Progressive Linguistics

With Italy month come and gone and France month just around the corner, I've been thinking about langague and how it relates to prog. For a genre with so many international scenes, there's a great variety. There's a little bit of prog in almost every major world language. Therein lies a dilema: how can one understand all of the lyrics on the deep topics Prog rock indulges in?

I'd argue to some extent that it doesn't really matter all that much. For better or worse, English has become the dominant lingua franca of the world. This leads to two effects on prog: either singing in English despite it being a non-native language (common in Romance Language and German Speaking nations), or sticking to instrumentals (Common in the Benelux nations, Scandinavia, Germany, and to a lesser extent France). On one hand, in a genre so focused upon the instrumentation, this is not a problem at all. Many of the great guitarists, drummers, bassists, and keyboardists have come from outside the anglophone world to make great leaps forward in their craft. This theoretic state of "lyrical irrelevance" has done a great amount to spread prog into areas of the world where English is poorly understood.

The Sapir–Whorf Theory in psychology states that an individual's mother language influences their way of thinking an perception of the world. For example, the Pirahã language in the Amazon has no word for numbers above one, just a word for one and many. Tests have shown a distinction inability to perceive and function with even counting amongst these people.

This leads to a conclusion that singing in non-native languages on prog records is foolish. Since the lyrical intent of a song will be thought of in the mother tongue first and then translated, those special thoughts that are shaped by the language will be completely lost. This leads to a loss in the true message. Even sillier is to invent a new language (Magma with Kobain), as then no one will get the message and pretension ensues. Additionally, while a good portion of instrumental prog is intentionally vocal-free, to remove non English lyrics would be a silly practice. Language is a beatiful part of a person's existance, and they should use it fully in communicating thier ideas.

This leads to the question of the prog fans: should you learn languages to understand progressive lyrics? I would say no, not solely for prog. I speak one other language besides English: French. I'd say I'm at an intermediate level after 5 years in school and some outside studies of mine. Ange's Emile Jacotey is the only French language Prog album I have heard in full, and my results with it have been mixed. Parts of it I could get at the first listen, parts I'm slowly translating in my head, and others are going way to fast for me. To really get the fullest from Prog in that language would require basic fluency, which takes an immense amount of time and effort. I have many other reasons I take French however, parce-que je veux utilizer la français pour communication et culture. Rather than wanting to listen to prog and then learning a language, one should want to learn a language and then listen to its prog.