Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Gibberish Rap




EVERY WORD YOU HEAR IN THIS VIDEO IS SUNG BY AN ITALIAN by the name of Adriano Celentano, and it is gibberish. Yep. According to Celentano, these words were “Americanized gibberish.”

The name of this song is “Priscencolinensinainciusol”
(I don’t think it can be pronounced) and was performed by Italian singer Celantano and Raffaella Carra. When I first watched this, I actually kind of liked the surreal funky-ness of it. And this was 1972??? WTF? Have we discovered the origins of rap?

This music is fun, weird, insane. So where was I in 1972 while this was going on? On Friday and Saturday nights you might have found me at The Elbow Room, a college bar at East Carolina University drinking 10¢ draft beer and singing Don Mclean’s “American Pie,” with dozens of my friends—lamenting the end of freedom, or whatever. Yet, across the world in Italy, crazy, nutty
Prisencolinensinainciusol is someone’s version of bad acid trip. Hmmm, I’ve changed. This song and video was about 40 years ahead of it’s time.

Prisencolinensinainciusol was first released as a single on November 3, 1972, and later on his album Nostalrock. The lyrics are pure gibberish, often described as sounding like American English as heard by a non–English-speaker.

In an interview, Celentano explained that the song was about “incommunicability” because in modern times people are not able to communicate to each other anymore. He added the only word we need is
prisencolinensinainciusol, which is supposed to stand for “universal love.”

Celentano’s rationale for the song was that, after releasing albums about ecology and social issues, “having just recorded an album of songs that meant something, I wanted to do something that meant nothing”.

The song was recorded at least twice for television broadcast.

The factual information above is from Wiki. So, what do you think?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

It doesn't matter how many times I try to say Prisencolinensinainciusol... I just cant!!!

South City Shiner said...

Brilliant.

Unknown said...

Note that there IS a subtitled version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S00Br2SSrY8

Hilary said...

Too funny.

Karim beat me to it. I thought for sure there's be one of those faux sub-titled entries on YouTube.. as in Benny Lava fame.

TP said...

And this was 1972??? WTF? Have we discovered the origins of rap?
I respectfully suggest that you turn your gaze further into the past, and consider Bob Dylan's 1965 Subterranean Homesick Blues.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQaDUD-a_EE

carmackart said...

Damn, that is fun. Thanks.

Peter Faur said...

I'm speechless! Great stuff.

Unknown said...

Think how awesome it would be to give this song to a foreign English language class for translation. Crazy!!

upfromsumdirt said...

hilarious... and funky as hell.
almost puts isaac hayes to shame:
"Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N8k3uJu6K8

nicole sommer said...

HA! Thank you for posting this! This is fantastic!! How did you find this?!

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