A couple of months ago, I profiled four bands that play in French, but who come from elsewhere. Today, I bring an unofficial fifth. Irie Révoltés comes from Heidelberg, Germany, but for some reason they sing about 70% of their songs in French, with most of the rest in German. To my own ear, it's an exciting mix because Irie Révoltés' music combines the Gallic tongue with decidedly Teutonic inspired reggae, ska, hip-hop, and electronic beats, with the music changing the feel of the language, and the language changing the feel of the music.
A good example of this mix is Irie Révoltés' song,
Zeit ist Geld. This is heavily electronic hip-hop, with some ska horns mixed in, and lyrics in both German and French. As Irie Révoltés is an explicitly political band (thus the name of the band), this linguistic and musical internationalism merely adds further punch to their universal message of speaking to the common man.
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