4 Songs &
People
1:4
"Der er noget
i luften"
"There's Something in the
Air"
In the video "Soon Coming to a Social Media Near You," I said that the first of our 4 Songs & People would be "Der er noget i luften"—Danish for "There's Something in the Air." And so it is.
I also told you I'd see you again very soon. That was in August, so I
guess "very soon" depends on your perspective. I recorded the song
for you in the sweltering heat of summer and planned to post it then with
written material to accompany it. The plan was to post the song at the opposite
end of the year from Christmas, a way to encourage hearing the song outside of
its traditional context. Yet winter is already upon us (it’s even snowing
outside) and waiting ‘til next summer…well…no. As last summer fined away into fall,
I was massively retarded by trains across Europe, as well as business in France
and China. Schedules on screens did not hold. For decades, we’ve been sold the vaunted
time-saving magic of software, but what about the oceans of hours spent
securing and maintaining all that digital stuff, and the way it affects the way
we think and act, on screen and off? We’ll dwell further on the retards another
time. For now, let it suffice to say that they are not without relation to the questions
that have motivated 4 Songs & People: very human issues, persisting still,
now in an age mesmerized by visions of ever greater productivity, power, and
perfection.
In my youth, I taught guitar off and on, from high school to nearly the
end of medical school. Basically, though, as a musician, I’m an amateur, and mostly
play with family and friends. So, what’s behind the present postings? Aside
from the joy of playing, I have in mind not mesmerizing visions of perfection,
but human issues as wellsprings of yearning and doing, expressed in music and words.
Recording Mississippi John Hurt’s “My Creole Belle” for a young Danish friend
made me once again think about the ways music affects us. Without words or
common logic, music can make people laugh or cry, think or numb, soothe or
inflame. Music has its way of speaking to us, cognitively and emotionally.
Sometimes it elicits a wide pallet of thoughts and emotions, on other
occasions, a surprisingly narrow range of them, or nothing. Music—including
lyrics, i.e., words put to music—may entirely circumvent our consciousness to
reach something within us that first manifests itself after the fact. Hence,
music may serve to explore the space between you and me, between you and
yourself, me and myself, us and others.
Try to reduce music to a formula or force it to serve specific ends, and
chances are it will manage to resonate beyond these limitations. Not
surprisingly, political regimes and religions through the ages have gone out of
their way to control musical expression (some still do). We’ll leave the
politics be for now. Here, differences are our reference, and,
importantly, the time necessary for them to bear fruit. Ever notice how the same
piece of music elicits different reactions in different people and often they don’t
know why or how? To paraphrase the first line of “Der er noget i luften”:
There’s something in the air, but I don’t know what it is.
Let’s sing and try to find out.
The song was introduced to me years ago by a Dane named Anders Krag. We were
in our late 20s and early 30s. Since the lyrics reach beyond the now we are
wont to think eternal, since it puts generations in play, I find it noteworthy,
looking back, that the song was enthusiastically recommended by such a young
man. Both the melody and the lyrics were written in 1913 by another Dane,
Vilhelm Gregersen. Though it is officially a Christmas song (to some, a
Christmas carol even), it is clearly more than that. What has increasingly
engaged me about this song is the way it expresses in all simplicity the losses
life ineluctably imposes on us and the uses it makes of them. Losses are the
wilting of roses, the departure of birds as winter approaches, the distant
memory of childhood, the passing of generations. In our age, such things must
be fixed, and fast. When the going gets rough, as it invariably does from time
to time, lurks denial, hatred, and divisiveness. Yet not in "Der er noget
i luften." Where losses and differences elsewhere readily serve as reasons
for rows, they are here the stuff of which communal bonds are made. As roses
wilt, their fragrance endures in memory, and both the wilting and the fragrance
feed the web of significance between people. It is an opportunity to
connect…and an invitation to translate.
Translate? But does not music, more than words, defy translation? Well, even
so, all the more reason to strike a blow for the process of translation.
Translation is the footing on which 4 Songs & People rests,
the socle on which interpretations build, and the point from which they
emanate, consciously or not. Translation takes place not only when ferrying
between languages. It is also at work in music, in biology, in physics, and on
their respective interfaces. It is interesting in this regard that the Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021 was attributed not for the impressive work
done developing mRNA vaccines, but for the elucidation of fundamental
mechanisms by which physical input to the senses is translated into chemical
and electric messages in the body that in turn can be perceived and interpreted
by the central nervous system. In this instance the Nobel committee prioritized
"how do we do it" over "just do it"—a judicious choice in
our polarized, compartmentalized, just-do-it times. Translating has and is
often seen as a distracting difficulty in communication and those who practice
it, the invisible servants of authors writing in one language and readers
reading another, or speakers addressing a foreign audience. The task is further
underappreciated in our day as instrumentalizations of all sorts run rampant.
