Sheep in the Box mentioned a rapper who did songs in the Klingon language. Okay. I understand that people are pretty into this kind of stuff. But then I found out his name was Klenginem and I knew it must be a joke. (I’m not that disconnected from pop culture.)
And according to the Klenginem website, it did all start as a joke. And why not? Half the bands I really like resulted from their incompetence at performing the kind of music they wanted. As regular readers know, I’m not a big fan of professionalism. It rarely produces transcendent art. (But it’s nice to have.)
The genius behind Klenginem is Quvar muHwI’ valer who grew up on Klingon starbase Morska. He learned rap-music by listening to incoming waves. As Mr Universe said, “There is only the truth of the signal.”
There aren’t a lot of Klenginem’s songs on the internet. In fact, there don’t seem to be many Klenginem songs at all. But he has released “SuvwI’pu’ qan tu’lu’be’.”
Google Translate does not include Klingon as a language. Fortunately, there are independent sites to perform this important work. So I know that the title of the song is, “There Are No Old Warriors.” The rest of the lyrics go along with that.
It’s a pretty catchy tune. Enjoy!
Image cropped from one on Klenginem website under Fair Use.
This is actively what America NEEDS. Heck, the world, since there’s no language barrier.
It is delightful!
To my understanding, the Klingon language was made up on the fly by actor James Doohan (“Scotty”) on the set of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Just an off-the-cuff grab bag of nonsense glottoral syllables, because the film producers wanted to cash in on Star Wars and Close Encounters being huge hits, they really hadn’t thought the thing out very well. Now it’s become a whole thing.
You can, and I shit you not, visit the Smithsonian Air & Space museum (it’s one of the most visited museums in the world), and have a audio tour guide in Klingon on your phone if you wish. I swear to God this is true. It’s something somebody put together just as a joke, it didn’t cost the museum a dime (you’d best believe I looked into this).
Apparently the guy who did the Klingon tour recording had a hard time with “Friendship 7,” the name of John Glenn’s first orbiter capsule, because in the now-established Klingon lexicon there’s no word for “friendship.” That is so many levels of awesome, I have no words to express it.
I’d prefer it if you had made it up but I’m sure you’re telling the truth. I know that people take the language very seriously. I remembering seeing an interview with John Larroquette, who was a minor Klingon in the third film. And supposedly Roddenberry tutored him in the language.
That doesn’t make sense that the Klingon language wouldn’t have a word for “friendship.” They are all about tribalism. It’s English that shouldn’t have a word for friendship!