File talk:Leonard Cohen, The Partisan, 1968 - 28.5 second excerpt of English transition to French.ogg

Objection to the dispute of non-free rationale

Cross posted at File:Anna Marly - La Complainte du partisan - 1963.ogg since the two files only exist for comparison, the rationale is fundamentally the same for both.

Both this file and that of Anna Marly's excerpt were created to demonstrate the vast difference between the song's origins and the later version, which many sources agree, popularised it in the wider world. The files offer a comparison of a verse that several sources also compare, focussing their discussion on the content and meaning of the words; this can be done in text, and does not need audio comparison, but what is not conveyed in text alone is how starkly different the the results sound.

Leonard Cohen's cover version is by far more familiar to the world than Anna Marly's original, of which only a few recordings exist, that are relatively hard to obtain (likely making them infrequently heard). Simply stating in text that the original song was in French, while Cohen's cover is in English, while reasonably expecting the reader may have some familiarity with Cohen's version, cannot assist the reader in understanding how different sounding the two versions are.

The files were edited to include more than just a comparison of French vs. English (again; this can be done purely in text);

The article explains how Anna Marly was commended for her "singing and whistling" on the radio (aside for interest I felt was straying too far from the article's subject to include; her whistling apparently pierced the jamming the Nazis applied to the radio broadcasts, allowing the French to hear something at least, even if not everything) and the file contains a short excerpt of this whistling along with the discussed verse. I feel that there would be no way to effectively convey the feeling-or-mood-expressed by text alone.

The article also describes Cohen's composition and arrangement, the inclusion of French voices singing the French lyrics, and the mood of the result; the respective file was also edited to encompass these discussed features of his version.

If it is accepted that Cohen's version is somewhat familiar to potential readers, simply stating in text that its lyrics were originally in French might leave the reader misunderstanding that the original song was substantially like the many cover versions that followed it other than the language of the lyrics. Cohen's version led the way for later covers, so much so that it is commonly erroneously thought that Cohen wrote it. Since Cohen's cover has influenced so strongly how the song sounds in its many covers, it is unreasonable to expect a reader to imagine the difference in the sound of the original in comparison, and thus the files are needed. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 12:51, 26 July 2020 (UTC)