Linguistics, Music and Rebuilding The Rights of Statues (The RE-TROS)

I have just been reading a very interesting post on a blog called Crispy Quips, which is written by an American Linguistics major called Chris, who wants to teach English as a foreign lanaguage after graduation.

Chris has two sites, Cripsy Quips, which is a more general blog, and then one which is appears to be devoted to a more formal look at lingusitics - which is interesting for me to read, but not something I can really participate in as meaningfully as I would probably like to as I have never really studied linguistics.

(It occurs to me that this may become necessary if I'm going to be promoting Paolo's music but hey, one step at a time, right?!)

Anyway, while looking to find out what the Internet has to say about the relationship between music and linguistics, I found Chris's blogs, via one post in particular, that talks about a Chinese band called "Rebuilding the Rights of Statues (or the RE-TROS, for short,) who apparently circumnavigate government censorship by singing in English and submitting fake translations of their lyrics to the authorities.

Below is one of their videos, called Hang Police and if you would like to find out a little more about how they got away with that particular title, read his post about them here.



I thought they were definitely worth posting about for the audacity of their idea alone, (not the mention the fact that their tactics are not only bold and clever but working - so far). I will reserve judgement about their music for now, as it's not a sound that I can profess to love right away, but often that is the case for me with many new artists, so I will live with the music for a little while and see if it grows on me.

The point is, whatever you think of their music, their success appears to indicate that Paolo is not alone in believing that a strategic marriage of music and linguistics may indeed present many opportunities that a more ordinary communication does not - opportunities that in turn may offer the potential for explosive, and one hopes, enduring change - for the better?