Sermones Germanici ... Latine!

My girlfriend is reading Roman satire right now, which currently gets lots of comparisons to hip-hop, thanks largely to Ralph Rosen who I think first made the comparison between iambic poetry and hip-hop.

I like the idea of using Horace's 'sermones' (referring to his satires, especially, but also to his epistles) to translate 'rap' because both words refer to informal speech or compositions which affect informal speech. There's often the pretense that the composition is off the cuff or at least not 'inauthentic,' however that's defined.

There's never a 100% correspondence, but it can be instructive.

Anyway, David Meadows at rogueclassicism linked to a story about some people in Germany who rap in Latin. The story he linked to, and other stories I found on the net, failed to link to the band's site, and with a name like Ista they proved difficult to find.

But here it is, for your amusement: www.ista-latina.de/.