Guest: Artists singing in improvised / invented / personal languages

STREAMABLE

志方あきこAkiko Shikata sings medieval/ethnic/celtic/fantasy music in several languages (japanese, italian, latin, english...) including Hymmnos, an imaginary language.

Angélique Kidjo is fluent in Fon, French, Yoruba, and English and sings in all four languages and also her own personal language which includes words that serve as songtitles such as Batonga. Malaika is a song sung in Swahili language. She often utilizes Benin's traditional Zilin vocal technique and jazz vocalese.

Circle has recorded some material in a made-up "language" of their own called Meronian, and accordingly their first album was called Meronia.

Julien Jacob African music

Sigur Rós Sing some songs in Volenska (Hopelandic in English) a meaningless constructed language based on Icelandic phonetics. The rest are sung in Icelandic

Treble They're form the Netherlands but their music and imaginary language are clearrly based on African sounds.

Zap Mama African Music

NOT STREAMABLE

Caramba Swedish duo comprised of Ted Gardestad and Michael B. Tretow, better known for producing ABBA. They produced only one album as Caramba in 1981 with all tracks in a non-existent language.

Mikel Laboa has experimented during his whole career with an improvised meaningless language based in the phonetics of the Basque language as spoken in Lekeitio (Bizkaia). He otherwise uses Basque.


Do you know an artist that should be in this list? Answer to the thread

Note: Let's include only those efforts to make it sound like a real language. This would exclude pure rhythmic uses of the voice like most Scat or beatboxing.

Caramba added here

I added Esther Lamandier under Ladino artists. 1492 and the Catholic Monarchs in common with WELGR 03. It's said that the Queen didn't wash herself.

Thanks our Tina (late, yes?) and sanaag in African music

Added, thanks TheRealEvilOne.

They sing in Hymmnos language in the soundtrack of the Playstation game Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia

The Hymmnos language
Although it is a synthetic language constructed solely for the game, it is translatable and not just pure gibberish. Hymmnos basic grammar consists of "feeling sound(想音)-V-O-C", and many words are taken from existing languages, mainly English, Japanese, Sanskrit and German. The game's soundtracks' booklets even feature translations of the Hymmnos parts of nearly every song in the game.

glendarian said:
(Am I on the right lines here? I'm new :-)). Great group, thanks :-)

Err, I don't know. This thread is about artists that invent or improvise the language they use to sing, so you are not supposed to understand it, but fell it or something like that. If she does so in some songs, you are in the right thread (please confirm, because I don't know that).

This thread is just for fun and doesn't belong to the main artist directory, the artists here won't be added to the radio unless they use a Natural Endangered Language too.

Thanks to you for taking part.