How is whalesong like pop music? (And why?)

“What we know about humpback whale song is amazing. They typically sing head down, tail up. Songs can last from five to thirty minutes. All of the males within a population will sing the same song.

“One of the most elaborate acoustic displays in the animal kingdom, but there is still so much we don’t know. And in particular, exactly why they sing.”

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Germany, Culture, Music, Hamburg J B Germany, Culture, Music, Hamburg J B

They Translated ‘Hamilton’ Into German. Was It Easy? Nein.

So imagine the challenge, then, of adapting the story of America’s first treasury secretary for a German-speaking audience — preserving the rhythm, the sound, and the sensibility of the original musical while translating its dense libretto into a language characterized by multisyllabic compound nouns and sentences that often end with verbs, and all in a society that has minimal familiarity with the show’s subject matter.

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