One of the reasons that Disney hired Lin-Manuel Miranda for Moana was explicitly because of his skills with writing bilingual songs. His work on his award winning Broadway show "In the Heights" seamlessly combined English and Spanish lyrics without isolating the audience while simultaneously maintaining the integrity of the cultures being represented.

They didn’t even care for Hercules did they.

i didn't say he stole five dollars. I didn't say he stole five dollars. i DIDN'T say he stole five dollars. i didn't SAY he stole five dollars. i didn't say HE stole five dollars. i didn't say he STOLE five dollars. i didn't say he stole FIVE dollars. i didn't say he stole five DOLLARS.

When I first saw Lilo and Stitch, I had no idea of the cultural significance of "Aloha 'Oe", and just thought it was a beautiful, touching scene. Years later, I learned exactly what that song meant to native Hawaiians, and now that scene makes my bawl every time. Truly a perfect example of how understanding the cultural history of music can deepen the impact of art.

I love how the music in Coco is either bilingual or completely in Spanish. It feels so authentic and I love it.

in other words : Lin-Manuel Miranda is a fricking genius

“Throughout history Disney had a tendency to set their movies in a variety of different countries and cultures” Also Disney: *avoid the Slavs at all costs*

The beginning of “we know the way” actually is sung in Samoan, then in Tokelau. There are multiple Polynesian languages before it is sung in English

i feel so educated rn

"And each of their sidekicks gets a song..." Me: wait... Heihei has a song???

the. "what ARE you doin'?" vs "what are YOU doing?" conveys that idea (if you know what they each are saying and the difference) so well. it shows how two seemingly identical questions can have different feel and implications.

Who was like "so they're neolithic native Alaskans?" "Yes." "Mhm. I'm thinking Bulgarian music. How about you?"

That’s why you shouldn’t translate Besame Mucho into English. In Spanish, it’s beautiful but then you just have English which is just- *”kiss me. kiss me a lot”*

So the Lion King definitely fulfils the “Africa is a country” trope because it’s clearly meant to be set somewhere in the Serengeti and the characters have mostly Swahili names, but used Zulu for the opening scene because it was easier to hire and record artists in South Africa than in Kenya

Ok, as a Norwegian, I gotta say how weird the frozen franchise is. They just sorta mix and mash all Scandinavian culture together, and add in a little native American as well, which makes everything very wrong. The saami are actually originally Russian, but emigrated to Sweden, Finland and Norway in the 900's, and now most of them lives in Norway. The fact that they took a Danish melody, a christian one at that, and acted as if that is normal for a Saami group to sing is so bizarre. The saami religion is mostly extinct now, thanks to Christian missionaries, but when the movie takes place (1700's/1800's, max) it was still very much active. Oh, and the city Arendell is a play on the real Norwegian city Arendal, which is literally on the other side of the country from the saami that are depicted in the movie.

Why did I expect Moana’s side kick to be the pig or the chicken? 😂

As a bilingual person who grew up watching Disney movies in two languages, I feel that whole... changing-the-meaning-of-the-lyrics-so-that-the-syllables-fit-the-melody thing in my soul

That made it even more satisfying when it got to “Aue aue/Away Away.”

I heard that ‘Mr. Hamilton’ was hired for Moana before Hamilton was even a thing that people knew about. Which means they hired him because of his first award winning musical, In The Heights. And now I’m wondering if they hired him for this because of his experience working on a bilingual score 🤔

me before the Dipper clip: nah he dont really sound like Dipper me after the Dipper clip: oh god now i cant unhear it

I learned something. I was once at a Native American PowWow and I was listening to the young men playing drums and chanting. To my ear it sound like “Hey ya ha ha hey ya ha ha.” Curious, I asked on of the singers what the lyrics meant. He said, “Hey ya ha ha hey ya ha ha.” I thought he was simply blowing me off as an ignorant white man. I was a little hurt, because I genuinely wanted to know. Then in this video, I am told that the words to Native American songs have no linguistic values. So the young man’s answer was the real answer and not an insulting blow off.

