How Disney uses Language

so when you have a fever of 103 and decide to make a youtube video three things are going to happen first you find out through the YouTube comments that when you're sick you end up sounding like dipper from gravity falls you're listening to girly Icelandic pop sensation babba no I wasn't that important second you convince yourself that for whatever reason Viacom owns Disney Disney wants to commission a hit because for some reason Viacom wants more money and third and finally you come up with an insane conspiracy theory that Disney is looking to the rising popularity of musicals in order to find musicians to work on their new animated adventures a conspiracy theory which Disney totally proves is actually true when they hire mr. Hamilton himself to work on the next big hit in Moana and it shows both frozen and Moana have a strong female lead both have an opening number that explains the economy of the local populace and each of the sidekicks gets their own comedic relief tune that explores their warped sense of the world drink in my hand my snow up against the burning sand probably getting gorgeously tanned in summer when is Tara headed any God what can I say that you're welcome and of course both have that one big show-stopping number that was written to sell albums but that wasn't a part of Moana that really grabbed my attention this was solo so let me see if I can explain why this is such a great musical moment throughout history Disney has had a tendency to set their films in a variety of different countries and cultures and as wonderful and cosmopolitan is that all is it immediately creates a problem for the music department now you have to figure out what and or how you're going to musically deal with communicating the setting of this film on one hand you can just ignore the setting and continue with whatever style of music that producers had originally intended this is where you're going to find your Aladdin's and jungle books there's a whole lot about these films that really musically suggest that we're in the Middle East or India and whatever there is that might be trying to suggest that we're in the Middle East or India well [Music] well honestly that's a subject on its own but on the other side of the spectrum if you want to try to musically communicate your story setting you can try to include music that's culturally significant to the area but then you start moving dangerously close to the hole and the world of ethnomusicology or the study of music with relation to cultural significance is incredibly complicated not all cultures place the same weight on music some cultures don't even acknowledge music the same way we do and not all experts really agree on how everything is defined in ethnomusicology it's all just really dense and complicated so just trying to copy and paste a specific piece of music or whatever you might think sounds indicative of a certain cultures music almost always spells for disaster this is where people like to point out instances where Disney might not have been as culturally aware as they could have been and this is where you tend to see a lot of people talking about films like Pocahontas and I mean I guess it's kind of right but I would rather talk about brother bear seeing this scene and brother bear you hear this piece of music called transformation [Music] and you might start thinking yourself oh that sounds really different it totally communicates the sort of ethnic tone to this story I feel so culturally aware right now now if I have any weave excuse me anime fans in the audience you might find that this actually sounds kind of familiar probably because it sounds really similar to the opening to ghost in the shell' that might have something to do with the fact that both of these pieces use Bulgarian choir music ghost in the shell' was heavily inspired by it but I think they actually hired a Bulgarian women's choir to sing for this piece specifically so they used music that most people hadn't heard of that had nothing to do with the context of the film in order to make the scene sound I don't know more magical alien and it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with that and but there's actually one thing that they did really well in the scene if you listen closely and happen to have an incredibly thorough understanding of the languages of the world you'll hear that the lyrics in this piece are in in UPI which is the language that belongs to a group of people by the same name who are from Alaska where this film is set so this film actually got something right and that they used a language other than English to represent a native population and that is very important now I know in the past that I've discussed how lyrics aren't music and I stand by that studying lyrics is more like studying poetry than music that's why almost any composer that's ever written opera has had a librettist someone who wrote the words for them but if you're going to write a piece of music that uses lyrics ie a song then you're going to have to alter your piece of music in order to fit your lyrics it isn't as easy as just writing a piece of music and then slapping words wherever you want them the act of text setting is an art form unto itself and one of the most important aspects of text setting is figuring out how you're going to musically emphasize the syllables in your lyrics if you give each syllable a note that's called syllabic text settings incidentally information vegetable animal and mineral I know the kings of England effect was the fights historical from marathon to Waterloo in order categorical if you give each syllable multiple notes that's called melismatic text setting okay and let me just go ahead and stop you right there you sound terrible and if you mix and match it's called pneumatic Oh [Music] all right here but creating a musical emphasis on different syllables is really important otherwise your song won't make sense here's an example it's happy birthday to you not happy birthday to you but different languages will necessarily have the same number of syllables for words that have direct translations on top of that every language puts varying emphasis on different syllables that's one of the more difficult aspects of learning a language and why most people will stress that you have to go out into the world and learn from a native speaker because you can't really learn syllabic stress and their meanings from a book what I know what do you do know what are you doing what are you doing know what are you doing so what all this means is that if you compose a piece of music for a certain language you've already altered the fundamental structure of your piece of music if I write a piece of music for a French text I would have never written that exact same piece of music even if the text had the same meaning but happened to be in English that's why a lot of song translations can sound kind of awkward if you don't believe me just look up Disney songs and other languages or YouTube a few English covers of anime openings you'll see what I mean and at some times the piece will become more melismatic or syllabic because the translated language will have too many or too few syllables this is a critical reason as to why most operas and high art songs won't get translated from their original language so even though Brother Bear uses Bulgarian music to try and convey an Alaskan sound which all right they were actually on the right track by using the native language using a song set from a text from a native language in order to represent a native population of the area creates a new piece of music that would not have otherwise existed had the composer just ignored the setting and written everything in English you can still represent a native population or culture without having to tread close to the hole and you can actually see this exact situation in the opening to the Lion King they would have not arrived at a piece of music that sounded like what they have had they not used Sulu those are the speech patterns syllabic stresses and literally just the number of syllables that they had to take into account just would not have happened had