two main areas. One is primarily aesthetic, and
explores considerations of how sounds from the natural world are woven
into music composed by humans and intended for humans (Reibel,
2016). Artists as different as Messiaen and Mirin both follow this

approach. The other is essentially environmental. It attempts to investi-
gate the questions mentioned above, and is based on the preservation and
protection of the world soundscapes. It also aims to investigate whether
non-human beings make and enjoy music (see the many and pioneering
publications of Martinelli, including 2007 and 2009; Krause, 2012;
Fischer & Cory, 2015) or whether music can be considered as environ-
ment (Reybrouck, 2015). It explores interactions between the different
spheres of soundscapes identified by Krause (2012/2013), geophony,
biophony and anthropophony.
A growing body of research in different disciplines, from microbiology
to ethology, focuses on interspecies interactions. Scholars are currently
exploring biosemiotics in cultural contexts (Cobley, 2016; Wheeler,
2016) and embryonic work is starting in translation studies (Marais &
Kull, 2016; Cronin, 2017). However, Cronin has primarily investigated
how ecological processes would benefit translations studies rather than to
investigate the specific challenges of translation and exchange in a world
made up of related living systems. Kobus Marais and Kalevi Kull bravely
but tentatively question the possibilities for translation studies to open
up to the study of translation between symbolic and non-symbolic lan-
guages, outlining the challenges that working within a Piercian frame-
work would entail. ‘Semiotranslation’ is currently the main framework
considered in the context of interspecies communication, but the tradi-
tional semiotic references used would benefit from interdisciplinary
intersections with anthropological, ethological, cognitive and cultural
models of investigation. While Piercian sign theory currently seems to
offer the broadest conceptual framework for enquiry, and while it can be
considered across disciplines, it may be wise and appealing to consider
the complexities of interspecies communication from a range of perspec-
tives and disciplines. For instance, comparative ethology and epistemol-
ogy (Zwart, 2008) might also offer a good starting point for identifying
common ground in communication, something needed for any transla-
tion process. Different species use a wide range of modes such as visual,
auditory, olfactory, thermal, kinetic, tactile, seismic or thermal which can
have little in common with human languages, even those beyond the
verbal or the symbolic. Members of a species communicate primarily
362 L. Desblache
with members of their own species, even within the same biological class:
a blackbird sings for another blackbird only. This means that focusing on
signs without giving equal interest to their messengers or receivers may
not yield very successful results. It also explains why attempts to com-
municate with animals through human language have been limited.
While there has been a degree of success in teaching human language to
dogs, dolphins and apes, it has been limited. Scientists are now exploring
how barriers in interspecies communication can be broken using non-
verbal language (Heesen, Hobaiter, Ferrer-i-Cancho, & Semple, 2019).
Music is one of the areas that is being studied as providing common
ground between humans and other species. Some composers have endeav-
oured to compose or record music intended for specific animals. While
humans respond emotionally and aesthetically to some animal music,
such as the songs of birds or whales, animals may also react to human
music. Marek Brandt (Brandt, n.d.) for instance, writes music based on
sound samples which relate to individual species and performs it with
this species in mind. His music for wildcats (2014) thus involves a saxo-
phone but includes field recordings of tree and grass rustling, feline
hunting noises and other such sounds. It was performed in a German
forest which still has a high concentration of wildcats. This attempt to
devise human music for another species encountered much criticism,
particularly from animal activists who felt that it disturbs animals.
Seen as marketing opportunities, and as part of a flurry of offers
designed to appeal to human pet owners, new services are appearing:
dog- (RelaxMyDog) and cat-friendly (RelaxMyCat) playlists are seem-
ingly popular with a YouTube channel of over 600,000 subscribers
(Kalia, 2018).
Fun apart, systems of sound communication are primarily intraspe-
cific, even if animals react to sounds from other species or interact with
them at some level, such as dogs and humans who can exchange some
information and share emotions. The limited ability of members of dif-
ferent species to communicate with each other makes interspecies trans-
lation particularly challenging. Some might say that in view of these
features, translation studies is bound to be one of the most anthropocen-
tric of all disciplines. Humans talk about animals and, to a basic degree,
to animals, but can only sustain conversations with other humans.
Animal communication to humans is similarly limited. Using a concep-

tual framework that is intended for symbolic language also highlights
humanity’s tendency to be blind to non-human skills. Even when using
human language, communication about non-human matters can be cul-
turally challenging. Music may be intended for humans, but it has the
ability to cross over these boundaries both epistemologically and aestheti-
cally. Considering how to channel this ability more widely is only begin-
ning to be explored.
Music requires listening, to vibrational events and to the silence that is
part of it. Moreover, it favours listening beyond ‘sense’, beyond rational
meaning. Listening beyond sense is at the heart of translation too, as
poets, attentive to rhythms and various vocalisations, well know.
Somehow, the mediation of music between animals and humans, and the
importance for humans of interacting with non-human voices, not only
to enrich human music, but to allow the experience of including others
which can ensure that humanity no longer lives as separated from its
environment, are scarce. Dominique Lestel (2001) has long argued that
the process of life is inseparable from cultural development, that every
animal has a culture, and that human cultures have grown through con-
tact with non-human cultures. Twenty first century ethology, particularly
philosophical ethology, further punctures the myth that human behav-
iours are solely human (Haraway, 2008; Despret, 2016).
Increasingly, philosophers work with artists and musicians, to reveal
the artificial and even harmful nature of binaries such as the nature/cul-
ture ones, but equally, to encourage the fusion of artistic and intellectual
activities. Timothy Morton (2009, 2013) for instance, works in collabo-
ration with Björk with the aim of thinking with emotion. Art (Aloi,
2012; Baker, 2013) and literature (Yates, 2017) criticism also conceptu-
alise how cultures emerge and evolve through relationships with and
beyond other species. Some, such as Ron Broglio (2011), have investi-
gated how interspecies expression is key to challenging obsolete forms of
communication. Yet musicology is slow in taking a similar path. Perhaps
the obsession of many classical composers with originality, with the idea
of ‘pure’ compositions using novel idioms on one end of the spectrum of
musical creativity, and standardised, repetitive pop music to be delivered
to a mass market on the other, makes it challenging to conceptualise the
364 L. Desblache
new holistically? Perhaps the notion of music as a discrete art discon-

nected from the rest of the world, which, as we have seen, has shaped
attitudes to music from the eighteenth century until the last decades of
the twentieth century in most of the Northern hemisphere, still leaves its
mark on musical production? Yet technological developments which
made recordings of beings and phenomena available to human ears in the
last hundred years, from ants to natural radio, broke the myth that
humans had the exclusive power to create a musical language. In any case,
zoomusicology and other approaches to ecology in music primarily
involve borrowing models and processes rather than the exploration of
how dialogues and exchanges take place (Reybrouck, 2015). Some call
for changing attitudes and for hearing the sounds available in the world
as material for music. In turn, this allows different ways of being curious
about other species, which have been primarily understood so far through
scientific observation, experimentation and classification.
Until field recordings were possible, non-human voices could not reli-
ably be part of human music making. Animals were and still are, to some
degree, used for music-making in different ways, as most instruments
included part of an animal body: violin strings were made of sheep or
goat intestines; various drums were made of snake skins; bows are still
made of horsehair, and timpani, of calf or goat skins. The spirit of the
animals that contributed to the making of an instrument could impact
on how it was regarded, and have a transformative power over musicians
and audiences, as Erica Fudge has argued (2012). Interestingly in his
short music treatise, Descartes (1568 my translation) mentions that a
drum set with a sheep skin ‘loses its sound entirely while it resounds
when covered with wolf skin’! Today, most instruments are not created
from animal body parts, and music is hybrid in different ways, using
instruments played by humans and recordings from a wide range of digi-
tised soundscape samples, as was discussed above. And if musicology is
still slow to conceptualise interspecies interactions or even input from
different species, musicians are doing so freely and bring the topic into
the open. Tobias Fischer and Lara Cory’s (2015) book on Animal music
offers an overview, not only of the diversity of practices in the area of
music making from recordings of species, but also of emergent interspe-
cies communication attempts through music.
Jonathan Harvey’s (2003) Bird song with piano song is a landmark in

music based on sound exchanges across species. He attempts a dialogue
between the human and non human through music. Messiaen’s use of
bird sounds was spectacular and original, but his process of composition
was an act of faith which intended to place what he considered God’s
musicians centre-stage. Besides, there was still a strong element of natural
history in Messiaen’s approach. He saw himself as a musician and orni-
thologist who transformed birds’ vocalisations through the voice of the
piano. They were, in some respect, classified by a human hand, mirroring
the sound collections of scientists and field recordists, as the very title
Catalogue d’oiseaux suggests. Harvey, who admired Messiaen, has a differ-
ent approach. Bird song with piano song involves a piano loaded electroni-
cally with bird samples including 40 Californian species and an
instrumental ensemble of 17 musicians. The birds are heard in their raw
state at first, and partially at the end of the 30 minute piece, but their
sound is modulated in a range of ways, as it fuses and dialogues with
human instruments. In particular, bird songs are slowed down to match
the pitches and tempi of human instruments. They are translated to
function on a human scale. This makes it possible for listeners to interact
with them and to hear their complexity. Harvey uses music’s full spec-
trum of communication modes for listeners to have not only an in-depth
understanding of bird song but also an understanding that is not centred
on object collection. This is recurrent in his work. He explores elsewhere
how symbolic and non-symbolic languages can respond to each other;
Speakings (2008), for instance, attempts to get an orchestra to do just
this: use speech.
This desire to use technology creatively in order to push the boundaries
of human listening and to foster interactions with other species is also
increasingly common in folk music and some areas of popular music.
Folk singers Sam Lee and Karine Polwart, in very different styles, mix
narratives of song and story to put non-human living centre stage. Lee
was inspired by Beatrice Harrison, a cellist who insisted on being recorded
with a nearby nightingale in what was the first outdoor recording, in
1924, in her Surrey garden. This recording was phenomenally popular,
and Harrison became known as the Nightingale Lady. In 2015, following
a radio broadcast, Lee engaged in a series of concerts entitled Singing with
366 L. Desblache
the nightingales, setting his concerts in woods, singing, and speaking

