Month: July 2019

In an impassioned Tumblr post on Sunday, June 30, Taylor Swift reacted to the news that the master rights to her first six albums had been sold by her former label, Big Machine Label Group, to powerful music manager Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings LLC. Swift’s letter addressed the founder of the label, Scott Borchetta, as well as Braun, describing the acquisition as her “worst case scenario” following years of perceived “bullying” from Braun and his artists. She concluded by speaking directly to fellow musicians hoping to avoid this experience. “Hopefully,” Swift wrote, “Young artists or kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation. You deserve to own the art you make.”

There are two levels of class that we take: diction classes and language classes. In diction classes, we focus only on how to pronounce the language and sound like we speak it, but we don’t actually learn to speak it. Our language classes, by contrast, tend to be normal language classes, but with an added emphasis on conversation skills (we mostly need to speak, not write, in foreign languages).

A typical conservatory undergraduate degree will require a year of language class in French, German, and Italian. They’ll also require at least a semester of diction in those languages.

I didn’t do an opera undergrad, but I did two grad degrees, both of which came with a year of diction in each of those languages, plus a semester of diction in Russian for each graduate degree. Subsequently, I did two years in the Lindemann Program at the Metropolitan Opera, which came with independent language study, one-on-one, in German, Italian, Russian and Czech (I spoke fluent French from childhood but they would have given me that, too, if I’d asked).

I went to the Love Yourself In Seoul concert films and watched a few clips here and since I regularly interact with ARMYs who speak in languages other than english, I have different perspective.

Language

Various ARMYs travelled all over the world to attend BTS concerts and can often feel overwhelmed because of the local language used. For example I can read in 7 languages, out of these 7 I am fluent in 3 and can understand 5 spoken.

BTS seemed to have a language coach whenever they are in one country to help them practise for their fans. For example, In Saint Denis (Paris), Jimin french words were very closed to the ‘standard french’.

BTS seemed to focus on 2 languages on concerts, the official local language of the country they are in and korean which is generally translate to the local language.

This can decrease the concert experience for foreign fans.

There was a Brazilian interview that I watched ( I really struggle to understand Brazilian portugese so it’s not very clear), parents, not young fans, had been sleeping outdoors for two days in line to buy BTS concert tickets for their children and themselves. These parents were often crying, hungry and exhausted.