I take NOTHING away from Lin-Manuel Miranda, but the man responsible for the Tokeluan music in this film is singer-songwriter Opetaia Foa'i. The songs feature Foa'i's New Zealand-based vocal group Te Vaka, as well as a choir from Fiji, and if you look at the track listings, you can see that Foa'i is responsible for **the music and the lyrics** for "We Know the Way," and it is performed by him and Miranda. Foa'i also the wrote the music and the lyrics for "Tulou Tagaloa", "An Innocent Warrior", and "Logo Te Pate"...that is 4 out of the 6 songs that use Tokeluan (not counting the finale version of "We Know The Way," which included Miranda, but is basically a reprise of the earlier version). I am passionate about pointing this out, because Mr. Foa'i does not get the recognition he deserves for his work in the film next to the more widely known Miranda, but he was working on these songs in 2013 while Miranda was not hired until March 2014. I'm not saying they didn't collaborate together beautifully, because they did and Foa'i says so, and the film's showstopping number "How Far I'll Go" is Miranda's doing for sure and a song I love. It's right up there with "Let It Go" as a thematic girl-power song, and SO well written! But when it comes to the more ethnic sounding pieces, that is Foa'i's doing, and he wrote them specifically with the idea of being able to transition to English with the same kind of melodic system presented in this video...something he has been doing for more than 20 years. The film is GREAT, all the music is truly moving (How Far I'll Go still gives me goosebumps), and the score Mancina wrote ties it all together beautifully. But all the comments saying it is because of Miranda without acknowledging the others who contributed bothers me. I am just as much Native American (one-quarter) as anything else and I, too, get annoyed when a native culture either gets misrepresented or their contributions get ignored. Miranda is fortunate to be famous among white people (instead of just among his own ethnic group) as he completely deserves to be because he wrote a hit Broadway show. Opetaia Foa'i is nearly as famous among Polynesian people (maybe a little more so) and has been touring consistently and selling out places for 20 years. But, because he is not someone known outside of Polynesian circles, he gets overlooked when it comes to getting credit in the making of this film's music. This film SHOULD have helped to make him a star with a broader audience, but he is not being given the credit because it is all being attributed to Miranda, whose name is better known, even though that is only a recent accomplishment.

So the instance of Nani singing Aloha 'Oe to Lilo is complicated because, while Tia Carrera (Nani's voice actor) is Native Hawaiian, Daveigh Chase (Lilo's voice actor) isn't. However, a *lot* of the voice actors for even the minor characters are also Native Hawaiian. They even got a real hula teacher to voice Lilo's hula teacher. This kind of representation is unheard of even today, let alone *twenty years ago* (holy shit that makes me feel old). I'm not Hawaiian myself, so I don't get a say in whether or not is actually is appropriative, but I do think it's important to note how many actual Native Hawaiians they cast.

i got jumpscared so many times by the cultural appropriation.

I love the cultural appropriation scare quotes. I think one should always be considerate of other cultures when electing to represent them, but I think its ok when there's a blend of tones, themes, and music the audience is familliar with as well. Otherwise you lead to a stagnation where cultures can't mix, which is just, not how culture and art work. Just don't be rude or spiteful with it.

Lin really did that I guess? Does he ever stop? Nah...he’s non-stop...

2:51 "Is this guy playing music? Or just stamping envelopes?" Maybe I'm biased but did this remind ANYONE else of "I Ain't Got Rhythm" from Phineas and Ferb?

This is really interesting. As a someone who doesn’t have English as their native language, I always had this whole different syllabus debacle in my head when watching Disney films. But to someone who grew up in the US, the thought of translating songs isn’t as recurring. It’s similar to the refusal some English speakers have to read subtitles. For the rest of the world, we just accepted that, in order to view the actors’ complete performance, we have to read subtitles. I’m glad more and more Americans are watching pieces of media from other cultures

A minor note, Ghost in the Shell was inspired by the Bulgarian choir song but the actual lyrics are in Japanese and are based on Min'yo chanting and Noh plays.

Could you make a video of how Bo Burnham use music for comedy? Your videos are great.

Ok but as an American who came from Middle eastern immigrants and grew up watching Disney, Aladdin was my favorite movie because even if they didn’t use middle eastern language, the instrument and vocal elements sounded like the music my family listened to and the characters looked like people in my family. I LOVED having a princess that looked like me and music that was familiar

My computer froze exactly at 5:50 so it got stuck in a Jim Carrey loop singing aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Me: Pocahontas is my favorite disney movie People: BUT IT WASNT EVEN THAT GOOD LIKE IT WAS PRETTY BAD AND HISTORICALLY INACCURATE AS WELL AS THE MUSIC WAS REALLY INACCURATE HOW DARE YOU

Gaelic pronounced like “gay-lic” is used in Ireland. Gaelic pronounced like “ga-lic” is used in Scotland. Thanks 😂

This reminds me of when I was five years old I heard a French song and I asked my dad to translate it to Dutch because I didn't understand. He started saying the words, thinking really hard about it and I got all mad like "dad, I want you to SING it, DUH." I started crying when he said that wasn't possible.

the two parts of that song from Moana played over each other slaps.