against bird song. Polwart, on the other hand, works with sound designer
Pippa Murphy to tell the story of birds and various living organisms, and
to give them a voice. Moss, for instance, in her piece ‘The moor speaks’
(Polwart & Murphy, 2017), is the central subject telling the story of the
moor, musically and dramatically. Both artists reflect a commitment to
re-anchor folk music in the natural world. They do so in ways that
enhance its voices, introduce its participants as subjects and not motifs,
and put them at the core of their stories. Their human listeners are there-
fore made to hear voices so often silenced or ignored. Although interac-
tion between species is limited, there is a desire to ‘make space’ for
non-human voices and to respond to them. This means that the human
voice is not always the directing force. It may wait, listen and improvise
around non-human sounds.
The musician who perhaps goes furthest in stretching interspecies
musical communication, and does so most prominently, is David
Rothenberg. For him, more artistic ventures and research are needed to
explore music as an interactive tool leading to activity and interactions
between humans and non humans. His research and music making have
involved birds (2005), whales (2008) and insects (2014), and challenge
what he sees as two myths that stop species interrelations: the compart-
mentalisation of science, philosophy, literature and music on the one
hand, and the capacity of one species to communicate only with their
own members on the other. He believes that interdisciplinarity is essen-
tial to new cross-species discoveries. Science, for instance, can give useful
information on how whale or bird song is structured, on how much of
their vocalisations are audible to the human ear, on the spectrum of their
pitch and rhythm preferences; it can hypothesise on the reasons for their
singing and on their functions, on their general behaviour patterns, on
how the sounds they make fit into those functions, or how they react to
human noise. Such information is useful background in the aesthetic
context of composing with the intention of engaging with other species.
Non-musical art forms can also provide different questions and answers
regarding human perception of other species that blur with or differ from
the ones discovered through music.
Moreover, since the French novelist André Gide (1950) brought to the
fore the notion of engagement in art and literature, the idea that creative
forms of expression are not exclusively aesthetic products but reflect their
author’s involvement and beliefs in social and political causes has grown.
In the twenty first century, when communication is driven by social
media, cultural products also mirror the environment in which they are
fashioned, and are shaped by the audiences that interact with them. The
concept of animal art (Sillito, 2012), although quite widely accepted in
the twenty first century, especially in relation to elephants and apes, is
still rejected by some, but evolution affects forms of expression in human
and non-human animals in similar ways. For instance, as many birds now
live in a noisy and densely populated habitat, their songs have evolved:
they are louder, are produced at a higher frequency and may even take
place at night rather than during the day (DeWeerdt, 2016). And in an
era saturated with objects, music, which is not dependent on them as a
core theme of its production, and is immediately experiential, may well
be the most efficient art form to test and develop interspecies dialogues.
Rothenberg believes that human-made music can be used to start
engaging in communication across species. His arguments are more
ideological and philosophical than artistic. He thinks that humans engag-
ing in cross-species music-making are not only likely to be more caring,
but that they will also feel more at one with the rest of the world. Listening
to the voices of other species, making music that is inspired by them and
playing them in an environment that is conducive to a response may lead,
according to Rothenberg, to a sound mediation that also could be mean-
ingful to animals, and trigger responses from them.
His work in cross-species translation is, like that of Brandt mentioned
above, controversial. Marine environmentalists (Richardson, Greene,
Malme, & Thomson, 1995; Simmonds et al., 2014) believe that noise
pollution is one of the most endangering factors for cetaceans, as
Rothenberg himself acknowledges. Many feel that unnecessary sound
interactions are not welcome. After all, as Primo Levi (1961) and Pascal
Quignard (1996) have highlighted, discussing the obscene use that the
German SS made of it in concentration camps, music, even in an exclu-
sive human context, is the only art form that has been used systematically
368 L. Desblache
to accompany submission or suffering. More recently, tactics in the

Guantanomo Bay detention camp for breaking prisoners’ resistance
included playing repetitive excerpts of music very loud (Anon., BBC
News 2017). Sound pollution is likely to be equally destructive to non-
human animals, as suggested above. Yet Rothenberg argues for the value
of interspecies music, aesthetically and ecologically. The two are insepa-
rable for him. Interspecies music is first about hearing members of
another species in their environment, and second, to see if some of those
members could participate meaningfully in human music making.
Hearing a whale respond to his clarinet calls, or even remember one of his
previous calls, makes Rothenberg think that music might be the perfect
tool to share emotion and some sense of aesthetics with the animal.
Rothenberg’s approach is the antithesis of someone like John Cage, also
keen to integrate sounds from the natural world into his music. Child of
tree (1975) for solo percussion, for instance, uses amplified plants.
Microphones are inserted into cacti and other species from which the
percussion can improvise. Cage is interested in sounds for the sake of
them, and in how the aleatory combination of non-human sounds can
stimulate the human ear. For Cage though, the living instruments are
objects, in his own words, ‘plant materials’, relating with each other
sonically through the percussionist structured improvisation for the lis-
teners’ pleasure and entertainment.
Rothenberg, on the other hand, is primarily interested in a musical
aesthetics driven by social communication between animals and humans
and how they can find points of encounter in ‘musicking’. Humans might
not need bird or whale songs to be ‘translated’ to them in any way, they
are meaningful as such to many people. Investigating the language of
animals logically and methodologically belongs to scientists, and such
investigations have been and are being undertaken, so far with mixed suc-
cess and controversial ethical involvement. Using terminology developed
by Gregory Bateson (1978), they primarily aim to translate the analogue
language of animals, seen as syntax-free and focused on maintaining rela-
tions between transmitting and receiving subjects, into the digital lan-
guage of humans, based on denotations and exchanges of ideas. Yet for
Rothenberg, music can and should be a very different translational agent.
First, the translation pathway envisaged is a dual one: major (human) to
minor (animal) but more importantly, minor to major, as the aim is not
to teach animals human language in order for them to do things, but to
interact with them musically, and to expand the notion of music beyond
the realm of each species. Second, music may be the ‘soft’ bridge that can
make interactions between the world of analogue and digital communi-
cation possible. Just as each musical composition, improvisation and per-
formance is unique, each living species, each individual and even each
phenomenon has its own sonic identity that can be musically meaningful
and open another exploratory door into non-human worlds: each vol-
cano, for instance, has its own infrasound structure and its own acoustic
identity (Johnson, 2019). Interspecies listening and music-making can
shift the balance of attention from things, ideas and events to their many
contextual relations and translations. New balancing is needed to guide
exploration into these unchartered territories, however.
In his novel The Whale Caller, Zakes Mda (2005) writes the cautionary
tale of the emotional, spiritual and sexual obsessions of a man, the epony-
mous whale caller, never given a name in the novel, with a female south-
ern right whale, Sharisha, who comes back every early Spring to Walker
Bay on the south coast of the Western Cape. The book is set in the small
town of Hermanus and framed in a postcolonial setting critical of whale
tourism. The story is based on the real presence of a whale crier in the
town, Wilson Salukazana, who features in the novel, and whose kelp
horn playing both announces the arrival of the whales every year and
entices the whales to respond with various displays. In Mda’s novel, The
Whale Caller, distraught by such money-making activities, plays and
teaches melodies and rhythms to his beloved whale, who responds enthu-
siastically with rhythms and dances. The descriptions of the bonding
between whale and man are set against several patterns of toxic social or
intimate human relationships, and can be read at several levels. From the
music perspective, both the professional crier employed for tourists and
the main protagonist of the novel engage in some form of interspecies
dialogue with the whales, induced by horn playing. But this communica-
tion, which is more of a communion for the protagonist, ends destruc-
tively. Hermanus community members are described as poor, unable to
shift from addiction or boredom, and in the grips of an unsettled post-
apartheid South Africa. Many are too absorbed by human survival to
370 L. Desblache
consider whales as subjects, and only relate to them through consump-

tion or profit. Whale watchers seasonally flocking to the town seem to
alienate most locals, and their frequent approaches to the whales endan-
ger the animals’ lifestyles. As for Sharisha, the dancer and musician, she
strands herself on a beach getting too close to her human lover. In what
can be interpreted as an allegory of marginality—the three main charac-
ters are vulnerable—, music plays a key role in connecting the protago-
nists and expressing their desires, floats above real-world hindrances, but
in the case of the whale and the man, leads them to an impossible com-
mon destiny. The creativity of the animal as subject is not questioned, but
the ability to express it in the foreign environment of the Other seems
still out of reach. Something that Rothenberg must ponder on when
attempting to reach whales.
9.2 Connections and Translations

From the Enlightenment period until the mid-twentieth century, think-
ers primarily valued music for giving direct expression to inner subjectiv-
ity (Hegel, 1979) and for offering tools of awareness to individual listeners
which could enable them to seek ‘truth’ (Adorno, 1941/2002). Such aes-
thetic beliefs, which considered the world as decipherable by and mean-
ingful for humans only, are now put into question. The notion of
autonomous music, focused on human concerns and limited to the
human sphere, central to musical and other art forms since the beginning
of the Renaissance, and deeply anchored in Western philosophical tradi-
tions, is now being shaken. German philosophy of music, in particular,
has been largely discarded since popular music impacted the cultural
scene in the 1960s. Music is presently no longer thought outside of his-
torical and social contexts, and mostly considered as a platform for social
change and exchange. This constructivist base means that it is still pri-
marily considered within a human supremacist perspective even when it
voices environmental concerns. Large concerts intended to fund the fight
against global warming such as ‘Live Earth’, which occurred simultane-
ously in 11 locations on July 7th 2007, are representative of this trend,
for instance.
As has been argued in this book, music also intersects with visuals and
movements, and is meaningful across generational and social barriers as
well as spatial distances, beyond verbal communication. It allows its lis-
teners, at least some of the time, to make sense of sounds and silence
beyond these barriers. Evelyn Glennie (2005: v–vii), among others,
argues that music is not just about listening to a concert with human ears
or playing notes to render a piece, and in the twenty first century, it is no
longer perceived as such. Audiences and performers have a need to link it
to other forms of expression: dance, touch, visual input, vibrations and
more. For Glennie, music is now ‘our everyday language’ (ibid.: v). It
thrives on ambiguities, alternative meanings and coalesces past and pres-
ent, global and local, human-made, technology-produced and environ-
mental sounds, in order to tell stories.
These musical stories are increasingly enlarged beyond human-centred
perspectives, as human lives are more visibly entangled with non-human
beings and entities. Many musical experiments also involve non-human
beings and their environments, and consider human/non human inter-
ests in non-dualistic ways. John Luther Adams, for instance, who com-
poses across different genres and for different platforms, aims to create
music within an ecological perspective, where human and non-human
are connected. His sound and light installation The Place Where You Go to
Listen (2004/2006) was thus composed for ‘hearing the unheard music of
the world around us’ (Adams, 2009, p. 4), and is conceived as interactive,
so that listeners become aware of natural sounds and are able to make
sense of them as part of a world that they live in, not as natural sounds
that are alien to human perception and language. Become Ocean (2014) is
another example of his immersive music. The ocean is evoked as encom-
passing human lives, since humans are largely water. At the root of his
music is the idea that the destructive global changes initiated by humans
may lead to them be dissolved in the ocean, as he explains on his pub-
lisher’s site (Adams, 2014).
In his analysis of an earlier piece, Pierre Boulez’s Répons, Timothy
Morton (2013, p. 109) argues that the French composer’s work offers ‘the
sound of real entities appearing to humans’, as intersemiotic connections
are made between images of the natural world and sounds. Morton con-
tends that music has the power to tear the illusion of what humans think
372 L. Desblache
the world is, to reveal its anthropocentric fiction to them, and to intro-
duce them to a reality that allows them ‘to relate directly to nonhumans’
(ibid.), mediating it beyond self-convergence. The role of translation in
making sense of the complex connections, mergers and related fragments
that are part of music, may not have been emphasised yet, but it is crucial.
This third part has endeavoured to show how music translates these
stories beyond time differences, cultures, geographies, human abilities
and, in this chapter, beyond the human, shaking the myth of human
supremacy, and opening new communication channels. It possesses key
features to do so. First, it intersects meaningfully with all modes of expres-
sion, from visual to verbal, and ‘languages’, produced by humans, non
humans and human-based technologies. Second, it is based on sound
and silence, crucial elements that reveal humans’ relationships to their
environment. Wasn’t one of the first notable environmental books enti-
tled Silent spring (Carson, 1962) for this reason? Haven’t pioneering
musical ecologists such as Bernie Krause (Wild sanctuary) revealed since
the 1970s that the destruction of the environment is heard—through
silence, as species disappear—much before it is seen? And that communi-
cation with non-human beings and mediation of their sounds is key to an
aesthetic ‘appreciation of how soundscapes inform our mental, physical
and cultural lives’ (Krause, 2012/2013, p. 255), let alone to an under-
standing of how different beings interact? Third, music travels, is based
on variations, adaptations, repetitions and distortions, as has been
emphasised throughout this book.
In spite of these facts, several questions remain with regards to music’s
ability to translate beyond the verbal and across species, and to the notion
of translation in general. They are large questions for which many of the
answers are not provided here. As stated in the Prelude, the lack of estab-
lished boundaries which could guarantee the terms of what translation is,
remains challenging. For adepts of ‘conventional’ translation and for those
who work in the language service industry, removing the limitations which
have been established over centuries to secure the role of translation can
trivialise the notion, or even harm a profession whose recognition has
always been fragile. In an attempt to broaden and appropriate the term or
adjust it, scholars in different disciplines have attempted to map it. This has
happened in areas that are related to translation such as semiotics (Hartama-
Heinonen, 2015), but also in unrelated disciplines where the concept of

