Somehow, I missed this post before now.

The space I was presenting assigned me a native French speaker to help with program notes and language issues. I ended up cutting all but two text pieces. One was based on poetry, so I got it translated and re-recorded it in French. The other piece, I played for some French folks and they said they liked it even though they couldn't understand the words. I wrote hefty program notes for it, explaining what it was about.

I've quit working so much with text since being overseas. My pieces previously tended to use recordings of American political debate television. Even British folks had trouble understanding the words or following the discussions. However, if they didn't also have musical meaning, they wouldn't work as pieces. They just work on more levels for Americans. People who were contemporaries of Ives could listen to his pieces and recognize all the marches and hymns and things and so they got more of the references than anybody now would, except the occasional music scholar. I don't mean to compare myself to Ives, but just point out that getting all the references isn't always integral to listening to a piece of music.

I tried doing a piece with French political recordings, but found it to be much more difficult. First, it's easier for me to find materials in the US. Media Matters for America posts media files of the worst exchanges, which makes things a bit easier for me. George Bush has his radio address. Democracy Now podcasts. And IndyMedia usually has recordings of folks chanting at the lastest protest. And, of course, I could just flip through cable "news" with a recorder at the ready. France is much less online than the United States and I don't have cable. Even if I was drowning in media, I don't understand what's going on as easily. Also, there's the same problem as in the US where issues fade away. The biggest thing here for the last several weeks was a proposed law called the CPE. I heard people singing songs about how it was bad. It was discussed daily on the news. There was a general strike every Tuesday for a while. Great for getting media! But the French government actually responds to people marching and so the law was withdrawn. It's not a current issue anymore. I think it will continue to resonate in the public consciousness for a while (it's the first time the Sorbonne has been occupied since 1968), but no political piece about a single issue has much staying power. I just don't understand the context well enough to turn it into something broader, which is undoubtedly there. The discontent of youth and all the cars burning back in November are all closely linked in some way. Somebody French is going to make some lovely art about this.

I have no idea what it would be like to listen to my Text Sound and not understand the words. But a few years ago the magazine Ou published it's archives, which were text sound pieces in English and French. When I first got it, I didn't speak any French, but many of the pieces still worked. Some didn't. The only way to find out, I think, is to get feedback from somebody who is similar to your potential audience. Getting feedback is always a good idea anyway.

Anthony Gnazzo did a piece called "The Population Explosion" which was a locked loop at the end of the A side of "10+2: 12 American Text Sound Pieces." It was just a guy saying "bang," but it went on forever, or until you flipped the record. It's a really fantastic way to represent an idea like a population explosion and it's such a simple and brilliant piece. To present it to non-english speakers, though, you would definitely need a translation. Fortunately, it's not much to translate.