Eunice Jung – 60
Your teachers and parents will encourage you to study and to develop your skills. What for exactly? Their assumption, naturally, is that the more you know, the greater chance you’ll have of being successful. But, just listen to the charts and tell me if the most skilled musicians are the ones scoring the hits!
The same teacher and parents will also encourage you to travel the world, to forge friendships with as many foreigners as possible, and to see how others on this planet live. Yet, sadly, a large chunk of the Earth is filled with endless, dangerous conflicts.
It all seems so complicated. It all feels like a riddle that doesn’t have an answer. However, for Eunice Jung, it all fell into place in a marvellous and heartbreaking way once she realised the truth – all of us are the same in our fragility.
Eunice Jung’s “60” is a sophisticated, jazz-tinged pop track about the passing of time, and, most importantly, about the way that, inevitably, all of us end up having exactly the same characteristics. Jung’s whispered singing is fantastic here, and the lyrics are a smart way of reminding the people in the world that they have more in common with both their enemies and friends than they may want to. What now? Peace, perhaps?
REAT – Terra II
There are anthropology courses, most likely, trying to explain how the blues travelled to the U.S.A. or how the South American countries inherited the rhythm that nowadays we just call “Latin music.” But I can’t say for sure.
Never having been invited to one of those institutions of higher learning, I’ve had to come up with my theory. And I ain’t got none of those fancy words to name them with. What I do think is, simply, that hurt and outrage, moreso than love and hope, are emotions easily transported through song and art.
It doesn’t take much vocabulary understanding to know when someone is angry or feels fearful. Swiss band REAT know how that works, and are banking on our shared discomfort with the way that the world is being run, to create a direct connection with you.
In fact, REAT’s “Terra II” is sung in the beautiful language of Romansch, a Latin-tinged dialect spoken, still, in Switzerland. And while you’re unlikely to be one of the few thousand who have mastered the tongue, you will, no doubt, understand the outrage, despair, and rage that drive the song. “Terra II” is a modern alt-rock song about what our planet is becoming while all we can do is sit and watch. Turns out, yes, that music remains a Universal language.