translation has been borrowed: in health studies (Graham et al., 2006) and
genetics (Woese, 2001), for instance. In more cultural disciplines, the term
is also used liberally: poets have appropriated it since the mid-twentieth
century to refer to existing work which they have transformed creatively,
such as in homophonic translation for instance; musicians also use it to
refer to its transformative impact on creative input, as we have seen (Julia
Minors, 2013; Szendy, 2009). In cultural studies, translation commonly
denotes ‘exploring how languages, values, beliefs, histories and narratives
can be shared and understood across different cultures and contexts’
(AHRC Translating cultures) and scholars rarely refer to traditional con-
cepts such as source and target texts, faithfulness or equivalence.
Yet if the concept of translation is borrowed profusely outside of trans-
lation studies, its use in translation studies is more strictly and critically
defined. The use of the concept of translation with reference to how
music can facilitate communication between species, aesthetically and
semiotically, is therefore controversial. The awareness that humans do not
have exclusive language skills and the exploration of communication
between different beings across species barriers are both recent in terms of
human history. Moreover, the notion that music may act as a transla-
tional agent between species may appear provocative. Nevertheless, I
believe that the notion of translation is the most useful to consider the
transfers and creative transformations that are taking place in music
focused on relationships between humans and non humans. In all inno-
vative contexts, translation aims to promote and share an original text
and its culture rather than just seeking a mere equivalent of it. In this
respect, what is true for poetry is true for music too.
There are, of course, limitations to this interpretation of translation. A
poem is intended for a reader of the foreign language that it is written in.
Even in the case of a translation which drifts far away from, or ignores the
text that inspired it, the translator knows that a target reader, listener or
viewer can perceive the common notion of a language. A piece of music
based on animal or environmental sounds is composed and generally per-
formed for a human audience, and the translator’s reading, however bio-
centric in intention, is necessarily anthropocentric. Even when music is
created with an intention that includes interacting with non-human
374 L. Desblache
beings, as in the case of Rothenberg’s music, no reliable knowledge of

how they perceive the music can be gathered. It can be argued that limita-
tions in communication manifest in many forms, including in transla-
tion: when we clumsily attempt to describe an emotional experience
verbally, words express it approximately, and there is no guarantee here
either that our listener understands us.
At a time of ecological emergency, when living systems are threatened
in part because humans have not interacted successfully with their envi-
ronment, communication beyond human language needs to be attempted.
This attempt cannot be linguistic, or at least not exclusively linguistic.
For Paul Ricoeur, imagination is the ability to understand information
produced in different ways ‘not above the differences, […] but in spite of
and through the differences’ (Ricoeur, 1978, p. 148). In music, it is
expressed through feelings, in ‘a relation to the world that constantly
restores our complicity with it’ (Ricoeur, 1986, p. 85). This capacity of
understanding through involvement with others and through an aware-
ness capable of transcending the self is close to Antoine Berman’s (1984)
dialogic views of translation. While Berman’s priorities were on ethno-
centricity in translation, his focus on listening to the message of the
Other, on shifting supremacy from the centre to the peripheries, and on
giving a voice to the voiceless, is also needed for what, in the twenty first
century, could be called a biocentric translation. As humans understand
the destructive nature of their ecological power, they begin to recognise
that listening and communicating beyond their own sphere is both nec-
essary and thrilling. Both translation studies and music can and need to
trace paths leading to this new era of communication, however unknown
the way to success is.
Note
1. For the purpose of this chapter, we shall consider ‘nature’ and ‘the natural
world’ as human cultural concepts referring to life forms and other reality
which are neither human nor the product of human work, in spite of the
fact that human beings also understand that they are part of that reality
(see for instance Soper, 1995/2000, pp. 6–8).
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10
Coda
Back from lunch in London with an English friend who was brought up
in France, I ponder on our discussion. She was introduced to solfège at
school and later in life, she wishes to take up the piano. ‘What happened
to do ré mi?’, she asks, puzzled by the different theory systems. This ques-
tion brought me back to the initial thoughts that started me on this book.
In particular, to the fact that so much translation related to music seems
to affect the peripheries of music without going to the core of its product
or process. A French violinist performing a classical piece generally can-
not be identified as French from his or her playing. Or do the origins of
the performer have a deeper impact than expected? In spite of the sup-
posedly universal system of music notation, the French solfège system, like
the French language, is more ‘abstract’ that the English one (Vinay &
Darbelnet, 1958/1977, p. 59) and has a tendency to generalise. Solfège
puts more stress on the absolute value of notes. Is this why French
composers have forged a reputation for being emotionally more restrained
than their English counterparts? Transfers between musical attitudes and
systems are certainly not seamless. The prospect of having to translate
from a new music system in her own native tongue left my friend worried

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54965-5_10
384 L. Desblache
that she was going to have to learn a new language as well as learn
the piano.
I also left this meeting thinking of translation. Of how music transla-
tion allows musicians and music lovers to favour the relations that humans
entertain with musical objects, ideas and events rather than with these
objects, ideas and events themselves. The acoustic reality of a piece in C
sharp major, for instance, will be the same all over the world, but its iden-
tity will be articulated differently in various cultures and contexts. For
some musicians, it will have a specific colour, and they will relate to this
key in a particular way, giving it musical and emotional meaning. For
most listeners though, this specific key of C sharp major will have no
meaning and the piece will have the same significance transposed into
another key. So while translating discrete aspects of music may be impor-
tant, translating how individuals, groups and nations relate to music may
be as enriching.
This focus on relations, first emphasised by Gregory Bateson, is at the
heart of twenty first century thought and at the heart of translation.
Bruno Latour’s recent inquiry into the different modes of existence which
allow humans beings to navigate across different networks of knowledge
stretches his original concept of translation as continuous transformation
made at a particular time and in a particular context (Latour, 2013). In
postcolonial philosophy, Glissant (2005, p. 143), using a more Deleuzian
perspective, sees translation as a process of creating meaning across the
rhizomes of different languages and cultures. Throughout his work, he
also claims the importance of ‘the right to opacity’, mentioned in the first
pages of this book, which refers to the importance of accepting a reality
even if not understanding it fully. Opacity is a safeguard of differences,
while translation provides meaning on the relations between these
differences.
Focused on this notion of ‘relations’, I had three aims for this book.
First, I wanted it to be definitional. In many ways, defining a concept
implies restricting its meaning. This is why complex notions are usually
defined in context. Yet in the case of music and translation, definitions
are liberating rather than limiting when the two notions are related to
each other: world music, vocal music and electronic music, for instance,
all imply different ideas of music. The reality of interactions between the
10 Coda 385
notion of music and one of its collocations enriches them both. Becoming
aware of the role of translation in music can enrich music and expand its
creative potential. New lyrics added to a song or new rhythms included
in a dance can transform creatively an existing piece of music, as we have
seen. Similarly, conceiving translation with an awareness of the many
ways in which music mediates and transcreates can lead to new transla-
tional models: music thus has the capacity to mediate meaning across
senses or to explore interspecies relations, as was discussed in Chaps. 8 and 9.
Second, I wished for this book to be encyclopaedic. The area of music
and translation is still emergent. While some of its aspects, such as inter-
lingual lyrics translation, have been investigated in relative depth, others
are only starting to be explored by researchers and practitioners in differ-
ent disciplines. These ‘explorers’ have different understandings of what
music and translation mean, and of how they feed into each other. It was
important to survey what has been done, and to point readers to estab-
lished work, while also leading them to new areas of development that
often lie beyond their own subject or area of interest. Although I make no
claim that this has been done comprehensively, the intention behind this
book was to open the door to the rich and unpredictable movements of
exchange and transfer that take place in music. One of the exciting fea-
tures of this field is its interdisciplinarity. Translation scholars, cultural
and media studies scholars, politics and music scholars, philosophers,
ethnologists, anthropologists, poets, lyricists, practitioners in different
areas of popular culture, musicians, music producers, translators and
interpreters have taken different routes to discover how musical texts are
translated and how music translates. Yet an account of this richness of
perspectives and interactions had not been attempted. At a time when
interdisciplinarity is valued but challenging to implement, the area of
music and translation is an inspiring model of success in interdisciplinary
thinking and experiment.
Third, I envisioned this book to point to biocentric rather than exclu-
sively anthropocentric models. I believe that human beings need to
communicate much more widely and inclusively than they do at present,
beyond the realms of their own species. It is essential for the well-being,
and even, the survival of the environment and all creatures. It will benefit
human beings, broadening their sense of purpose and understanding of
386 L. Desblache
the world in which they live. Verbal language is no longer the only or,
even, most important language of communication. Learning to make
connections and transfers across different modes of language is essential.
Audiovisual Translation has been a pioneering discipline in this respect,
moving across multimodal landscapes and intersensorial languages.
Music, which creates meaning beyond the verbal, is key to innovation in
this area. This book has opened a window to encourage further reflections
and experiments in transcultural and translinguistic explorations. Today,
as translation keeps pointing to the wonders and challenges of new equiv-
alences and continues to evolve, music is a key instrument of translation
as it creates counterpoints of meaning. I hope that these ideas will encour-
age creators and researchers to take this path, which starts with an aware-
ness of sound and a desire to make it meaningful in different languages:
That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning—yet long untaught