they written the entire piece in English in the Hunchback of Notre Dom they throw a bunch of Latin around and even though it might not explicitly reference the chant that it comes from it still lends that old Catholic sound to all the music you can hear something similar in the opening to frozen with oily the song was inspired by Sami yoking and a Danish hymn called daily air jordan so because it's inspired by Sami joking I'm pretty sure this tune doesn't use any explicit language with a direct translation [Music] but that's important because the Yoakum style is singing wouldn't always use the native language this is a rare instance where using the native language would have actually been the wrong move um there's a similar situation in Pocahontas so even though you see in here Pocahontas speak a little plotting in a film I'm exactly not to run having anyone sing in patan would have been a big problem most Native American singing isn't done with their respective languages like most Sami yoking Native American music is sung using vocables or syllables that have no linguistic meaning but are significant as lyrics for music again cultures are really complicated so this isn't a hard and fast rule but when you hear this and the opening to steady as the beating drum [Music] [Music] like the opening to frozen it remains true to how the indigenous population would treat language with their music but even though all of these pieces of music use lyrics be very linguistic or not that are significant to the native population does it really convey where these stories are taking place did anyone hear the opening to frozen and immediately think ah yes of course we're in Scandinavia unless your audience is familiar with the language music or lyrical style or just the general sound of whatever culture you're trying to simulate the entire process is kind of lost the best way to remedy this problem is to actually have characters sing in these other languages that way even if the audience has no idea what language they're hearing the cultural expression is anchored in the characters and not just the setting of the story in the first four examples we don't really see anyone singing in any other languages everyone for the most part just speaks English and the disembodied voices sing in languages other than English they might represent the land or the setting but not the people or the culture so kind of ends up missing the point it makes more sense to have the music be more diegetic in order to relate it to the people that it's trying to describe for example in brave you hear Merida's mother's saying my bean bond was sow I'm really sorry it's a little lullaby written in Gaelic and specifically written for this film and it's played during a flashback scene where Merida is very young and frightened by a storm one of the unique aspects of this scene is that the characters switch between languages the Queen speaks in English but then sings in Gaelic the implication is that most of the audience won't really understand the Gaelic which makes the piece sound that much more personal the queen isn't just singing a Scottish piece she's a Scottish Queen specifically singing a piece of music in a Scottish language to her Scottish daughter even if you haven't been paying attention and don't know where the film is set or who the two characters are you can understand the significance of the relationship by the Queen singing in a native language even though English is the vernacular [Music] there's a similar instance in the opening the lilo and stitch where the music is more dye genic or at least that's the implication even though for the majority of the song you don't see the choir or the soloist you do see the EP players playing along with what you hear and the in samba finishes the piece [Music] same goes for the scene where Nani is singing Aloha oi - lilo this serves a triple function first it demonstrates the efficacy of having a character sing in a native language as opposed to the vernacular second this piece of music actually makes sense in terms of the narrative Aloha OE was written by Queen Liliuokalani the last monarch of the kingdom of Hawaii and Aloha OE translates to farewell to thee it became a symbol for the loss of her country and was sung at her funeral and in this scene nani thinks she's losing lilo so she totally lo goodbye in the most Hawaiian way she can and third because this piece of music exists in the real world it actually serves to anchor the listener in an authentically Hawaiian sonic landscape it's the musical equivalent of having an establishing shot of a city with the Eiffel Tower in the background in order to visually communicate to the audience that we are in Paris Lloyd but wait but if we're using a real piece of music that has serious cultural significance and a piece of media that isn't explicitly written created by and for that culture then isn't this cultural appropriation wait does that mean that having an establishing shot of the Eiffel Tower is architectural cultural appropriation I don't know anymore either way you must now see where this is all going we went from using a bulgarian women's choir to make a story in alaska sound magical to using native languages to establish where these stories are set to having character singing native languages in order to implicate said characters in the cultural context that these stories are trying to demonstrate to now actually using music as a way to facilitate a method of communication between the represented culture on-screen and a suggested culture of the audience so we know the way begins in Tokelau in' but unlike any of the other pieces of original music we've seen so far we know the way translates to english midway while trying to maintain a consistent musical structure now we see something like in a circle of life but as soon as the song translates to English the melody changes because of how difficult it is to maintain a consistent musical style while switching from one language to another but here they do everything they can to keep all the music consistent even though the language changes in this case you're given a musical demonstration of how the language influences how the music is constructed and how translating that piece of music to English creates such a difference and to prove that to you I have a little experiment this is going to be a musical version of one of those magic eye pictures on the left you're going to hear and see the token allowance section of this piece and on the right you're going to see in here the English part [Music] No Oh so this piece doesn't just demonstrate how using a different language can change a piece of music it literally shows the audience how this piece of music specifically has to change in order to go from the native language of the representative population to the English that the audience hears the character speaking to each other the transition between Tokelau into English bridges the gap between cultures in such a way that the audience doesn't even notice there's even a subtle transition where you stop seeing the cast singing when the piece translates to English implying that the people on screen are so detached from the audiences culture that they literally don't speak English none of that magical Disney magic translation because love BS this piece uses music as a common language in order to highlight emphasize and celebrate the cultural divide between the audience and the characters in the story in a way that's both welcoming and understanding it doesn't just demonstrate that this film is set in a Polynesian culture it musically welcomes the audience to cross the cultural divide and explore the world of Moana anyway that's it for me for now thank you guys for watching I really appreciate it if you want to help me make these videos a little faster a little cleaner consider donating to my patreon page and if you have any music questions follow me on Twitter and twitch so I can answer your questions live but other than that thanks for watching oh yeah by the way Disney uh I know you're listening if you want to make a lot of money and I mean a lot of money have your next disney princess be south korean