As a Peruvian, i think they missed the opportunity to put some Quechua in “The Emperor’s new groove” since is taking place in Cuzco and the actual language is Quechua (our official Peruvian languages are Spanish, Quechua and Aimara).

an example for a movie that really nailed the cultural singing is dreamworks's "prince of Egypt". the songs that are personal and close are written in Hebrew, and they even got a jewish singer to sing them. she is also the voice actor of moshe's mother. the word are mostly pronounced correctly, probably thanks to ofra haza (the jewish singer). also, to be honest, and i think its a good thing, the film is way better in its native language (hebrew).

Both parts of "We Know The Way" mixed together sound gorgeous. Don't change my mind.

Ok, I literally started crying in We Know The Way. That montage literally hits me like the Up montage, and I don't know why. Damnit Opetaia Foa'i and Lin-Manuel Miranda!

Lili'uokalani (Sept 1939 - Nov 1917). She was a young queen, I'll tell you that.

Lol, I'm Tokelauan and yeah ur right. They had to transition the song to best fit the rhythm, they did a good job tho... But sometimes in movies, they play songs that literally don't relate to what's happening on the screen, for example 'Loimata E Malingi' is about a fire that killed teenage girls in Vanuatu, but on the movie the song is used for Moana as a baby when she has her first interaction with the sea. Disney tries very hard to add cultural recognition within their movies but to be honest, a little too hard. But hey, at least they got great musicians to do the music.

6:33 So, it's the first time I hear this piece in the original language. Before I watched this movie only in a Russian dubbing. And now I understand WHY this piece was looking to me so stupid before. Russian sound actors didn't get the syllabic stresses right. It was just "What are YOU doing" 4 times in a row.

One thing that's especially challenging about making music for Brother Bear, is that is seems the producers never did their research about Inupiat culture from the post ice-age time period the film is set in. One thing to note about indigenous tribes throughout North America, is that their cultures developed a historical record through verbal story telling. Unlike other cultures that have used written language to convey history and meaning, most indigenous American cultures pass down history and TRUTH through story telling. These stories are NOT like the telephone game, in which the story changes with each teller. The story is told the same way every single time. This means that the Inupiat peoples would have a very strong sense of what their people did hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Not only did Disney not ask the Inupiat directly what their music should sound like, they also didn't ask the Inupiat directly how they wanted the public to perceive them. The second question can be a loaded one, with varying answers, and when Disney finally did do this for Moana, people were still offended. Mainly not everyone in every culture wants the same thing and sees eye to eye.

When you’re casually watching a KZfaq video and it quickly turns into a full on linguistics lecture... as a linguistics student... I love it!! ✌🏻

"have your next princess be south korean" Me, audibly at 1 am: oooOOOooooo

In Polish "Happy Birthday" song is literally "Hundred years! Hundred years!" (org. Sto lat! Sto lat!)

I really can’t see how anybody would try to spin using a specific cultures musical stylings for that specific setting as cultural appropriation. I think it’s more offensive to put characters in a country and then use nothing from that country.

From the video title I assumed you were gonna talk about how Disney characters swear without seeming too vulgar and adult.

Update here: Frozen 2 was made in such a way that it will be relatable to the indigenous Sami tribe of Northern Norway, hence why it was dubbed into the Sami language

"We know the way" starts in Samoan and then moves to Tokelauen and then to English. The English part isn’t a translation of the Samoan/tokelauan part. I can only translate the Samoan and a bit of the tokelauan "We are voyagers, called by the Gods of the Ocean to come, We hope for good tidings in our journey, Aue, Aue. We pray to the kings of old, Send the birds to guide us...." The group Te Vaka is a tokelauan group, but they have a home in Samoa and speak it fluently. Their home island of Tokelau is a victim of global warming and is slowly being covered by water. That’s why they decided to live in Samoa

My friends help with text-setting for Disney movies (specifically the songs) translated into Swedish, and they walked me through how competently doing something like that is more than just using direct translations, but also about capturing that culture's expressions in ways that make sense to the audience you're writing to. It's absolutely fascinating stuff.