I did not hear;
But now the chorus I hear, and am related;
[…]
I hear not the volumes of sound merely—I am moved by the exquisite
meanings,
I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving,
contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;
I do not think the performers know themselves—but now I think I
begin to know them.
Walt Whitman (1900).
References
Glissant, É. (2005). La cohée du Lamentin. Poétique V. Paris: Gallimard.
Latour, B. (2013). An inquiry into modes of existence. An anthropology of the mod-
erns (C. Porter, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Vinay, J. P., & Darbelnet, J. (1958/1977). Stylistique comparée du français et de
l’anglais. Paris: Didier.
Whitman, W. (1900). That music always round me. In Leaves of grass. Retrieved
December 21, 2018, from http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1322/
pg1322.txt
Author Index1
A Anderson, Benedict, 26
Abdallah, Kristiina, 270 Anderson, Leroy, 277
Abreu, José, 266 Angelic Upstarts, 136
Adams, John Luther, 371 Anthony, Richard, 130
Adler, Guido, 58 Aoyama, Tomoko, 122
Adorno, Theodor W., 38, 39, 113, Appadurai, Arjun, 26, 30
271, 370 Apter, Emily, 73
Afro, Teddy, 17–20, 318 Apter, Ronnie, 144
Aguiar, Daniella W., 72 Aquinas, Thomas, 349
Ahmed, Abiy, 17 Aragon, Louis, 131
Ainge Roy, Eleanor, 189 Arendt, Hannah, 19, 20
Åkerlund, Jonas, 138 Aristotle, 334, 349
Alamo, Salvatore, 130 Arvidson, Mats, 328
Allwright, Graeme, 130 Ashford and Simpson, 239
Alms, Anthony, 176 Atanasovski, Srđan, 116
Aloi, Giovanni, 363 Attali, Jacques, 25, 62, 321
Alperson, Philip, 140 Attenborough, David, 197
Alsop, Marin, 65–66 Auden, Wystan H., 111, 148, 322,
Amis, Martin, 256 323
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54965-5
388 Author Index
Aufray, Hugues, 146 Bateson, Gregory, 368, 384

Augé, Marc, 273 Batten, Jack, 291
Augustine, 174 Baudelaire, Charles, 236
Avraamov, Arseny, 277 Bauer-Lechner, T., 353
Axel, Philippe, 41 Bauldry, Anthony, 219
Ayres, Richard, 352 Bauman, Zygmunt, 30
Azad, 232 Baylis, Lilian, 182
Aznavour, Charles, 130 Beard, David, 65, 69
The Beatles, 43, 65, 75, 153, 155,
194, 280
B Beethoven, Ludwig van, 118, 180
Bach, Johan Sebastian, 124 Bellei, Sergio L. P., 74
Bachelard, Gaston, 150 Bencivelli, Silvia, 303
Baer, Brian J., 8 Benhabib, Seyla, 20
Baez, Joan, 25, 291 Benjamin, George, 358
Baily, John, 115 Benjamin, Walter, 357
Baines, Roger, 141 Bennett, Jane, 270
Baker, Catherine, 26, 27, 115 Bennett, Lucy, 87
Baker, Josephine, 316 Bent, Amel, 130
Baker, Mona, 285 Berger, M., 63
Baker, Steve, 363 Berio, Luciano, 238
Bakhtin, Mikahil M., 151, 171 Berlioz, Hector, 7, 110
Balkwill, Laura L., 303 Berman, Antoine, 134, 374
Ball, Philip, 303 Bermann, Sandra, 72
Balmer, Yves, 356 Bernac, Pierre, 227
Banhart, Devendra, 222 Bernhard, Bernard, 169
Baños López, Roque, 346 Bernstein, David, 60
Bantok, Granville, 172 Beyoncé, 42, 140, 200, 239, 292,
Barad, Karen, 271 301, 302
Barbara, 145 Bhabha, Homi, 72, 223, 310, 321
Barnett, George, 30 Biddle, Ian, 26
Barthes, Roland, 135, 151 Bielsa, Esperança, 32, 34, 35, 73,
Bartók, Béla, 22, 23, 144, 145, 147, 310
151, 152, 351 Birkin, Jane, 130
Bashō, 188 Bizet, Georges, 140, 207, 244
Bassnett, Susan, 7, 69, 91n3, 285, Björk, 34, 125, 324, 358, 363
336n2 Blackford, Richard, 349
Bastin, George, 69 Blades, James, 344
Author Index 389
Blanning, Tim, 239 Bullock, Ross, 334

Blesser, Barry, 223, 309 Burgess, Anthony, 148
Boase-Beier, Jean, 68 Burkholder, Peter J., 120, 121
Böcker, Thomas, 230 Burnard, Pamela, 35, 41, 114
Bohlman, Philip, 116, 171 Burton, Jonathan, 225
Bölke, Peter, 142 Buzelin, Hélène, 270
Bonifassi, Betty, 320, 321 Byers, Will, 87
Bontempi, Giovanni Andrea, 176 Byrne, David, 40, 41
Borges, Jorge L., 198
Bosseaux, Charlotte, 197, 200, 234
Botticelli, Sandro, 302 C
Bouin, François, 248 Caccini, Giulio, 176
Boulez, Pierre, 358, 371 Cage, John, 60, 62, 64, 238, 349,
Bourdieu, Pierre, 46n6, 90, 116, 368
122, 224 Calvocoressi, Michel Dimitri, 37
Bowie, David, 43, 65 Camille, 44
Boyle, Danny, 241 Canning, Hugh, 178
Brabec de Mori, Bernd, 272 Canteloube, Joseph, 22, 171, 172
Bragança, Guilherme, 335 Capéo, Claudio, 130
Brahms, Johannes, 142 Christine, 22, 171, 172
Branagh, Kenneth, 251, 306 Caramelli, Paolo, 335
Brandt, Marek, 362, 367 Carré, Albert, 182
Brassens, George, 43, 44 Carroll, Lewis, 248
Bray, Elisa, 80 Carson, Rachel, 346, 372
Breitkopf, Immanuel, 103 Carte de Séjour, 131, 132
Brel, Jacques, 44, 144, 146, 236 Carter, Chandler, 148, 149
Britten, Benjamin, 76, 77, 118, 119, Castelo-Branco, Salwa El-Shawan,
253, 294, 323, 329 286
Brocklehurst, Steven, 45 Cecchetto, David, 315
Broglio, Ron, 363 Cerniglia, Ken, 84
Broockman, David, 287 Chadwick, Helen, 318, 319
Broude, Ronald, 64, 70 Chagall Guevara, 110
Brown, Geoff, 200 Chamoiseau, Patrick, 73, 77
Brown, Steven, 360 Chan, Amy, 117
Bruegel the Elder, Pieter, 239 Chan, Ruper, 225
Bruhn, Siglind, 110 Chandler, Charlotte, 307
Bruni, Carla, 131, 134, 135 Chaplin, Charlie, 139, 188
Bull, Michael, 279, 280 Chastagner, Claude, 288
390 Author Index
Chateaubriand, René de, 170 Crémieux, Hector-Jonathan, 80, 182

Chatwin, Bruce, 256, 274 Crocker, Richard, 124
Chaume, Frederic, 68, 197, 234 Cronin, Michael, 11, 361
Chion, Michel, 1, 234, 303, 316 Crosby, Bing, 256
Chopin, Frédéric, 31, 108, 118, 304 Crosby, David, 256
Chris, 192 Cuthbert, Nancy, 315
Christensen, Thomas, 103
Christine and the Queens, 192
See also Chris D
Christophe, 130 da Gagliano, Marco, 176
Chu, Yiu-Wai, 194 Dahlberg, Monika, 188
Clark, Birgit, 199 Dale, Pete, 241
Clarke, Arthur C., 335 Dalida, 130
Clarke, Roger T., 274 Dalmasso, Fred, 141
The Clash, 280 Dalmès, Mony, 200
Clayton, Martin, 27, 152 Daquin, Louis-Claude, 352
Clayton, Thomas, 177 Darbelnet, Jean, 69, 383
Clements, A., 256 Davies, Lawrence, 143
Clements, R., 215 Davis, Bette, 307
Clodoré-Tissot, Tinaig, 351 Davis, Lydia, 322
Cockney Rejects, 136 Dayan, Peter, 111, 112, 324, 328,
Cohen, Leonard, 43, 199 329
Coleman, Miriam, 35 de Andrade, Oswald, 75
Collins, Francis, 29 de Campos, Augusto, 75
Collins, Sarah, 2, 310 de Campos, Haroldo, 75, 76
Collyer, Michael, 115 de Lassus, Orlande, 175
Conard, Nicholas J., 126 de Machaut, Guillaume, 118
Connell, John, 29 de Villiers, Pierre, 175
Cons, Emma, 182 Debussy, Claude, 118, 187,
Cook, Nicholas, 336n1 352–354, 356
Coomaraswamy, Ananda, 349 Declerc, Claire, 200
Copland, Aaron, 119–121, 152 Delaney, Brigid, 40
Cordier, Adeline, 27 Deleuze, Gilles, 331, 332
Cory, Lara, 62, 361, 364 DeNora, Tia, 290
Coulton, Jonathan, 35 Dent, Edward J., 181, 182
Cox, Brian, 102 Desblache, Lucile, 86, 175, 193,
Coyier, Chris, 281 220, 225, 309, 330, 346
Craft, Robert, 148, 149, 313 Desiderio, Vincent, 317
Author Index 391
Despret, Vinciane, 363 Ellington, Duke, 143