Channel: Sideways

Views: 1,762,394

Rating: 4.9310646 out of 5

Keywords: How Disney uses Language, Disney, Language, Moana, We Know The Way, Tokelauan, Hunchback, Notre, Dame, Latin, Lion, King, Zulu, Lilo, Stitch, Hawaii, Brave, Gaelic, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Frozen, Vuelie, Vocables, Syllables, Melismatic, Syllabic, Culture, Cultural, Appropriation, Ethnomusicology

Id: btxZGzWlsMw

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 23 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/thebatmansymbol]

Man that was layered. I'm glad I had the time to listen to the whole thing. So fascinating.

[u/-MarbleSoda-]

"15 minutes?! I'm not watching this whole thing..."

15 minutes later

"That was really nice :)"

[u/KimLeaLane]

That was actually very interesting. I've never thought if this before.

[u/Chrisixx]

Here a link to the Tokelauan song he talks about, it's quite good.

[u/TheRealF0xE]

He really does sound like Dipper.

[u/Gizmo1324]

Oh man, a South Korean disney movie would make a shit load of money.

[u/teoSCK]

I don't see how the Brother Bear scene has anything to do with the notion of "Noble Savages". The magical aspect of the stories is something that is present in many other Disney films, and the movie takes place in the Stone Age, so we don't really have an idea of the music they would've had. I think the music they went with was just as valid a choice as a derivative of say, Mongolian throat singing. It sounds epic and spiritual and fits the scene well imho.

That being said, I really enjoyed the video, especially the final comparison. No surprise that Lin-Manuel Miranda managed to pull that off, he does similar things in his musicals.

[u/[deleted]]

It's no surprise Lin's so good at this. In the Heights does this often on a much larger scale in all of the music.

[u/[deleted]]

Cultural appropriation? That is ridiculous. Disney has been very good about this. It's cultural exchange, and it's one of the beautiful things of the world we live in.