Category Archives: Film music

by | June 11, 2018 · 6:00 am

Schizophonic transmogrifications of Balinese kecak

Audio recordings of Balinese kecak performances are de- and re-contextualized in two landmark films: Federico Fellini’s Satyricon (1969) and Joel and Ethan Coen’s Blood simple (1984).

Kecak’s use in these soundtracks is a case of schizophonic transmogrification: the rematerialization and thorough reinvention of people and places whose voices and sounds, as inscribed on sound recordings, have been separated from their original sources of identity and meaning and resituated in entirely alien contexts—real or imaginary or somewhere in between.

This according to “The abduction of the signifying monkey chant: Schizophonic transmogrifications of Balinese kecak in Fellini’s Satyricon and the Coen Brothers’ Blood simple” by Michael Bakan (Ethnomusicology forum XVIII/1 [June 2009] pp. 83–106).

Above, a performance of kecak in Bali. Below, the Minotaur scene from Satyricon; further below, the failed abduction scene from Blood simple.

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by | December 8, 2016 · 6:00 am

Disney music legacy libraries

snow-white-score

In 2015 Hal Leonard launched the series Disney music legacy libraries with Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the seven dwarfs”, a bound, glossy facsimile of the master score for the 1937 animated film Snow White and the seven dwarfs.

This 200-page MS guided the construction of the film’s final mix of music, dialogue, and sound effects—in effect, it represents the entire soundtrack of the world’s first full-length animated feature film.

Unlike many film studios, Disney has always saved its written and recorded music assets. Over almost 90 years, dating back to the earliest Mickey Mouse shorts and Silly symphonies, millions of pages of music have been preserved, most recently in climate-controlled conditions. Over a million of these documents have now been digitized, streamlining the time needed to find one from two weeks to three minutes.

Above, a two-page spread from the book (click to enlarge); below, Disney recalls making the film. More about the book series is here.

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by | June 9, 2012 · 1:00 am

Tarzan redux

Of the many Hollywood films made about Africa, the Tarzan films are among the most influential in creating stereotyped notions of African peoples, geography, and social organization.

An examination of the portrayal of Africa and Africans in Cedric Gibbons’s Tarzan and his mate (1934) provides a window into how music has been used to generate these stereotypes and calls into question the degree to which these (mis)conceptions, under the same or different guises, have survived into the 21st century.

This according to “When hearts beat like native drums: Music and the sexual dimensions of the notions of savage and civilized in Tarzan and his mate, 1934” by Clara Henderson (Africa today XLVIII/4 [winter 2001] pp. 90–124).

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the apes, the first Tarzan story, is 100 years old this year! Above, an early dust jacket for this classic; below, the original 1934 trailer for Tarzan and his mate.

BONUS: The film’s notorious river scene, for which the Olympic swimmer Josephine McKim temporarily replaced Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane.

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