Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican singer, rapper and one of the world’s most popular musicians, made history on Sunday during the Apple Music Superbowl LX Halftime Show. Over 128 million people watched the performance, and — a testament to the lasting power of the 13 minute performance — almost every single video I’ve seen on Instagram since Sunday has been of the show. 

Funny enough, most of the videos are of family members and friends watching the show, many of whom don’t speak Spanish and therefore don’t know what is being said. What I love is that their confusion doesn’t seem to stem from a place of stubbornness as exhibited by those who decided to throw their own “party.” 

In fact, the performance has drawn attention to one of the greatest pleasures most people don’t take advantage of enough: listening to music in a language you cannot understand.

To be transparent, I don’t speak any languages other than English. I took Latin as my secondary language in high school, which was really only good for reading stripped down versions of “The Aeneid.” And despite all of my private attempts to learn French, I don’t practice nearly enough to get past the most basic level. 

When I started collecting records, I found tons of cheap French and Spanish language records that have become favorites in my collection — Bossa Nova records from the 60s, French pop albums from the late 70s. I didn’t understand a word of it, but I found that the music could be  enjoyed universally regardless of the language. 

It felt more like an unexplored territory rather than a barrier or an exclusion. 

And once I developed my foundation in those older records it felt exciting to move onto newer music. It was a new method of appreciating music, one that I can’t use in my language. 

Like most people, I take pride in understanding what I consume. When you get older, you find certain ways in which your intelligence best manifests itself, and I knew early in my life that music — understanding and interpreting it — was one of the ways in which I could best prove myself. 

Choosing art in a language that is foreign to you is the deliberate choice to uproot a stable foundation. 

We frequently place our value on understanding art over appreciating it. No one wants to be the clueless person in the room, the person who doesn’t get the punchline of the joke or fumbles the answer to the question. 

So we engage with material that feels comfortable — music we know, movies we can easily understand and books that are tangible and grounded. But like all other things that require a learning curve, art — in all forms, in all languages — is rooted in education.  

So it becomes more important to analyze the words rather than the way they make you feel. But when you’re able to let go of that need to know, you are awarded the pure pleasure of enjoyment for enjoyment’s sake.

This isn’t to say I never look up the lyrics to the French or Spanish music I listen to — sometimes that logical part of our brain wins out, but there are times where I think it’s good to let it run wild in search of answers and meaning. 

But the limitations we have in speech and language shouldn’t be barriers for the art we consume. They should be opportunities.