Universal Language.

The summer I was 15 my family hosted an exchange student from Japan. Her name is Erika and to this day she is one of my very best friends. When we picked her up from the host program and headed home, we had an interesting car ride home. My family does not speak Japanese. Her English was really great compared to most of the students we have hosted in the past, but she was definitely out of her comfort zone trying to communicate. We giggled at ourselves trying and failing to communicate for a while, and then Erika started singing Disney songs. The deal was sealed. We were friends. We had a language barrier, but music is the universal language. We became friends through Frozen and Tangled.

It was even more amazing a year later when we visited Erika and her family in Nara, Japan when she remembered the tune and some of the words to a song my mother and I had taught her without realizing it. We stood together in a public bathroom on the other side of the world singing one of my favorite songs because it was a powerful memory of me for Erika. Now it is also a powerful memory of Erika for me.

A year after that I was a teen camp counselor for the same exchange program that brought my best friend Erika to me. At this teen camp, there were over 300 Japanese kids spending a week together in Utah before they were sent to host families. They performed amazing cultural presentations and taught us about the home they dearly love. They taught us a song and dance about fishermen catching giant fish. I didn’t understand the words, but I understood that it was important to my friends, and they are important to me.

Throughout my high school choir experience, I have sung amazing songs from all over the world. Brazilian-Portuguese songs about lace-makers, Catalan pieces about floods, Latin songs about God and happiness, Chinese songs about nothingness and Mongolian songs about horses to name a few. I love the experience of not only learning a new song, but learning part of a new language and learning about the culture that accompanies it. Chinese songs about nothingness become a lot more meaningful when you learn the story behind it, monks that learned to meditate and communicate with their own selves. Creepy sounding Catalan pieces become much more moving when you learn the story of a flood, tragedy and death and then rebuilding. I never experienced those things myself, but I sang about them. I told the stories and I felt them. The music and the stories made me think about life differently, even though I don’t speak the languages. Music is the universal language.

 One of my favorites I have ever done is a French piece called ‘Ouvre Ton Coeur.’ It means “Open your heart.” When translated correctly, it is a romantic love song, but “Open your heart” can mean so much more than romantic love. Opening your heart means accepting others regardless of their differences. It means standing up for those that are bullied and oppressed, regardless of where they live. It means forgiving those who have wronged you. Opening your heart can mean gathering your courage, stepping up and doing something that scares you. For me, one of the best examples of opening your heart is traveling, meeting new people and experiencing new cultures. The language of music has inspired me to want to learn more. To experience more. To help more. To become more.

Many times, we think of culture as the way people dress or the kind of food eaten in a particular place. The culture of music isn’t quite as tangible. However, it is more universal. One of the biggest things I have learned through hosting exchange students is that people are just people. We have many differences, but we are all just trying to live the best life we possibly can. We’re not as different as we sometimes think. We come together through the things we have in common. My favorite one is music.