regarding the Italian entry for Eurovision Song Contest 2017, I’d like to tell you what the song is about. I’ve been reading a looot of comments, people yelling “cultural appropriation” and “racism” which are two very importants problems in our society.
The song is called “Occidentali’s Karma” and it’s by Francesco Gabbani.
“Occidentali” of course is not an English word, it’s Italian and it means “Westeners”. So the title is basically “Westeners’ Karma”.
(I might also explain why this anglicism in particular but then the post would be too long)
Because the whole song is a CRITIC to Western misuse (and abuse) of wisdom, religions, concepts that belong to Oriental cultures.
The song mocks all those people that act all spiritual and stuff but don’t go deep enough to understand a culture, or a religion. The words you hear in the song, and that make you angry because you think it’s wrong that he, a white Italian guy, is singing them, are actually quotes. He’s not making fun of a culture when he says Namaste: he’s quoting those who get tattoos of stuff they don’t get and that say random foreign words just to be cool, and yes, he’s making fun of those people.
He’s basically saying; “look at us, we go look for wisdom in Orient and we come back quoting stuff to look cool and enlightened but in the end we’re all “naked apes” dancing (he literally says “La Scimmia Nuda”, ahem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Ape)
He’s not an idiot. He knows what he’s singing about. He knows the importance of the many Oriental cultures and religions and he also knows those people who act like “web’s know-it-all” (”i tuttologi del web”, as he says in the song) and pretend to be experts of those cultures, because they had a yoga lesson once or because they eat sushi every Friday. He talks about evolution, he uses scientific and religious terms as someone who’s trying to look cool would use them. (Namaste? Aleeeè!) (ever been to a footbal match? Aleeee alee aleee aleeee) (same thing)
I KNOW that cultural appropriation is a very important problem, but Francesco Gabbani knows too and he’s basically as pissed as you are, and he made a good song about it.
I know that if you don’t speak Italian and look at the lyrics you’d start screaming, but instead of using, idk, google translate (which is terrible when it comes to Italian, go ask my high school professors who still yell at the students who use it for their homework), ask us to translate it. Ask us what the hell is the talking about. what people is he talking about.
And that said, see you at Eurovision, come dance with us
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