Deuze, Mark, 250 Emmerson, Lake & Palmer, 120
DeWeerdt, Sarah, 367 Eno, Brian, 273
Di Giovanni, Elena, 25, 91n10, 176, Enoch, Rolf, 142
232, 235, 244 Entwistle, William J., 169
Di Piazza, Loredana, 274 Enya, 44, 188, 189
Diabaté, Toumani, 41 Erlandsson, David, 280
Dibben, Nicola, 336n1 Escher, Maurits Cornelis, 306
Diderot, Denis, 62 Escobar, Manolo, 43
D’Indy, Vincent, 354 Espasa, Eva, 336n2
Dion, Céline, 43, 145 Esselink, Bert, 67
Disney, Walt, 33, 83, 84, 90, 188, European Disability Arts Festivals,
195, 198, 250, 251 254
DJ Champion, 320 Evans, Jonathan, 322
Donaldson, Rachel Clare, 27 Even-Zohar, Itamar, 313
Douek, Joel, 303 Evora, Cesária, 31
Dreyer, Carl Theodor, 312
Dryden, John, 322
Dueck, Byron, 27 F
Duncalf, Nick, 320 Fabergas, 41
Dunn, Christopher, 75, 270 Faith, Paloma, 294
Duteil, Yuves, 146 Falchi, Simonetta, 305
Dvořák, Antonin, 22, 23 Faraz, Darain, 279
Dyer, Richard, 234 Fazenda, Bruno, 126
Dylan, Bob, 120, 153, 194, 199, Feld, Steven, 39, 345
200, 240, 323 Feldman, Jack, 84
Fellezs, Kevin, 125
Fenton, George, 346
E Fernández, Fruela, 3, 251
Ebeling, Daniel, 179 Ferrat, Jean, 130, 134
Eco, Umberto, 236 Filidei, Francesco, 351
Edelman, Joshua, 86 Fischbach, Flora, 44
Edensor, Tim, 26, 63 Fischer, Tobias, 62, 361, 364
Ehrhardt, Damien, 63 Fitzgerald, Mark, 27
Eisentraut, Jochen, 240 Fleming, Renée, 125
Elfman, Danny, 312 Fonseca, João Gabriel, 335
Elgar, Edward, 306, 307 Fonsi, Luis, 42
Elleström, Lars, 328 Forsell, Paul, 2
392 Author Index
Foster, Stephen, 288 Glück/Gluck, Christoph Willibald,

France, Peter, 80 7, 80
François, Claude, 251 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 108, 170,
Franzon, Johan, ix, 10, 144, 245 315
Frasca, Simona, 127 Gola, Ferre, 41
Freeman, Morgan, 197 Goldman, Jean-Jacques, 130
Frith, Simon, 266 Gololobov, Ivan, 137
Frederick III of Saxony, 206 Good Vibrations Music and Arts
Friends, 35 Festival, 254
Fritz, Thomas, 303 Gooley, Dana, 2, 310
Fryer, Louise, 237, 243 Gorlée, Dinda L., 1, 3, 72, 205, 219
Fudge, Erica, 364 Grant, Roger M., 142
Fuhr, Jenny, 142, 145 Greco, Gian Maria, 242
Fulcher, Jane, 1, 27, 64, 114, 116 Greenberg, David, 329
Fuld, James J., 180, 201, 248, 289 Gregory, Georgina, 368
Grimaud, Hélène, 77
Guattari, Félix, 331, 332
G Guberman, Daniel, 228
Gainsbourg, Serge, 130 Guillemain, Antoine, 233
Gambier, Yves, 69, 72 Guillon, Stéphane, 131
Gardane, Antoine, 175 Guldin, Rainer, 91n3
Garofalo, Reebee, 203, 207, 208 Gurrumul, Yunupingu, Geoffrey, 40
Gaskill, Howard, 170
Gavin, James, 140
Gebesmair, Andreas, 26 H
Gell, Alfred, 272 Haake, Anneli B., 279–282
Gentzler, Edwin, 46, 60, 73–76 Habibi, Assal, 267
Gershwin, George, 21, 120, 291 Hahn, Jonah, 28
Gessen, Masha, 136 Haino, Keiji, 359
Gibbons, William, 182 Halévy, Ludovic, 80, 182
Gibson, Chris, 29 Hall, Stuart, 125
Gide, André, 367 Hamilton, Harriette, 290
Gifford, Terry, 350 Hamilton, Katy, 78
Gil, Gilberto, 74, 75 Handel, George Frederick, 112, 125,
Gioia, Ted, 304 179
Glennie, Evelyn, 241, 333, 371 Hansen, Jochim, 302
Glissant, Édouard, 4–6, 28, 33, 73, Hanslick, Eduard, 311, 316
384 Haraway, Donna, 10, 363
Gloag, Kenneth, 65, 69 Harrison, Beatrice, 365
Author Index 393
Harvey, Jonathan, 365 Hugo, Victor, 108

Harvey, Pat, 130 Hunter, Patrick G., 307
Hatch, Christopher, 60 Hutcheon, Linda, 69, 116
Healy, Gareth, 356 Hutchinson, Sydney, 116
Heesen, Raphaela, 362 Hynes, Dev, 334
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm, 370
Hein, Fabien, 116
Helbig, Adriana, 290 I
Held, James, 111 Ingram, David, 345
Hendrix, Jimi, 40, 65, 91n6, 323 Iser, Wolfgang, 73, 78, 125
Hendy, David, 344 Ito, Hiroko, 123
Henry, Pierre, 305 Ives, Charles, 120–122
Herbert, Trevor, 27 Ives-Keeler, Keira, 201
Herder, Johann Gottfried, 171
Herl, Joseph, 205
Herman, Mark, 144 J
Herrmann, Bernard, 312 Jakobson, Roman, 4, 60, 68, 111,
Hesiod, 101 236, 329
Hewson, Martin, 270 Jallot, Francoise, 123
Hightower, Michael, 35 James, Henry, 329
Hitchcock, Alfred, 304, 312 James, Robin, 124, 136
Hoffman, Dustin, 196 Janaček, Leoš, 22, 23, 286
Hogarth, William, 322 Janequin, Clément, 351
Holden, Anthony, 249 Jankélévitch, Vladimir, 2
Holiday, Billy, 222 Jauss, Hans-Robert, 116
Homer, 102 Jay-Z, 301, 302
Hoogstad, Jan H., 140 Jeffcote, Caterina, 72
Hooker, John Lee, 191 Jenkins, Henry, 74, 82, 222, 228,
Hooton, Christopher, 141 331
Horkheimer, Max, 39 Jenkins, Neil, 179
Hornby, Nick, 255 Jennens, Charles, 179
Horne, Gerald, 288 Johnson, Jeffrey, 369
Houry, Jean-Louis, 333 Johnstone, Doug, 255
Howe, Julia, 289 Jones, John Paul, 222
Hsu, Madeleine, 357 Joseph II, 177
Hubscher-Davidson, Séverine, Julia Minors, Helen, ix, 3, 91n10,
308 330, 373
Huebner, Steven, 118 Juliette, 280
Hughes, John, 248 Juslin, Patrick N., 336n1
394 Author Index
K Larage, Faf, 232

Kahn, Douglas, 347 Larbaud, Valéry, 58
Kaindl, Klaus, ix, 3, 122, 167, 219, Larionov, Ivan, 247
220 Larson, Steve, 267
Kalia, Ammar, 362 Lassonde, Julie, 315
Kalla, Joshua, 287 The Last Night of the Proms, 66, 226
Kallman, Chester, 148, 322 Latham, Alison, 8
Kandinsky, Wassily, 111 Latour, Bruno, 74, 270, 271, 384
Karsky, Nadia, 141 Laufer Krebs, Bonnie, 346
Kar-wai, Wong, 118 Lavrosky, Leonid, 221
Katan, David, 25 Le Clézio, Jean-Marie, 275
Keefe, Linda, 85 Leandros, Vicky, 146
Kennedy, Nigel, 65 Lebrun, Barbara, 27, 44
Keys, Alicia, 87 Leclerc, Marie-Dominique, 276
KidX, 41 Lee, Sam, 365
Kimball, George, 277 Lefevere, André, 285
Kiwan, Nadia, 115 Legendre, Kevin, 288
Knights, Vanessa, 26 Lenneberg, Hans, 103
Knutson, Susan, 67 Lennon, John, 195
Kobbé, Gustav, 178 Lepage, Robert, 319–321
Koltay, Tibor, 272 Lestel, Dominique, 363
Korczynski, Marek, 279, 280 Leterrier, Sophie-Anne, 276
Korsyn, Kevin, 1 Levi, Primo, 367
Kraft, David, 356, 357 Lewis, Tim, 40
Kraidy, Marwan, 27, 28, 73 Li, Belinda, 278
Kramer, Lawrence, 1, 109 Ligeti, György, 238
Krause, Bernie, 62, 348, 349, 361, Lim, Yon Soo, 30
372 Lindenberger, Herbert, 86
Kull, Kalevi, 361 Linebaugh, Peter, 277
Lipsitz, George, 24, 27, 115
Lister, David, 195
L Littlefield, Richard, 2
Lachno, James, 85 Littleton, Cynthia, 33
Lacôte, Yves, 356 Lloyd Webber, Andrew, 83, 189
Lady Gaga, 233, 334 Lomax, Alan, 320
Lam, Joseph S. C., 124 Lomax, John, 320
Lang, Jack, 132 Lorde, 334
Langdon, James N., 278 Low, Peter, 3, 5, 10, 144, 182, 219,
Langlois, Simone, 146 225, 245, 251
Author Index 395
Lowe, Zane, 200, 312 McGeezer, 333

