Music Across Languages

When setting out on this current events thing, I decided that I was going to try and find interesting, less seen articles that I thought were interesting enough to share. This week I've decided to share this CNN article about AfroCubism, which is a band of Malian and Cuban musicians. The blending of two musical cultures first drew my eye, but as they described how that the bands members do not all speak the same language, and how they work together to create their own language in music, that's what really made me enjoy this article.

Tioumani Diabate, who plays the kora and is the musician whom the article focuses on makes the comment that AfroCubism shows that music can bring people together. I am very much into the uniting power of music, and of how music is able to speak to the deepest parts of ourselves. I admit that I do not know much about nor really follow international music, so I had never heard about AfroCubism before and to now know about such a collaboration is really really cool.

Music is one of the things that makes us human, allows us to express ourselves, so I definitely see music as being important to our culture and to who we are, and can be used to help see those differences in culture. And the bringing of two cultures together to create one sound allows us to continue to close the gap in the extreme differences we see in one another.

So perhaps I got more out of the article than was initially there, and I am certainly interested in what kind of thoughts you have after reading it (and watching some of the videos) too.