They hired Lin after watching In The Heights, the specific reason being they knew he was good at composing music for two languages

the two parts of the song form moana put together acutally gave me goosebumps

will you ever talk about Prince of Egypt? : O

Ok, that We Know the Way split language clip was like INSANELY addictive & satisfying

made this comment when i was young and stupid and forgot i ever did. whooshing this away

I'm so. glad. you talked about the different musical emphasis on syllables in different languages. it bugs the heck out of me when some fan-translated different-language covers don't realize this, and we are left with cringe-worthy direct-trans lyrics on a shifted rhythmic emphasis. worse when you understand both the languages and it's just frustratingly awkward to listen to. Thank you for explaining everything by putting in terminology, I'm now learning the name of everything that I've always thought was just me noticing, appreciating or getting peeved by. Learning about music is fun!

Also, I had an Irish friend who tried to help me learn to say a few small things in Gaelic and it is incredibly difficult. Gaelic is beautiful but hard af unless you've been brought up in it.

"both have that show sto-" *_IT'S_* *_A_* *_SHOW STOPPING NUMBER_* *_A REAL SHOW STOPPER-_*

Fun fact: the frozen song you mentioned actually has a rough translation. I did it in choir and the beginning of the sheet music. It is saying roughly the Queen has come and let us go to her coronation

2:28 Was half expecting "we are Siamese if you please..."

The goddamn Psycho music playing whenever "cultural appropriation" comes up is fucking slaying me, lmao

Not Disney, but I think the band Celtic Woman does a great job at this. They switch between English and Irish in their songs a lot, without changing at all the atmosphere or the music.

Someone finally put into words why I burst into tears during the singing of "We Know the Way", especially the Tokelauan singing. Some of the happiest memories of my childhood and adolescence were listening to people singing in Samoan or Tongan or Maori at my church and I miss my Polynesian friends and their culture and humour so much 😭

No one's gonna talk 'bout Mulan and how pretty My Reflection sounds in mandarin right?

Every time I rewind the Tokelauan/English mix I get chills. I think it sounds better with the two sections played over each other like that ❤️❤️❤️

A good example of this is 'Song of the Sea.' It uses music in a way I haven't really seen in other movies.

What about the Hebrew in "When you believe" from Prince of Egypt??????????

Damn son. At this rate you'll be on the fast track to KZfaq stardom in no time! literally no time. so little time in fact that it's already happened... keep up the good work!

love this video it's amazing small footnote though, and it doesn't really matter, but Gaelic (pronounced Gay-lic) is the Irish and Gaelic (pronounced ga-lic) is the Scottish version. As I said it doesn't detract from what your trying to say but just in case anyone finds it interesting. Thanks for all your amazing work :)

I've got an interesting story on how a band changed their song between 2 languages: The Swedish metal group Sabaton made an album focusing on Swedish history & recorded it twice, once in english & once in their native tongue. I've listened to both versions of one songs from that album & they sound almost identicle but when you look at the translated lyrics vs the english version, the songs are completely different, both written about the 30 years war but from different perspectives. The english song "A Lifetime of War" is almost like an outsider talking about the war in general with lines like "from dawn to dawn THEY'RE fighting die where THEY stand" While the Swedish "En Livstid I Krig" is from the pov of a soldier saying that "I willingly go to fight alongside my countrymen & die for my homeland but asks who will mourn for me? A father, a son, a friend, who will remember me?"

See, I’m Korean, South Korean. I honestly don’t care if a company tries to portray my home culture, so long as it’s accurate to what my culture is. Then again, I understand not everyone, nor every culture views this situation as I do.

Kinda mad that somebody apparently translated "Dejlig er Jorden" to "Fairest Lord Jesus" - like yeah it is a christian hymn but the title means "Lovely is the Earth"

8:17 I don't know if "Fairest Lord Jesus" is supposed to be a translation here, but I'd like to point it out in this case. "Dejlig er jorden" would be correctly translated to "Nice is the Earth" or rather more comfortably to "The Earth is nice" (the switching up of words is due to the change in speech over time)

This is one of the most incredible phenomenons of music. What you describe as having to match syllabic stress unique to a language goes both ways, to the point that entire cultures of instrumental music still sound evocative of the language.