Lubet, Alex, 240 McKuen, Rod, 236
Lully, Jean-Baptiste, 176 McMichael, Polly, 137
Luther, Martin, 205, 247, 291 Mda, Zakes, 369
Lvov, Nikolaj, 171 Meinhof, Ulrike H., 115, 116
Meintjes, Louis, 24
Melson, Gail, 351
M Melting Pot, 21, 124
Mâche, François-Bernard, 349 Melzner, Johann, 302
Macias, Enrico, 130 Mendelssohn, Felix, 253, 327
Mackinley, Elizabeth, 35, 114 Menken, Alan, 84
MacMillan, Kenneth, 221 Merker, Björn, 360
MacPherson, James, ix, 169, 170 Messiaen, Olivier, 334, 348, 349,
Madonna, 128, 191, 325 355–359, 361, 365
Mahler, Gustav, 353 Meyer, Julien, 156n1, 275
Maitland, Sarah, 4, 125 Micheli, Francesco, 253
Malina, Maria, 126 Miclet, Brice, 193
Malm, Krister, 28 Middleton, Richard, 27, 116, 124
Maluma, 42 Mills, Sam, 153
Mambéty, Djibril Diop, 302, 316 Milton, John, 179
Mangiron, Carme, 25 Minaj, Nicki, 36
Manning, Jane, 79 Mireille, 130
Marais, Kobus, 361 Mirin, Ben, 359–361
Marc, Isabelle, 27, 46, 67, 71, 74 Mitchell, T., 28
Marcus Aurelius, 349 Mithen, Steven, 343
Mariano, Luis, 130 Mitsui, Tôru, 25
Marinetti, Cristina, 317 Moderne, Jacques, 175
Marinetti, Tommaso, 335 Mokyr, Joel, 277
Marley, Bob, 18, 19 Moniuszko, Stanisław, 193
Marsh, Peter, 45 Monroe, Marylin, 200, 325
Marshall, Alex, 191 Montand, Yves, 130
Martinelli, Dario, 361 Montemorra Marvin, Roberta, 86
Marty, Laurent, 276 Moon, Shin-I, 30, 32
Mateo, Marta, ix, 82, 219, 226, Morley, Iain, 344
336n2 Morra, Irene, 27
Mayanja, Joseph, 41 Morton, Timothy, 363, 371
Mazierska, Ewa, 115 Mossop, Brian, 247
McClary, Susan, 1 Motteux, Peter, 177
McDonald, Glenn, 129, 156n3 Mouré-Chauviré, Cécile, 351
396 Author Index
Mouskouri, Nana, 130 Offenbach, Jacques, 7, 80, 182, 183

Moustaki, Georges, 130 O’Flynn, John, 27
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 70, O’Hagan, Minako, 25
147, 148, 179, 180, 182, 206, O’Neill, Sinéad, 86
250, 254, 322 Operettenhaus, Hamburg, 83
Mrázek, Jan, 272 Opitz, Martin, 176
Münzel, Susanne, 126 Oram, Daphne, 237
Murphy, Pippa, 366 O’Reilly, Edward, 170
Murray, Christopher, 356 Orff, Marcus, 198
Mussorgsky, Modest, 110, 255 Orlando Consort, 312
Orwell, George, 292
Ossian, 169, 170
N O’Sullivan, Carol, 72, 90, 170
Nancy, Jean-Luc, 62
Naked City, 121
Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, 2, 62, 118 P
N’dour, Youssou, 41 Page, Jacqueline, 247
Nederveen Pieterse, Jan, 26, 32, 133 Palmer, Christopher, 77
Needham, Alex, 186 Palmer, Judi, 226, 247
Nettl, Bruno, 35, 61, 63, 126 Palmer, Roy, 293
Neves, Josélia, 25 Parrika, Jussi, 348
Newell, Mike, 111 Pedelty, Mark, 85
Nichols, Joe, 35 Pennycook, Alastair, 204, 310
Nicolson, Adam, 102 Peoples, Glenn, 33
Nixon, Marni, 200 Peranda, Marco Giuseppe, 176
Noble, Alistair, 117 Perez, Jomar, 280
Noir Désir, 44 Pérez-González, Luis, 72, 85, 167,
Nolan, Christopher, 306 220
Norris, Pippa, 310 Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, 313,
Nougaro, Claude, 120 314
Nussbaum, Martha, 310 Peri, Jacopo, 176
Nyman, Michael, 125 Perteghella, Manuella, 69
Peterson, Oscar, 289, 290
Petrucci, Ottaviano, 206, 209
O Pet Shop Boys, 125, 186
Ó Cuilleanáin, Cormac, 234, 281 Pezza Cintrão, Heloisa, 91n8
Ockelford, Adam, 2, 143, 144, 154 Phillips, Peter, 86
O’Connell, John, 286 Phillips, Tom, 238
Author Index 397
Piaf, Edith, 130 Regev, Motti, 40, 41, 73, 74, 116,
Piazzolla, Astor, 118 117, 310
Pickering, Michael, 280 Reggiani, Serge, 130
Pinker, Steven, 343 Reibel, Emmanuel, 361
Piper, Myfanwy, 329 Remael, Aline, 72
Planché, James Robinson, 182, 183 Renard, Jules, 353, 354
Platzer, Johann Georg, 239 Reni, Guido, 302
Polezzi, Elio, 274 Rentfrow, P., 329
Pollock, Jackson, 110 Respighi, Ottorino, 348
Polnareff, Michel, 130 Revaux, Jacques, 251
Polwart, Karine, 365, 366 Reybrouck, Mark, 361, 364
Pope, Alexander, 322 Rice, Timothy, 24, 28, 61
Poulenc, Francis, 131 Richardson, W. John, 367
Pountney, David, 80 Ricœur, Paul, 4, 374
Powell, Kimberly, 35, 114 Rihanna, 317
Prach, Ivan, 171 Rimbaud, Arthur, 236
Prince, 43 Rinuccini, Ottavio, 176
Prinsky, Lorraine, 85 Robertson, Emma, 280
Prokofiev, Sergei, 221, 351 Robinson, Dylan, 315
Pushkin, Alexander, 255 Rollins, Sonny, 142
Pym, Anthony, 35, 59, 68, 71, 322 Rosenbaum, Jill, 85
Ross Bullock, Philip, 334
Rothenberg, David, 347, 366–368,
Q 370, 374
Queiroz, Joao, 72 Royal Opera House, 319
Quignard, Pascal, 367 Rubin, Rose Michael, 247
Rubio, Paulina, 43
Ryan, Roman, 188
R
Raisner, Albert, 273
Raman, Susheela, 144, 153–155 S
Rameau, Jean-Philippe, 357 Sacks, Oliver, 241, 266
Rautavaara, Einojuhani, 34, 348 St. André, James, 91n3
Ravel, Maurice, 36–38, 118, 240, Salasse, Haile, 19
246, 353, 354 Said, Edward, 64
Raw, Lawrence, 59, 69 Salerno, Carosone, 187
Rediker, Marcus, 277 Salerno, Nicola, 187
Reed, Ricky, 138 Salimpoor, Valorie, 303
398 Author Index
Salter, Linda-Ruth, 309 Sillito, David, 367

Salvador, Henri, 130, 280 Simmonds, Mark P., 367
Sánchez Mompeán, Sofia, 199 Simon & Garfunkel, 196
Sangaré, Oumou, 41 Simon, Paul, 24
Sarkozy, Nicolas, 134 Simon, Taryn, 275
Satie, Éric, 277 Simone, Nina, 317
Satysheva, Ayala K., 113 The Simpson, 35
Schaeffer, Pierre, 305 Sinatra, Frank, 200, 251
Schafer, Murray Raimond, 62, 117 Sir Mix-a-Lot, 35
Schubert, Franz, 57, 180, 181, 315 Sister Nancy, 317
Schellenberg, E. Glenn, 335n1 Skipworth, Hunter, 197
Schikaneder, Emanuel, 180 Slobin, Marc, 30
Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 58 Sloboda, John A., 336n1
Schoenberg, Arnold, 121, 323, 354 Small, Christopher, 61, 273, 279
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 272, 290, Smetana, Bedřich, 206
311 Smith, Patrick J., 175
Schumann, Clara, née Wieck, 304 Smudits, Alfred, 26
Schumann, Robert, 187, 304, 314, Smyth, Ethel, 289
316 Soper, Kate, 374n1
Schütz, Heinrich, 176 Sorente, Isabelle, 302
Schwarz, Roberto, 74 Spangler, Todd, 33
Scott, Clive, 141, 332, 335 Spencer, Émile, 91n7
Scott, Walter, 180 Spener, David, 63
Scotto, Vincent, 130 Spielberg, Steven, 335
Scriabin, Alexander, 334 Staël-Holstein, Germaine de, 60
Scruton, Roger, 38, 39, 69 Steiner, George, 58, 271
Sen, Jónas, 358 Steiner, Max, 307
Serres, Michel, 25, 59, 125, 270, Steinholt, Yngvar B., 137
321, 328 Stevens, Sufjan, 235
Shakespeare, William, 57, 58, 180, Stilman, Michael, 247
181, 221 Sting, 145
Sharp, Cecil, 22, 169, 171 Stock, F. G. L., 278
Shaw-Miller, Simon, 333 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 358
Shostakovich, Dimitri, 256, 294 Stokes, Martin, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32,
Shrivastav, Baluji, 333 33, 41, 310
Siamdoust, Nahid, 194, 286 Stone, Ruth, 61
Sibelius, Jean, 108, 334 The Stone Roses, 110
Sidaway, James D., 29 Stougaard Pedersen, Brigitte, 140
Signkid, 333 Stratton, Jon, 132
Author Index 399
Straus, Joseph, 1 Teatro Coliseum, Madrid, 83

Strauss, Johann, 142, 193 Teatro Silvia Pivia, Mexico, 83
Strauss, Richard, 147 Thibault, Paul J., 219
Stravinsky, Igor, 70, 91n7, 107, 108, Thiebergien, Benoît, 27
144, 147–149, 313, 314, 322, Thompson, Walter, 330
323 Thompson, William F., 303
Street, John, 1 Tiersot, Jules, 171, 173
Strom, Eric, 141 Timms, Dominic, 197
Stubbs, Davis, 31, 39 Tin, Christopher, 231
Styles, Kaye, 233 Toffler, Alvin, 82, 246
Styx, 120 Tola, Virginia, 79
Summer, Donna, 237 Tolokonnikova, Nadya, 129,
Summers, Tim, 230 136–139
Susam-Saraeva, Şebnem, 3, 22, 27, Tortoriello, Adriana, 250
63, 85, 115, 135, 222, 286, Tower, Joan, 120
292 Toynbee, Jason, 27, 117
Swift, Taylor, 124 Traoré, Rokia, 41, 222, 223
Szendy, Peter, 313, 373 Tremain, Rose, 111
Szymanowski, Karol, 80 Trénet, Charles, 130, 131, 134,
135
Triandafyllidou, Anna, 116
T A Tribe Called Quest, 28
Tagg, Philip, 2, 4, 8, 35, 109, 110, Tropicália, 74, 76, 309
114, 122, 124, 205, 328, 343 Trump, Donald, 138, 139
Taha, Rachid, 131–134, 138 Tsing, Anna L., 26
Tal, 130 Tsui, Cynthia, 71
Tarasti, Eero, 2 Tunbridge, Laura, 78
Taruskin, Richard, 148 Tuominen, Tiina, 83
Taviano, Stefania, 63, 274, 286, 294, Turley, Alan C., 115
309, 310 Turnage, Mark-Anthony, 125
Tawil, Adel, 232 Tymoczko, Maria, 72, 285
Taylor, Steve, 110
Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich, 191, 255
Teatro Lope de Vega, Madrid, 82 U
Tenaille, Frank, 133 UNESCO (Nations Educational,
Tennant, Neil, 186 Scientific and Cultural
Tepper, Sheri, 335 Organization), 22, 26, 28
Théâtre de la Monnaie, 249 Unlimited Festival, 254
Théâtre de Paris, 83 Urbain, Olivier, 286
400 Author Index
V Whitman, Walt, 386

