Hip-Hop-Musik macht Schweizer Käse angeblich besser

What does “beschallen” mean in German?

German has a single verb for piping music or sound at something: beschallen, formed from Schall (“sound”) plus the prefix be-. You can beschallen a hallway with announcements, a cow with classical music, or, in this clip, a wheel of cheese with hip-hop. English needs four or five words for the same idea: “to play music at,” “to expose to sound.”

This reel reports on a real Swiss experiment: a 2018-19 collaboration between Bern University of the Arts and a cheesemaker in Burgdorf aged Emmental wheels under different musical genres. The hip-hop wheel reportedly tasted better than the classical or rock ones. The German verb beschallen lets the bizarre experiment fit into a single tidy sentence.