Language, music and loving to learn

Abstract

<p>As my body twitches in eighth-notes in front of the drum composer in full enjoyment of my new track, my ecstatic joy is dampened by the sudden realisation that I might be trying to achieve the impossible. I am using a musical phrase of Malian origin on top of which I have dropped a hybrid Hip Hop-UK Garage beat, and I intend to rap over it in German. My new track is called “ allein” , “alone” in English. It is a classical lament of lost loves. The rap in it is undoubtedly tight, I know that. More than ten years ago, when self- styled rappers were still rapping in ungrammatical school English, I was amongst the very first in Germany to rap in German, and my rap style back then has influenced generations of German MCs. Still, the lyrics of “allein” are not easily digestible. There is more than the usual cliche of “I let them all go, and now I am alone”. Woven into the words is a macabre strain, the masochism of a man who enjoys his solitude because it nurtures his weltschmerz . Am I not going too far in transcending musical, geographical and lyrical boundaries?</p>