We increasingly rely on machine translation, enlisting the aid of artificial
intelligence to make it faster and more accurate. "Why not?" you
might pertinently ask. Why deny us the benefits of technological advances?
Indeed. As long as we have some idea of what our success threatens to have
us lose. Here the stakes are high, as what we might lose is nothing less
than agency, i.e., our place as humans in the interconnected webs that bind us. So, you see,
translating is more than a technical task. It is a voyage, a way of exploring
how people connect and disconnect.
Now, let’s go ahead and translate the lyrics of the song. When the
translation task is easy, no problem. Take the title of our song. The
translation into English is a no-brainer. A simple, literal translation will do
the trick.
"Der er" means "there is"
"noget" means "something"
and
"i luften" means—you guessed it—"in the air"
After that, things get more complicated. Literal translations won't do.
There are issues to consider, expressions, shades of meaning, choices and
sacrifices to make. Add to that, that interpretations invariably color the
translation process. For the translator/interpreter, it's a more or less a conscious
part of the job. But people translate all the time; their translations just
take place below the radar, unconsciously. The interpretation is what we act
upon consciously. As such, what we base our interpretations on can have
far-reaching consequences. All the more reason to remind us that in its heart
of hearts, translating implies ferrying between languages in ways that seek to
be both true to the original and hearable in translation.
Let’s move on to the lyrics. You’ll find the original Danish in its
entirety first, then repeated with an English translation below each line:
Der er noget i luften
som forår, skønt skoven har mistet hvert blad.
Der er noget i luften, som rosernes duften,
som fuglenes fryd,
skønt rosen er falmet, og fuglen er dragen mod syd.
som frisker mit hjerte i ungdommens bad.
Der er noget herinde, et strålende minde
med kærter og sang
om julen derhjemme, derhjemme hos moder en gang.
som lyser imod mig som stjernen fra Gud,
som leder mig stille til frelseren lille,
med barndommens fryd,
skønt barndommen flygtede som fuglen, der rejste mod syd.
om lokken er gylden, om håret er gråt,
udbred dine hænder, mens lysene brænder,
og skænk os din fred,
thi evig, ja evig er glæden, når du følger med.
with translation in English:
Der er noget i luften
There's Something in the Air
There's a something in the air, what, I do not know,
som forår, skønt skoven har mistet hvert blad.
like Spring, though the trees are baren for leaves.
Der er noget i luften, som rosernes duften,
There's a something in the air, the fragrance of roses,
som fuglenes fryd,
birds chirping for joy,
skønt rosen er falmet, og fuglen er dragen mod syd.
though roses are faded, and the birds all long since gone south.
There's a something in the air that makes me so glad,
som frisker mit hjerte i ungdommens bad.
that refreshes my heart in showers of youth.
Der er noget herinde, et strålende minde
Something's going on in here, radiant memories,
med kærter og sang
of candles and song,
om julen derhjemme, derhjemme hos moder en gang.
of Christmas back home, back home at mom's, long, long ago.
There's something in the air, messages from childhood,
som lyser imod mig som stjernen fra Gud,
shining toward me like a star from God,
som leder mig stille til frelseren lille,
leading me quietly to the newborn Savior,
med barndommens fryd,
with a child's true joy,
skønt barndommen flygtede som fuglen, der rejste mod syd.
though childhood's long vanished, headed south with the birds.
Oh, come to all of us, you, great king og kings,
om lokken er gylden, om håret er gråt,
whether your locks are fair or your hair is gray.
udbred dine hænder, mens lysene brænder,
Spread out wide your hands while all the lights shine bright
og skænk os din fred,
and grant us your peace,
thi evig, ja evig er glæden, når du følger med.
for, yes, everlasting is our joy when you are with us.
Now, time for the music video. To access it, simply click on the Danish
title, "Der er noget i luften." You’ll find there’s more to the video
than song and guitar. There’re the visuals, a pixie cap with flashing lights in
the middle of summer. As it turns out, I’m posting this as winter approaches,
but no matter, barring a major outage of the Internet, it’ll still be here next
summer. Whether summer or winter, we don’t completely abandon yuletide or the
trappings of our time, accompanying the lyrics as they have their say.
Play, sing, translate, and think.
