If you want to know who is giving concerts in Esperanto these days, here is a collection of concert videos that can also serve as an introduction to Esperanto music. Many of these were recorded very recently, during the Youth Esperanto Week (event for young people between Dec 28th 2012 and January 4th 2013). Presenting only one song per group – explore more!

Click on the image above to see more. Also, feel free to upvote videos you like to help your favorites rise to the top!

Today, I’ll be taking a quick detour from my usual fare to bring you something different, because last night I attended the opera. If you’ve read the headline, then you have correctly guessed that this opera was entirely in Klingon! When I first heard about it, I was skeptical, but even though I’m not a trekkie, I decided I really can’t pass up going to a Klingon opera!

The lights dimmed and the director came out and said, “The Klingon Terran Research Ensemble presents ‘u’, an authentic Klingon opera, ready for its last performance on earth.” He then explained that Klingon culture places a high value on opera and that Klingons all over the planet love this art form. One of the Klingons sitting in front of me enthusiastically yelled out “Yes!” in agreement. He went on to tell us that Klingon opera is divided into three acts, of which I remember the third is called the “impact act”. We were also informed that audience participation is required, as that we were to scream along during the actor’s battle cry. In Klingon culture, it is considered rude to be silent during these moments.

Klingons love opera

So, you’re probably wondering how can you enjoy an opera, if you can’t understand a word of it. Well, before each act, the screen behind the set displayed a summary of what would happen in English. Each summary was around 5 paragraphs. It reminded me of the surtitles that are displayed over many “ordinary” opera performances, so you can understand all the words.

The director has chosen, however, to let us bask in the Klingon language from the beginning. From what I know of Klingon, I could tell the language was well pronounced. The woman sitting next to me had studied some Klingon, and said that she had never heard it pronounced so clearly.

Klingon instruments

The Klingon “orchestra” started to play with music that fit the scenes perfectly. It had an otherworldly sound to it, and was magnificent. Several sounds came close to sounding like an emergency signal from a spaceship, while other parts had heavy percussion to follow along a battle scene. This was often accompanied by the actors and actresses singing in Klingon. Truly a sight and sound to behold!

To give you a feel for the opera, you can view this clip from a Dutch news broadcast about their first performance (starting at 0:35).

In the third act, the crowd really got into the battle cry and the entire theater erupted in a giant primordal scream from the audience… to show respect for the Klingon arts, of course! All in all, the experience was very enjoyable and would highly recommend attending if they perform near you. They said, unfortunately, that that would be their last performance on earth, but one can always hope that they’ll gear up again sometime!

Marc Okrand (right) and me

There was one last surprise though. During the curtain call, one man stood up in the audience to take some pictures and he was none other than Marc Okrand himself, an American linguist who invented the Klingon language! I later learned that he had actually written the script for the entire opera. Even though he denied the request to go on stage for a bow, he was very kind in giving out autographs and having his picture taken with members of the audience. His name was mentioned in the event’s description online, but I don’t think anyone expected him to be there!

Since this is an Esperanto blog, after all, I guess I should have to say I have to wonder if the world of experimental theater would be open to such a play in Esperanto. While not having the concrete cultural background of Klingon, it would have the advantage that carefully chosen words and ways of acting them out could be understood by an audience who can’t speak Esperanto. A brilliant example of this is a performance by Daniel Soloman in his piece La seksa vivo de helikoj (the sex life of snails), given to an audience who can’t speak Esperanto near Stuttgart, Germany. Another idea would be to develop an Esperanto play for the public with surtitles in the local language. What do you think?

US Army Field Manual*

Did you know the US Army once used Esperanto? In training the military, they wanted to more realistically simulate the language situation during combat. So, the “aggressor forces” learned Esperanto. Apparently it was chosen, because of how easy it is to learn. I’m sure Zamenhof (the initiator of Esperanto) would’ve been surprised to hear about the US Army using his “language of peace” (Zamenhof initially made Esperanto, so that everyone could speak to each other and thus be easier to have peaceful relations with everyone. To be fair, during the first Universal Congress of Esperanto in Bologna-sur-Mer, France in 1905, it was unanimously accepted to define an Esperantisto as follows:

Esperantisto estas nomata ĉiu persono, kiu uzas la lingvon Esperanto tute egale, por kiaj celoj li ĝin uzas. Esperantisto sekve estas ne sole tiu persono, kiu revas unuigi per Esperanto la homaron, esperantisto estas ankaǔ tiu persono, kiu uzas Esperanton ekskluzive por celoj praktikaj, esperantisto ankaǔ estas persono, kiu uzas Esperanton por gajni per ĝi monon; esperantisto estas persono, kiu uzas Esperanton nur por amuziĝadi; esperantisto fine estas eĉ tiu persono, kiu uzas Esperanton por celoj plej malnoblaj kaj hommalamaj.

English translation:

An Esperantist is every person who uses the Esperanto language completely irregardless of their reason. An Esperantist is not only someone who dreams of uniting humanity under Esperanto, but also someone who uses Esperanto exclusively for practical purposes, and also someone who uses it to earn money, as well as someone who uses it for their amusement. An Esperantist is even someone who uses Esperanto for the most evil and lowly ways.

Back to the manual itself, I was surprised to read the following in the beginning of the manual:

Esperanto is not an artificial or dead language. It is a living and current media of international oral and written communication. Its basic rules of grammar are such that it will remain a live language because it can assimiate new words that are constantly being developed in existing world languages.

After I received my used copy on Amazon last year, I was most amused by the fact that here in my hands, I’m holding a manual on how to learn Esperanto completely focusing on military vocabulary and dialog. Here’s an epic paragraph from the example dialog:

On this chart is shown the organization of Aggressor military forces including the following echelons: squad, section, platoon, company, battery, battalion, regiment, brigade, division, army, army group, and regional command. In addition, the basic types of Aggressor weapons are listed: pistol, rifle, machine gun, mortar, recoilless rifle, howitzer, rocket, rocket launcher, missile, tank, and armored carrier.

And its translation into Esperanto:

Sur la karto estas montrata la organizaĵon de la Agresaj militfortoj enhavanta la sekvantaj niveloj: areto, sekcio, plotono, roto, baterio, bataliono, regimento, brigado, divizio, armeo, armegrupo, kaj regiona komando. Apud, la bazaj tipoj de Agresaj armiloj estas listiginta: pistolo, riflo, maŝinpafilo, bombkanono, senresalta pafilo, kanono, haŭbizo, raketo, ĵetaĵo, tanko, kaj kirasa portilo.

Somehow I’m very much going to doubt that any of those new words you just learned will be of much use to you, but the manual is pretty incredible. I was most disappointed to discover that 205 of the 233 pages of Esperanto: The Aggressor Language were just an English-Esperanto dictionary (bi-directional), albeit entertaining in how military-centric the vocabulary is, such as alpha rays, iron girder, and canonical scanning!

In looking into this further, I discovered that you can read the entire book online for free. Also, I know that when Sam Green was producing his Esperanto documentary The Universal Language, he ran across a four-minute video that the US army made to summarize its field exercise. Surreal. Watch it below!

*Book cover image under CC license: BY-SA Cindy McKee.