There's a beautiful song, a rather short one, called Amazing Grace to the English-speaking world. To the Chinese-speaking world (Specifically Mandarin), it's known as 奇异恩典 (Qíyì ēndiǎn). Both are linked below as MP3 files.
奇异恩典 (Qíyì ēndiǎn) - 普通话 (Pǔtōnghuà)
They both tell the same story, the same message. The only difference is how they're conveying it. One is conveying it to a language spoken by about 1.35 billion people worldwide, whereas the other is conveying to a language spoken by about 1.12 billion people worldwide, though I like to think of music as a universal language... one that can be understood by all. Let's examine the songs I linked above, shall we?
Firstly, their melody: It's flowing, smooth, and (somewhat) graceful, peaceful even. They both create the environment that one could be at rest in, very much contempt with the world, and not a care around. They're slow and at a calm pace, one that puts you at ease, whether it be for a joyous occasion or a more somber and serious one, but they both convey the same message: Something has happened, and everything will be okay. Now, I'd like to move on to the lyrics:
English Lyrics
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wrench like me!
I once was lost, but now I'm found,
Was blind, but now I see.
Chinese (Mandarin) Lyrics (With Hanyu Pinyin)
奇异恩典何等甘甜
我罪已得赦免
前我失丧今被寻回
瞎眼今得看见
Qí yì ēn diǎn hé děng gān tián
Wǒ zuì yǐ dé shè miǎn
Qián wǒ shī sàng jīn bèi xún huí
Xiā yǎn jīn dé kàn jiàn
Both tell a story about being saved from an ailment that severely impaired them, and expressing joy or some other happy emotion in that they overcame what they did, much as if you would feel after overcoming a major obstacle in your life.
Now, to discuss a broader topic that this piece refers to in the third line, separation. So many people think that we're separated by linguistics... that simply not knowing each others' language separates you. While this may be true to some degree, ultimately, it's not to the degree that you might think. While we have amazing tools such as Google Translate, the two of you already have ways of communicating. You'd more-than-likely gesture the same (or similar) things for most ideas, you might enjoy the same or similar activities, but music is universal. My first time experiencing this was when I found a song called Brother Louie, and it was played, hilariously enough, by the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble of the DPRK (North Korea). Being in High School and not caring too much for pop music at the time (I still don't prefer the genre over my record-era favorites), I didn't think much of it. The lyrics sounded vaguely English when I listened hard enough, but it had a somewhat catchy tune. Mix that with the satisfaction of finding such a piece (along with forty-four other tracks from what I presume to be the same album) on YouTube, and I had some music that I could put on my headphones and listen to as I developed a fictional world of all kinds of creatures to exist in and make some interesting plotlines from.
Yeah, I've always had some rather... strange... tastes in music, but to each his own.
Anyway, a few months later, I wanted to see how much music from the Hermit Kingdom (as it's so eloquently called) on YouTube during a stint of boredom. Much to my surprise, I find the song Brother Louie was originally written by a (West) German pop duo who called themselves Modern Talking in 1985/1986.
Maybe someone thought that would be a good thing to bring into the country several years later, I don't know.
The point I'm getting at is, while two people may be different in every conceivable way, they will almost always have a similar reaction to a track, regardless if they can understand the lyrics because music, like different languages, is complex in its creation and what it says. The words you hear are only a part of the picture, and a tiny one at that. We experience similar emotions to music because music is one of the things that nearly everyone on the face of the Earth is exposed to from a very young age.
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