Vainiomäki,Tiina, 23 Wien im Rosenstolz festival, 177
Valkeapää, Nils-Aslak, 34 Williams, John, 120
Van Buskirk, Eliot, 128 Williams, Pharrell, 334
van den Toorn, Pieter, 148 Wilson, Earl, 200
van Orden, Kate, 202 Wilson, Evan, 281
Van Sant, Gus, 312 Winfrey, Oprah, 197
Van Swieten, Gottfried, 179 Wittgenstein, Paul, 240
Van Wyke, Ben, 315, 335 Wolf, Michaela, 317, 318
Vandal-Sirois, Hugo, 69 Wonder, Stevie, 112
Varèse, Edgar, 266 Wood, Michael, 72
Vargyas, Lajos, 169 Wood, Natalie, 200
Vartan, Sylvie, 130 Woodstock, 2
Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 10, 22, 350 Worby, Robert, 237
Venuti, Lawrence, 11, 80, 122 Worthen, John, 314
Verdi, Giuseppe, 77, 80, 178, 181 Wyatt, Stanley, 278
Villa-Lobos, Heitor, 206
Vinay, Jean-Paul, 69
Vogel, Martin, 118 X
Voix polyphoniques, 319 Xenakis, Iannis, 358
von Bauernfeld, Eduard, 57, 180
Y
W Yates, Julian, 363
Wagner, Richard, 118, 177, 181, Yekibayeva, Ninel A., 113
313 Yolanda Be Cool, 187
Wakabayasi, Judith, 122 Youngs, Ian, 62
Wallin, Nils, 360 Yueh-yu Yeh, Emilie, 117, 118
Wallis, Roger, 28
Warner, Jeremy, 256
Watson, Chris, 62, 348, 352 Z
Weaver, Sigourney, 197 Zabalbeascoa, Patrick, 200
Webb, James, 317 Zappa, Frank, 118
Webster, Emma, 91n11 Zeitchik, Steven, 235
Wen-chung, Chou, 266 Zenami, Meles, 19
West, Kanye, 317 Zimmer, Hans, 305, 306, 346
Wheeler, Wendy, 361 Zorn, John, 121
White, Meredith, 81, 110 Zaz, 44
Subject Index1
A 188, 196–198, 203, 222, 233,

Accessibility 236, 237, 245, 249, 250,
and audio description, 8, 221, 290–292, 306, 309, 311, 328,
226, 243, 244 372
and audio introduction, 7, 8, 226, Agency, 32, 33, 69, 84, 226,
254 270–272, 284, 290, 302
and blind, 221, 226, 227, 243, Alice Cooper, 256
244, 254, 326 Al-Nour Wal Amal orchestra, 331
and deaf, 7, 226, 232, 241–243, All the Lyrics, 18
254, 326 Alzheimer’s Music project, 266
and hard of hearing, 232, 242, Amazon, 197, 224
243, 326 Animals, 29, 34, 209, 231, 275, 323,
and synaesthesia, 114, 236, 333, 334, 343–347, 349–360,
334 362–364, 367–370, 373
and visually impaired, 221, 252, See also Birds; Insects; Whale; Wolf
254, 326 Apple Beats1, 228
Adaptation, 6, 7, 9, 25, 31, 36, 44, Appropriation, 5, 34, 39, 41, 69, 74,
59, 67–71, 75, 76, 84, 111, 80, 118, 124, 294, 320, 321,
115, 116, 120–122, 129, 135, 349, 351
140, 145, 169, 175, 181, 184, Artopium music dictionary, 8
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54965-5
402 Subject Index
Associated Board of the Royal Schools Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel

of Music (ABRSM), 102 (CSA), 232
Attitude is Everything, 227 Cosmopolitanism, 27, 30–42, 154,
Audience Agency, 226 309, 310
Authenticity, 23, 24, 31, 39, 65, 70, CSA, see Conseil Supérieur de
71, 152, 169, 202, 312, 344, l’Audiovisuel
345
D
B Deaf Rave, 333
Bärenreiter, 7, 206, 208 Deezer, 227
BBC, see British Broadcast Disney, 33, 83, 84, 90, 188, 195,
Corporation 198, 250, 251
Birds, 10, 34, 60, 346–351,
355–360, 362, 365–368
Brazil 70 Translation Project, 91n8 E
British Broadcast Corporation Ekphrasis, 108–114, 156n2
(BBC), 18, 196, 197, 225, El Sistema, 266
228, 243, 279, 304 English National Opera, 80, 86, 252
Bussongs, 34 European Commission, 83, 281, 282
Eventbrite, 86, 224
Every Noise at Once, 129
C
Cadenza Glossary, 8
Censorship, 18, 76, 85, 131, 169, F
178, 194–195, 286 Fest’Dif, 254
See also Repression/repressive Festival de Jazz de Montréal, 320
measures Freemuse, 286
Centre de Recherche en Fusion, 26, 28, 32, 38, 41, 108, 112,
Ethnomusicologie, 63, 173 128, 133, 135, 138, 150, 152,
Centre for Economics and Business 305, 310, 315, 331, 355, 363
Research, 226
Civil Rights movement, 288–291
CISAC (International G
Confederation of Societies of GCHQ, see Government
Authors and Composers), 203 Communications Headquarters
Columbia Records, 207 General Electric (GE), 33
Confédération Internationale des Glastonbury Festival, 225
Sociétés d'Auteurs et Globalisation, 20, 21, 30, 32, 73,
Compositeurs (CISAC), 203 125
Subject Index 403
Government Communications Intertextuality, 65, 80, 81, 122, 192,

Headquarters (GCHQ), 42 255, 301, 315–317, 321–326
Guantanomo Bay, 368
L
H Language
Hermeneutics, 58, 69, 108–114 English language, 18, 19, 35, 38,
His Master’s Voice, 207 41–46, 57, 78–80, 83, 88–90,
Hybrid/hybridities/hybridity/ 91n9, 113, 134, 137, 139,
hybridisation, 26, 31, 38, 41, 148, 149, 153, 154, 169, 172,
42, 59, 69, 77, 81, 114, 125, 174, 177–180, 182–185, 187,
128–130, 132, 133, 135–137, 190, 192, 193, 196, 197, 201,
140, 155, 177, 191, 194, 222, 202, 204, 206–210, 222, 225,
223, 233, 253, 273, 275, 290, 228, 229, 231, 235, 236,
294, 308, 312, 315, 329, 364 246–249, 251, 256, 310, 311,
See also Fusion 318, 351, 383
musical language, 32, 33, 36, 41,
58, 74, 79, 81, 107, 110, 112,
I 125, 145, 222, 274, 306, 311,
Improvisation, 5, 10, 28, 31, 81, 314, 323, 330, 348, 349, 355,
111, 118–120, 136, 143, 152, 360, 364
153, 226, 320, 368, 369 verbal language, 4, 10, 38, 67,
Inner Vision Orchestra, 333 107, 109, 113, 141, 144, 145,
Insects, 359, 360, 366 173, 222, 230, 238, 241, 248,
Intercultural/interculturality, 2, 5, 271–274, 286, 306, 317, 319,
24, 26, 28, 35, 37, 69, 74, 325, 327, 328, 343, 372, 386
114, 122, 123 La Scala, 178
IMSLP, see International Music Score L’écologie en chansons, 34, 359
Library Project Lexilogos, 251
International Council for Traditional Listening, 1, 39, 42, 61–63, 66, 80,
Music, 22 88, 90, 129, 137, 143, 154,
International Music Score Library 177, 198, 222, 223, 228, 229,
Project (IMSLP), 209 239, 241, 269, 278–284, 303,
Interpretation, 5–7, 19, 27, 31, 307–309, 312, 330, 332, 347,
46n3, 65, 69–71, 73, 75, 77, 356, 363, 365, 367, 369, 371,
109–111, 124, 130, 143, 145, 374
155, 169–171, 173, 202, 222, Live Earth, 370
236, 239, 252, 278, 301, 311, Lyrics, 1, 3, 6, 9, 10, 17–20, 27, 35,
321, 323–326, 329, 333, 352, 36, 41, 43–45, 46n3, 57, 77,
356, 373 78, 81, 82, 85–88, 90, 91n5,
404 Subject Index
107, 108, 114, 115, 120, 122, 238, 240, 243, 255, 272, 305,
130, 132–134, 137, 139, 144, 332, 345, 349, 358
148, 155, 167, 168, 173, 174, and EDM (electronic dance
180, 183–187, 189–192, music), 137, 237, 269
194–196, 200–210, 219–230, and film music, 27, 65, 90, 119,
232–235, 239, 245, 246, 304–306, 359
251–256, 278, 283, 288–290, and folk, 1, 17, 22, 23, 34, 40,
294, 309, 311, 385 45, 57, 70, 113, 145, 147,
Lyrics Translate, 18, 85, 228, 233 168, 169, 171, 172, 177, 184,
205, 207, 209, 222, 247, 251,
255, 286, 287, 289, 313, 365,
M 366
Macerata Opera Festival, 253 and funk, 133, 294
See also Sferisterio and gospel, 21, 112, 189, 290,
Media Accessibility Platform, 242 294, 317
Media Consulting Group, 83, 198 and hip-hop, 28, 35, 63, 140,
Melody/tune, 35, 36, 46n4, 81, 141, 155, 192, 200, 201,
118–122, 126, 130, 132, 135, 232, 290, 294, 309–311,
148, 150, 156, 178, 205, 289, 335, 359
290, 306, 317, 322, 348, 355, and instrumental music, 24, 61,
360, 369 65, 66, 81, 107, 113, 143,
Metaphor, 6, 59, 77, 91n3, 121, 144, 147, 149, 150, 175, 194,
326, 335 234, 245, 251, 269, 318
Momes.net, 34 and jazz, 21, 45, 46, 61, 81, 82,
Mood Media, 278 109, 118–121, 123, 125, 127,
MTI, see Music Theatre International 133, 139, 142, 143, 150–152,
MTV Live, 224 208, 289, 291, 316, 320
Multimodal/multimodality, 3, 7, 72, and lied/lieder, 78, 207
167, 185, 219, 235, 242, 245, and Musak, 273, 279, 309
250, 270, 271, 278, 313, 316, and musique concrete, 305
325–326, 330, 386 and opera, 3, 8, 65, 79, 80, 83,
Music/musical genre 88, 124, 140, 147, 148, 176,
and ambient music, 273 178, 185, 226, 243, 247, 249,
and classical music, 3, 7, 8, 34, 254, 318, 329
38, 45, 63, 64, 78, 82, 86, and pop-rock, 40, 41, 74, 116,
109, 112, 118–120, 124, 128, 183, 185
142, 143, 152, 173, 176, 178, and popular music, 2, 7, 19, 20,
180, 184, 189, 202–204, 206, 22, 24, 26–28, 33, 35, 36,
208, 210, 226, 227, 229, 230, 38–40, 42, 44, 45, 63, 64, 70,
Subject Index 405
71, 73–74, 83, 84, 86–88, 90, harp, 347

