Hanezeve Caradhina – a song that you are singing to yourself

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another,
not words.”
― Rumi

What does a language mean to you? Is it just a combination of some funny

tones that help you tell how cool you are? Maybe it’s a group of strange drawings
that help you understand the words via subtitles while watching your favorite hen-,
*khm* anime? That indeed is a tough question. But why do we need to understand
or to tell things? Right, to express emotions or to realize them. Human beings as
animals can show their intention through the action: you can hit another person,
you can shake their hand, you can hug or kiss. But is it always enough? Does it
open a homo sapiens’ full potential? We have something that other creatures don’t:
language that all of us understand. There are moments in life when nothing but
words can work, where nothing but sentences can help. As well as there are
emotions that can be expressed and shared, felt best by speaking or listening.
Nowadays people still aren’t able to speak only one language and that probably
will never happen. Therefore some things that sound special in one language to one
group of people will probably not sound the same to others and that’s fine. But it
does leave the question of whether translation or learning the other language is
enough to feel the emotions behind it.
What does music mean to you? Is it just some beeps and boops that you are
listening to while shaking your head? Is it a classy way to spend time when you’re
bored? Or probably it's a different way for people to share and express their
emotions in a language that everyone can understand? Also a tough question, huh?
There are two types of musical pieces: instrumental and the ones with the vocals.
When you’re listening to the pure instrumental you are able to feel the emotions
through the dynamics, the combination of the instruments and so on, that’s it.
Songs with the vocals are a bit more complicated. They add two more types of
emotion: vocal dynamics and lyrics. Vocal dynamics are undeniable and can be
understood no matter the language, they are an instrument of some sort. But lyrics
are different.. Have you ever listened to a song that you don’t understand, liked it a
lot, read the lyrics and went absolutely shocked thinking “probably should’ve
never read them”? Or maybe you didn’t fully understand the lyrics because of the
translation? Yes. And that ruins the whole experience. Yet there are also moments
when you’ve listened to a song that you liked and related to the lyrics as if you
were singing. Undescribed feeling, huh? “If I change a couple of things that’d be
my song, the song of my life”. That’s why creating a song that everyone can feel
and relate to through the lyrics is.. basically impossible. Or is it?
 “Hanezeve Caradhina” is a song composed by Kevin Penkin and sung by
Takeshi Saito for the anime series “Made in Abyss”. This emotional song does
have lyrics, but they do not represent any existing language, even though share
some similarities with German and Icelandic.
“We looked into qualities from languages such as German and Icelandic, but
sung it in a way that could represent a language of the Abyss.” – Kevin Penkin
The lyrics of this song can be considered a random composition of words for
some people, and they would be correct in a way.
“It's not a real language, as we thought it would be better with this track to
keep a certain amount of ambiguity in the vocals.” – Kevin Penkin
Instead of simply writing the lyrics in whatever language (that will create a
problem described above: relating to the text), composer and his team decided to
write in an imaginable language that “represents the Abyss”, which means it
should help a listener to hear the Abyss in a way that they want to.
Well is there anything significant to it? Come on, those are just some bluh-
bleh-bruh. Oh, is it? Let’s remember what any song tries to do: share a feeling,
express some emotion. How?
1) By instrumentals and their dynamics
2) By the vocals and their dynamics
3) .. lyrics [which is the biggest problem]

What did they do? They tried to make a song without the third problem. And they
did it. Emotions and the main idea can be felt with the instrumental and the vocals,
yet the lyrics.. are left for you to sing. Yes, they aren’t just random words, in fact
they are everything that you feel. And that’s what makes this song so powerful.
You can’t understand the original lyrics, because there is nothing to understand,
but you can hear and feel them nevertheless. Because you are the one who creates
the lyrics for this song depending on how see it. You relate to it on a personal level
because this is your song, too. There is no more “If only I changed..”, you can put
into those “la la le ah” every single piece of your life and you won’t be wrong. The
sound creates the world that allows you to connect with the song through thin
threads that are original lyrics. But how the threads will be intertwined is all up to
you.
“Hanezeve Caradhina” is a song that from the depths of the abyss of your soul you
are singing to yourself in a way that no one else could ever hear, because there will
never be a person just like you.
18.07.22 – ミカエル