What Makes You Enjoy Foreign Music?

[Uninstall]

What's good everyone (●´・∀・｀)ﾉ

Excuse my wording for the title..
..But I was wondering what makes you (in particular) enjoy music in which the vocal elements are sung in a language you don't understand? Because I know that there are a number of yall who can speak Japanese and listen to music in Japanese but then there's also those who don't speak Japanese but do listen to music in Japanese, or whatever other language. What factors make you enjoy it? How do you "rate" a piece? Under what criteria? What makes you enjoy music sung in this language more than the other?

Personally I've been listening to a lot of Hip-Hop in which the spittin is done in Russian, a language I don't know jack crap of. Though sometimes feeling the energy and vibes I just go "Daaamn that heat sounds ill" and I can just nod my head to it.

So in the end for me it's basically the musicality (the effect on how I favourably "receive" the music, sense of musical creativty, dynamics, energy, mood etc.) if I don't understand what they're saying.

If I do understand it (i.e. Japanese, English, Dutch etc.) I'll throw in cultural relevance into the "criteria", so to say. Heck, even if I don't understand it I'll consider this （●＾o＾●）

I'm curious for your thoughts... (ゝω・｀)

[AhGwee]

Nostalgia could be one of the reasons. Used to listen to canto-pop when I was little. And every Hong Kong drama always had an opening theme and an ending too *ehehe*

Anime themes. When I felt that they were composed really well and that the voices go really well with them, I listen to them constantly, even trying to learn the vocals and lyrics.

A lot of English songs are great, but I find songs before the year 2000 to be much better than nowadays. Some are still catchy however.

[~SnowAngel~]

First and foremost, I do not like the majority of western music. The way guys and girls sing can get on my nerves.. and on top of that, there's this spike of "dub step" music which I'm not fond of. I tried to get myself to like things, but I gave up even on my "favorite" albums after learning about anime. Japanese music seems to be more true to who they are, but americans seem to be forcing themselves to relate to a bunch of stereotyped problems. Even voice can be good, I think that voice and corrupt or distort music sometimes and make music lose its value. I listen to mainly voiceless music, but I still listen to things that sound like angelic or chant music. (tales of symphonia and ar tonelico). The majority I listen to is soundtracks, because they're focused on giving you a certain emotion, and make with that emotion. Usually, when they add words, they have to take out some music which then makes it sound weak. (instrumentals for example).

[AhGwee]

Mmm, yes. OSTs have that power to hit certain emotions really well.

[Decalcomania]

Most of my music consists of Electronic music, so I cannot say much. But I do have some Japanese, Korean and Filipino songs that I listen to every now and again because I am familiar with the languages.

Most of my Japanese songs are J-Rock and Visual Kei because that is what I like the most. J-Pop is just not my style. Korean is a bit different. I listen to K-Pop a lot and I do not even know if there is K-Rock. Filipino, it being another language that I speak, is much like how a person listens to their own language.

But Dubstep and much of the other Electronic music is foreign to me because they mainly originate from Europe and I am from the Americas. But I do not see a difference, since there are no lyrics involved mostly.

[vittusk]

First of all, i am not an expert musician so i apologize if my answer is kind of simple.

I always have had a fetish with the female voice so most of the music i hear is sing by womens, for my the music is form like this -> 60% instruments, no matter if they are synthetic or not & 40% Voice, the tone, speed, delicacy or the strong if it's the case <-.
About the aspect of how a rate a track, for my is a matter of feelings over technical aspects, i mean, i've heard songs that technically are simple but the feelings you receive for them are undescribable, for example, this song of Rocio Durcal
And what makes me enjoy a song is a mix of all the aspects i mentioned above, some examples are:

  Spoiler: Miko - Last Cherryblossom 

  Spoiler: 仲村芽衣子 - Palette 

  Spoiler: Kuuki Koudan - Aoi Hana 

  Spoiler: Marie - Yakusoku 

[~SnowAngel~]

Go to my visitor's message and listen to the song. That's usually the kind of feeling I like from vocals, but sometimes others are an exception.

[HatoriTakaya]

While I still had no injuries on my fracture wrist. I usually listen to a variety of music in different languages and their genre musics in their country. By no mean I'm limited to a particular type of culture when performing the piece. But I enjoy it based on how well they can sing well the music without too much modifications on their voice. But instrumentals music of their culture music is also something I enjoy, be it tribal, religious, dance, ritual, etc.

[stardice]

hm In fact im one of those who can't understand Japanese at all....but there's one song I have been liking for long time now....it's Hime Murasaki...I guess the reason would be....when I was watching Basilisk anime...of course with eng subtitle, I was flowed by the story line already and the when the ending song started. It felt like it was very touched listening the song while thinking about the story I just watched.

[alexsdu]

First of all, because it's foreign to me ears(beside English and Malay), well at least at first time. Now it's normal to me.
Plus, I like to listen to music while in from of PC, unless when I play FPS online.
When my Winamp play some English song while I'm reading something English, it(the song) tend to jumbled up with what I'm reading up to a point I can't focus or understand what I read.
When it come to foreign music, it wouldn't disturb my reading. I'll hope y'all know what I mean.

Second thing is that it's not something that I usually hear outside my room(local and English music). It's refreshing to know that I'm listening to something that not many people around me listen to and enjoying it.

Slightly off topic, most of my music collections are old songs from the late 70's down to the 10's, except for anime soundtracks.
Like my English collection, most of them are oldies, such as Glenn Miller's Orchestra. The latest ones are from the movies OST and Hans Zimmer's Modern Warfare 2's soundtrack.
My French collection consist mostly of Edith Piaf's songs.
My German collection are In Extremo, Rammstein and some the 40's era songs like Lili Marlene.
A couples of Indonesian song, Terang Bulan(Bright Moon) and Bengawan Solo.
One Spanish song, Amigos Para Siempre, meaning Friends For Life (closing theme for Olympic Game in Barcelona).
One Portuguese song, Elite Squad movie's theme song, Tropa de Elite.
My Russian's collection mostly military song, sang by the Russian Red Army Choir, and Tatu.
My Japanese's collection consist of Enka, anime soundtracks, game soundtracks, J-POP(from late 90's), Vocaloids and some 70's-80's songs.