2023-07-08 05:21:28
German, Italian, French, Romansh, Spanish. On the Gotthard is born a music which tries to cross the linguistic borders.
This content was published on July 07, 2023 July 07, 2023
Angela Wagner / Owen Ogieva / Fabio Flepp, SRF
The mountain range surrounding the Gotthard pass is hidden behind the fog. White clouds limit visibility and create some disorientation. We only hear the wind. But suddenly, the sky clears and the view clears up.
Five musicians were inspired by this image to compose a new common song. “Symbolically, we broke through the fog and came into contact with other parts of Switzerland,” explains French-speaking singer and composer Marc Aymon. These five people had never met before, let alone worked together.
They all come from different parts of Switzerland, speak different languages - and had one big goal: to compose a joint multilingual song within five days.
These five musicians represent the languages spoken in Switzerland
As part of the “Chantez-vous Suisse” project of the SSR national radio group, the following musicians have taken on this demanding task: Christoph Trummer for German-speaking Switzerland, Chiara Dubey for Italian-speaking Switzerland, Marc Aymon for French-speaking Switzerland , Mattiu Defuns from Graubünden. The Baloise La Nefera represents the migration languages of Switzerland with her mother tongue, Spanish.
The five are comfortable in different genres – from hip-hop, singer-songwriters to Modern Classic – and each sing or rap in their native language.
How was the common song born?
And here is the result of this attempt to bring together the linguistic regions of the mythical Saint-Gothard through the language of music.
“Plötzli chumi usem Nebel”, “I will come out of the mist”, “sevesin sur la nebla”, “salgo de la niebla”, “la nebbia”, sing the five acolytes in the different languages.
“The fog has spread over the Gotthard pass. He inspired us,” says Mattiu, from Romansh Switzerland. “We found up here that we barely see our own hand in front of our eyes. Then suddenly, the fog lifted and an unknown landscape opened up to us. This experience was for us an appropriate image that we wanted to incorporate into our song,” says Christoph Trummer.
When the fog dissipates, the gaze opens in all directions, including symbolically. FRS
The song is about coming out of the fog and meeting. To discuss and get to know each other better. “Everyone wrote their own stanza and described how they could get rid of the fears and prejudices they may have had before this common week,” continues Christoph Trummer.
Making music can start out in a very unmusical way. At first, there was just an empty whiteboard at the hospice. Ideas were collected. “At the beginning, we mostly talked a lot. We wanted to get to know each other and develop a mutual feeling,” says Mattiu.
A mixture of Swiss languages
The fact that everyone speaks another language was not too big an obstacle. “But I also surprised myself by mixing three languages in the same sentence,” explains Chiara Dubey. But it is above all German and French that have established themselves as languages of communication.
Languages spoken in Switzerland
German: it is a main language for 62 percent of the Swiss population.
For 23.1 percent, it is not an official language of the country. The most frequently cited languages are English, Portuguese and Albanian.
The French ranks second among national languages (22.8 per cent).
Italian is cited as the main language by 7.9 percent of the population.
Romansh is a main language for 36,000 people. This corresponds to 0.5 percent of the population.
More than two-thirds (68 percent) of the population in Switzerland use more than one language at least once a week in exchanges with their relatives, at work or in media consumption during leisure time.
(Source: Federal Statistical Office 2021)
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Sometimes they had to switch to English, especially when it was necessary to go quickly. “There, I confirmed the cliché,” says Marc Aymon, from French-speaking Switzerland, laughing. Among the national languages, he knows only French.
As for Mattiu, he hardly speaks French. But there is also the language of the music. “As soon as I strum my guitar, I find a language that everyone understands”. Chiara Dubey appreciated the mix of languages. “Mescoliamo un po tutte le lingue – we mix languages and we also communicate through the language of music,” she reports.
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