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Jan. 10, 2011 In the last six years I have posted many articles on songs at useless-knowledge.com. For the most part, these were traditional songs in foreign languages. An article generally included the lyrics in the original language and my own translation into English, with a link to a website where the song could be heard, and in some cases a link to the sheet music or score. I translated songs from Russian, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Hebrew and other languages. My proficiency in these languages varies, and readers have corrected me a few times by e-mail, but, all in all, the response has been favorable. These are songs that I myself sing. I know about 150 songs in 20 languages. One of my luckiest articles is the one on La Habanera, an adorable aria from Bizet’s Carmen. For this one, I found the complete sheet music on line and I linked to it. I also have the score for Tico Tico, a cute Brazilian song originally instrumental, to which Portuguese lyrics were added to be sung by Carmen Miranda. I have quite a few well-known traditional and modern songs, including O Sole Mio, Santa Lucia, Mackie Messer (Mac the Knife), Aquarela do Brasil (Brazil), Ta Pedia tou Peiria (Never on Sunday), Guantanamera, Fascination, Podmoskovnye Vyechera (Moscow Nights), Granada, La Mer (Somewhere beyond the Sea) and Besame Mucho. You can see a list of some of these songs at a page of my website: www.mecnita.com/songs.htm I have not linked all the songs that I posted on UK . I felt that some were not in keeping with the mood I was trying to promote on my website. For example, I have posted articles at UK on Ei Ukhnyem (The Volga Boatman), La Bamba and Qian Jin (the Chinese Anthem), but I don’t link to them from Mecnita.com. Incidentally, though I can manage a translation from Chinese, given enough time, I cannot handle Japanese at all. So the Japanese songs listed at Mecnita.com, Sakura (Cherry Blossoms) and Kimigayo (the Japanese anthem), have copied translations. I sing them, but only dimly perceive what I’m singing about. A disappointment has been that some of my songs were linked to midifile websites on geocities.com, so when Yahoo closed geocities, they broke several of my links. No one has mentioned it in my e-mail, however, so I guess it wasn’t terribly important. I also have a page on my website with a list of 60 or more pieces of music that can be heard right there. These mostly have nothing to do with the songs mentioned above, though there are some convergences. The music includes compositions by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Tschaikovsky, Debussy, Chopin and other classical composers. It also includes music from movies, folksongs and popular songs. Examples are Lara’s Theme, The Godfather, Charade, I Feel Pretty, Molly Malone, Greensleeves, La Cumparsita, Cielito Lindo and The Rose of Tralee. The page that these are on is: www.mecnita.com/music.htm In some cases, depending on your browser, you may have some trouble searching for an individual page, like either of the two mentioned above. In that case, just visit www.mecnita.com, and click on Songs or Music in the navigation bar. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written five books: ELEMENTS OF GRAMMAR and A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction); A TALE OF UNG, THE ENNUNMENT and GVAGMA (fiction). I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Visit my website here. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com
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