91n11, 109, 110, 112, 113, percussive instruments, 344
116, 117, 120–122, 124, 125, piano, 31, 57, 66, 118, 293, 357,
127–129, 136, 141–143, 152, 365, 383, 384
155, 167, 168, 170, 172, 174, timpani, 364
183–185, 187, 190, 201–204, Musical Vibrations, 333
207–210, 225, 229, 237–239, Music Theatre International (MTI),
241, 251, 269–271, 274, 284, 84
292, 294, 304–306, 315, 327, Musixmatch, 18, 85, 87, 228, 233
333, 334, 355, 358, 359, 365,
370
and punk, 133, 136, 137, 139, N
288, 294 National Aeronautics and Space
and reggae, 17, 19, 43, 133, 150, Administration (NASA),
305, 317 346
and rock, 43, 87, 109, 118, 120, National Geographic, 359
121, 123, 131, 133, 136, 137, Netflix, 83, 199, 233
139, 153, 154, 177, 186, 201, Newscorp, 33
208, 222, 231, 256, 271, 286, Nielsen Music, 91n11
288, 359
and serialism, 314, 354, 355,
357 O
and vaporwave, 278, 309, 310 Opacity, 5, 73, 384
and video game music, 230,
231
and vocal music, 9, 10, 18, 35, P
41, 45, 66, 67, 70, 79, 85, 90, Parody, 80, 118–120, 131, 149, 188,
107, 113–115, 131, 135, 144, 322, 325
145, 148, 155, 167–210, 221, Pixar, 83, 250
223, 227, 244–256, 269, 283, ProZ.com, 281
325, 384
and world music, 26, 36, 39, 40,
61, 135, 152, 153, 384 R
Musical instruments Radio Blind, 227
accordion, 123, 293 Reception, 3, 9, 69, 73, 74, 78–90,
drums, 37, 154, 222, 274, 364 168, 198, 223, 237, 291,
fiddle, 293 323
flute, 38, 126, 293, 344, 348 Repression/repressive measures, 17,
harmonica, 293 22, 131, 136, 286
406 Subject Index
Rhythm, 10, 23, 31, 33, 35–37, 43, Teatro Coliseum, 83

46, 74, 76, 79, 81, 85, 109, Teatro Lope de Vega, 82
112, 114, 118–120, 122, 124, Teatro Silvia Pivia, 83
126, 127, 130, 132, 134, 135, Thai Blind Orchestra, 333
139–156, 168, 173, 174, 182, TikTok, 229
191, 250, 251, 254, 280, 283, Transcultural/transculturality/
290, 306, 309, 311, 314, 322, transculturalism, 1, 27–29, 34,
323, 327, 344, 355, 357, 359, 63, 64, 85, 112, 114, 115,
363, 366, 369, 385 117, 118, 127, 134, 154, 222,
224, 284, 303, 386
Transformation, 2, 6, 9–11, 25, 27,
S 34, 36–38, 46n3, 60, 67, 69,
Sacrosanctum Concilium, 204 71, 78, 107, 122, 128, 173,
Sferisterio, 253 191, 291, 302, 305, 311, 323,
See also Macerata Opera Festival 328, 330, 331, 356, 358, 373,
Shazam, 87, 229 384
Shorts factory, 284 Transgression/transgressive, 11, 59,
The Simpsons, 35 81, 82, 123, 124, 140, 223,
Sir Mix-a-Lot, 35 241
SongMeanings, 228 Translating Music, 78, 91n10
Songs, 1, 6, 17, 62, 113, 167, 219, Translation
274, 304, 345 borrowing, 8, 68, 118, 121, 122,
Sony, 30 136, 169, 173, 322, 323, 349,
Sound art, 62, 315, 348, 359, 360 355, 356
Soundscape, 62, 117, 118, 127, 230, cannibalistic, 76, 314
305, 344, 345, 348, 351, 352, cultural translation, 9, 71–78,
358, 359, 361, 364, 372 123, 125, 182, 311
Spotify, 33, 129, 138, 141, 279, 280 interlingual translation, 9, 36, 68,
Stagetext, 227 89, 207, 225, 229, 245, 246,
Statista, 39, 43, 44 252–254, 326
Summerfest, 223 intersemiotic translation, 60, 68,
111, 236, 244, 329
intersensorial translation, 7, 221,
T 252–254, 324
Target text, 4, 5, 60, 69, 72, 81, 125, intralingual translation, 88, 89,
221, 311, 373 201, 252–254
transcreation, 9, 25, 27, 68, 69, lyrics translation, 25, 35, 68, 182,
76, 248 185, 235, 250, 385
Subject Index 407
mediation, 9, 27, 31, 36, 38, 64, V

67–71, 108, 111, 115, 122, Variations, 10, 28, 31, 36, 38, 63,
141, 223, 237, 245, 252–254 73, 112, 118, 124, 125, 130,
source text, 35, 72, 81, 83, 155, 136, 141, 145, 149, 150, 171,
170, 184, 234 173, 204, 205, 244, 289,
start text, 35, 71, 322 305–307, 309, 310, 320, 322,
Translators, 5, 6, 9, 11, 59, 62, 71, 323, 331, 344, 348, 372
72, 79, 85, 91n3, 110, 144, Viacom, 33
148, 154, 168, 170, 171, 202,
221, 234, 235, 241, 242, 244,
245, 247, 255, 256, 281–283, W
285, 286, 307, 308, 311, 313, Walt Disney Production, 33, 83, 84,
314, 318, 322, 335, 350, 353, 90, 188, 195, 198, 250, 251
373, 385 Warner/Time Warner, 30, 33
Transnational/transnationalism, 20, Whale, 62, 346–348, 362, 366,
27, 29, 30, 44, 64, 67, 76, 368–370
115–117, 123, 143, 147, Wild sanctuary, 372
154, 170, 171, 202, 204, Wolf, 351, 364
208, 224 World Street Music, 294
U Y
Universal, 30 YouTube, 19, 33, 41, 233, 362

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN TRANSLATING

SERIES EDITOR: MARGARET ROGERS

MUSIC AND TRANSLATION

NEW MEDIATIONS IN THE DIGITAL AGE

More information about this series at

Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

Cover Credit: © Manik Maity / EyeEm

author, is innovative, inspiring, and ground-breaking in its exploration of music

Part I Music and Translation in a Global Context 15

2 Music, Centres and Peripheries 17

3 Music and Translation Today 57

3.2.2 Music Reception and Translation 82

Part II Translating Music 101

4 What is Translated? Styles, Genres and More107

5 What is Translated: Vocal Music, Voice and More167

6 How is Music Translated? Mapping the Landscape of

Part III Music Translates 265

7 Music and Human Activities269

8 In and Beyond the Material301

9 Music and the Natural World343

Lucile Desblache is Professor of Translation and Transcultural Studies

Fig. 2.1 Dance rhythms 37

Table 3.1 Textual support provided at live music events 89

© The Author(s) 2019 1

film and media (Chion, 1995), philosophy (Kramer, 2012), politics

­ erformed, consumed and distributed. Nevertheless, the ivory tower syn-

exposed to 4 hours 17 minutes of music daily, either through personal

cannot be dissociated from power, and tends to favour dominant voices.

song translation, highlights the difference between translation (faithful

Equally, this book aims to encourage musicians to discover how and

• To expand the existing framework for understanding music and trans-

lyrics in its several forms has been covered comprehensively by translation

Jankélévitch, V. (1961/1983). La musique et l’ineffable. Paris: Seuil. Translated

Tagg, P. (2012). Music’s meanings: A modern musicology for non-musos. New York

Gluck, C. (1762/2000). Libretto by de Calzabigi, R. Orfeo ed Euridice. Vienna:

Artopium music dictionary. Retrieved July 4, 2018, from https://musicterms.

© The Author(s) 2019 17

His engagement as a singer-songwriter—he writes his own lyrics and

repressive Meles Zenami regime and of its unfulfilled promises, it makes

These words, so resonant in the post-2008 world, were written by Hannah

2.1 Music and Borders

culture. Others followed, promoting cultures such as Breton and Basque

Early twentieth century musicologists such as Cecil Sharp (1916) or

Music also developed as a channel of expression against colonial and

culture that mirrored their dominance, at the expense of marginal musics

styles, are being translated in the sense of lyrics translation, or transcre-

a massive scale in the eighteenth century, the most spectacular musical

and ethnomusicologists, have aimed to show how music, and especially

spite of its attempts to protect and enhance cultural diversity, the

2.2 Music and Cosmopolitanism

Yet by essence, music depends on variations—it always uses existing

it invites us to think about how people in specific places and at specific

As suggested earlier, in the music industry, translation tends to be silenced

localised products are generally domesticated as much as possible, so that

connectivities, and argues that translation plays an essential role in creating

In the arts, intercultural research is still emerging, and tends primarily

Maurice Ravel’s composition is based on a rhythmic cell ostinato of two

Part I Music and Translation in a Global Context 15

2 Music, Centres and Peripheries 17

3 Music and Translation Today 57

3.2.2 Music Reception and Translation 82

Part II Translating Music 101

4 What is Translated? Styles, Genres and More107

5 What is Translated: Vocal Music, Voice and More167

6 How is Music Translated? Mapping the Landscape of

Part III Music Translates 265

7 Music and Human Activities269

8 In and Beyond the Material301

9 Music and the Natural World343

Fig. 2.1 Dance rhythms 37

Table 3.1 Textual support provided at live music events 89

erformed, consumed and distributed. Nevertheless, the ivory tower syn-

2.1 Music and Borders

2.2 Music and Cosmopolitanism

2.3 Music, English and Anglo-Saxon Cultures

Katan, D. (2014). Uncertainty in the translation professions: A time to t ranscreate?

3.1 Definitional Aspects

3.1.2 Musical Texts

3.1.4 Cultural Translation and (Un)Translatability

3.2.2 Music Reception and Translation

4.1 Musical Hermeneutics and Ekphrasis