No hard Feelings, Ad. I think you hit the nail on the head: the music needs to be suited to the language, or rather, the music evolves from the language. You could go a step further and say that the music is a product of the culture. I guess both are true. Then there's the further complication of the listener's own tongue acting as a perception filter. This is particularly obvious when you listen to Chinese, Thai, or Vietnamese music; all these being tone languages, as opposed to Indo-european languages which are intonation languages. I wonder what that theory says about Arabic, though, considering the music I hear wafting from Mosques...
I'm always jealous, btw, of how well most Western Europeans - particularly the non English, Germanic tribes - speak English (such as you do) and a plethora of other foreign languages besides. I try to excuse my linguistic retardation by the fact that Australia is so geographically isolated, hoping that's the only reason. As a further aside, Holland is my second favourite European country for garage (but only for their English sung songs
). There's no doubt the Dutch possess a musical genius.