I gotta say you basically made me cry with that explanation of brave's lullaby. I never realized it's full significance until this moment. And then understanding the bridge that Moana's song "We Know the way" made just made me love the movie even more. Thank you

Alright, here’s my take on what cultural appropriation is: Appropriation is taking another culture and making it your own and doing it wrong, like in a lot of weeaboo cringe compilations. The opposite of that, which I’ll call cultural sharing, is when you take another culture and experiencing it yourself, but, and I can not stress this enough, after doing your research to make sure you’re doing it right. Cultural appropriation is not a group of non-Polynesian people making a movie set in Polynesia with songs in those languages. (It could be more accurate if that were the case.) Cultural appropriation is when non-Polynesian people act like they’re the experts on it.

Binging your videos these are just too good. Not only do you put in a boatload of research into them, it's edited so well AND you speak clearly to your viewers.

I heard that anakin doesn’t like the “my snow up against the burning sand” part

"Sept 1939 - Nov 1917"

Man, the language business makes me think of the norwegian version of "let it go". In short, since the chorus was written in english for english, the norwegian version got a botched chorus that would be translated directly into english as literally letting an object go, rather than letting go of something troubling.

1:38 the little mermaid is in Denmark...

I really appreciate your putting the two portions of We Know the Way side by side. It was so enlightening!

because damn, Lin is just that good He's had experience with switching languages in music See: In The Heights

So what I got from this video is that I like Bulgarian choir music ;)

This has given me a brand new appreciation for english cover artists for japanese songs. Especially the ones who manage to translate it and still sound good and without butchering the timings, and do it monthly if not somehow faster. I cant imagine the nightmare that would be trying to make the syllables function.

That one bit where the Tokelauan and English parts of 'We Know The Way' overlaps is a goddamn work of art. I have rewatched just those few seconds over and over again. Love your videos!

I think the moment at around 11-13 minutes kinda expresses how stupid things can get if you go too far down the "cultural appropriation" rabbit hole. Soon it gets to the point of including anything from a culture the piece or artist isn't from, no matter the context, becomes a demonized grab at their culture when really it's just not. Most of what's explained in the video is pretty much on point, but if we take things a single step further and have a little white kid singing the Tokelauan sections from Moana randomly in the street (because it's a kick-ass song and who wouldn't want to sing along) apparently that can be taken as cultural appropriation which just sounds silly. I also would like to express I think that as much as the song pulls people into the world of Moana that the song also brings that music and culture over to them, the divide isn't a one way street and invites the culture to express itself, or try to, in English to not only see the differences but similarities we may share. Yeah things don't line up perfectly, but that's the point It's a blend of the two cultures, not a "here's Polynesia" and "here's English/Americanised English" but "here we are together".

I live in Hawaii and I can tell you that many Polynesian musicians are masters of switching between their native language and English in the same song, so I'm not surprised to see it so well done in Moana.

14:02 uhh, the left ear of my headphone is broken soooooo Yeah, this didn't go as planned

7:07 FYI Japanese people sing the Happy Birthday song in English I don’t know why this version exists 😂

The opening of Xena is also inspired by Bulgarian choir music to the points where it's IN BULGARIAN and sung by a Bulgaroian choir, despite the series being set in Ancient Greece

isnt Ariel supposed to be near Denmark?

14:19 Ok so let me tell you something really funny. I know its not the right culture but it is complete coincidence and is downright hilarious. Where I come from, the word "Aweh" made the entire class laugh their heads off in Moana because its a interjection (and slightly rude) slang word for Oi! or Hey! or What the heck are you doing? etc but in the context of Moana it probably means Sail or something.

3:50 Me living in Bulgaria - "This sounds familiar.. oh OHHHH"

Im a Saami from Norway, while i liked frozen i dont think the yoik in the beginning was the right choice for the movies setting as the only connection to saami culture is the stories origin, the movie is so far removed from its original story. Since it sets us up for seeing Saami culture, but it never really elaborates on it and i dont even think we would have known kristoff is Saami if it wasn't for the writers telling us. Rather then adding to the movie, it just adds not much to the setting since they never really explore more of it, and while we have a Saami version of "deilig er jorden" it still seems out of place. I'd rather have them just sing in Norwegian as more traditional Norwegian song would have added so much more too it. Maybe they will do something in the next movie with Saami people (I know Disney has been visiting some reindeer herding families and other places in the north)

14:04 It sounds like they meant it to play side by side like this. I love it.

I wish they put a bit of Mandarin in Mulan, it would have been amazing

this is good for people that are learning about music