Indie-pop’s next big hit could be in Manglish.
That’s the blend of Malay and English singer-songwriter Zee Avi favors for her song “Kantoi.” The YouTube sensation visited Studio 360 recently and she performed the song live for us.
[YOUTUBE=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF32xfehHPE]
Zee Avi explained that “Kantoi” means “busted.” And the song is all about love gone bad. But if you don’t speak Malay (and I don’t), you only get half the story. Maybe she’s telling us that in this romance, there are some things that are better left said in Malay? Zee Avi likes to play with her audience’s expectations: she strums bright, joyful chords even as her lyrics reveal “I’ve always known that your words were never true” but that “she was cheating too.”
Listen to Kurt’s conversation with Zee Avi here:
[AUDIO= http://audio.wnyc.org/studio/studio012210f.mp3%5D
– Michael Guerriero
Want to know the whole love story? Linguist Benjamin Zimmerman translates “Kantoi”!
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2073