I'm writing this while sitting on a train, rushing through the Dutch countryside towards Maastricht. The trip is long: two and a half hours is quite a distance for this small country, and so me and my friend brought our computers to do some work in the meantime.
It makes me think that we take for granted this getting from one place to another, and we forget how these transitional moments shape our lives in such deep ways. Some weeks ago, in mid January, I went to see one of my heroes: Lady Gaga was performing at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, and of course I couldn't miss it. I packed some snacks, ate a nice dinner, and headed over to this cathedral of pop culture. The line was long, but everybody was so excited that you could feel the energy in the air. Finally we could go in, people were talking excitedly. I went alone because none of my friends like Mother Monster as much as I do. But who cares, I was gonna see my goddess live. The concert, of course, was incredible. I cried so hard when I saw Her on stage, rising up in a cloud of mist, lights from the back. Glorious. The songs were what you could expect and more. She sang all the classics, together with the new ones from her album Joanne. All in all, she didn't disappoint, but you can read about it in other pages. What interests me now is exactly what I mentioned before: the way in which she deals with what happens between songs, especially those moments when she goes offstage to change her outfit. It's a detail that is, of course, taken out of the filmed version of the shows. No one really wants to see this, it's a sort of necessary evil of live performances: the artist cannot be in two places at once, nor can the staging change in a fraction of a second. So, how do you deal with that? How do you keep your audience interested and excited for two and a half hours straight? Lady Gaga has different ways of dealing with this. First, you have these moments between songs, where she has to go out. I guess this is both to change outfit, and to rest for a couple of minutes. In these moments, you would have a solo from one of the instruments of the band, especially the guitar. These are moments where the music became much more active and intense that during the songs. It makes sense, since you are losing the main focus of the show, which is Gaga herself. When she is out of sight, the audience's attention and involvement naturally will decrease: it's a sort of rest moment. But if you increase the tension in the music, you can counterbalance this drop in attention, therefore keeping the energy until the next moment she appears. The other way of dealing with Gaga offstage was through the use of a huge video screen that was lowered to hide the stage. On it, you would have videos that are of a more surrealist nature, creating a sort of "dream" sequence, as if you are going into the mind of Gaga. This, of course, makes a lot of sense, since her shows are all based around the idea of her opening up emotionally and psychologically to the audience. It's a bit the complete opposite of the previous method, in that it creates a huge cut in the action, in order to present a different world, both by introducing a video screen and by changing the perspective from the more outward live show to the more inward, conceptual videos being shown. I think music is as much about how to go from one moment to the other as it is about what happens inside each moment. Some artists don't really care about how to create smooth or meaningful transitions between two pieces of music, and this can actually make the whole concert much less enjoyable, and hinder their ability to communicate effectively with the audience. I think we should really pause and study how these great artists deal with these things, because it all helps in creating the best possible environment for the audience to make the best of a concert. source of the image (here)
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Spoiler warning: of course I'm going to discuss some key plot points of this movie.
Ok, I'm not going to lie. I thought this film was a disaster, and I could write a whole other article about all the problems I found in it. But there are people who have written better and more informed articles about it, like Christopher Lebron for the Boston Review (here). Instead, I want to turn to a specific aspect of the film that I found quite interesting, and that I think deserves some thought: the soundtrack (by Ludwig Görasson). But not even all the soundtrack, just one particular theme that struck me. Towards the beginning of the movie, we learn that the king of Wakanda, T'Chaka, has died and his son T'Challa is the going to become the new king. After a ritual fight with the leader of one of the tribes that inhabit this country, he wins and his position is confirmed. What follows is what I found to be one of the most beautiful scenes in the movie, when T'Challa, after drinking the potion that will give him the powers of the Black Panther, goes into a trance-like state where he reaches the Ancestral Plane in order to meet his father one last time. What Görasson does in this moment is to introduce to us a sonic texture that we haven't heard until now: a solo cello with a very lyrical melody, which then grows to a sort of fanfare-like theme in the full strings that emphasizes the moment where T'Chaka tells his son that he is now the king. The whole thing is very beautiful and evocative, but this, of course, is not enough. Thinking back, I think Görasson in a way understood one of the core problems of the film and somehow tried to, if not save it, soften it. Why do I say this? Because of the second time we hear this theme. Towards the middle of the film, we have the scene where Killmonger challenges and defeats T'Challa and becomes king of Wakanda. He goes through the same ritual in order to gain the powers of the Black Panther, and has the same vision of the ancestral plane. Here, Görasson presents us the same theme, also in the cello, but a major second lower, which makes the music sound much darker. He also replaces the rising fourth of the "fanfare" theme for a rising minor second. Much less heroic, but more intimate. This way, the composer has created a mirror between the two scenes, thus suggesting that this theme we hear is not for either one of these characters (which is how usually these films are scored), but rather that it is the theme of the ancestral plane. This then gives the possibility to do what Görasson does towards the end of the movie. After their final battle, T'Challa has wounded Killmonger fatally. In his final speech, Killmonger says that his father told him that the sunsets in Wakanda were the most beautiful in the world. T'Challa then takes him to a place where they can actually see the sunset, and there offers him to cure him of his wound so he can live. Killmonger then says a beautiful quote: “Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from ships, ‘cause they knew death was better than bondage.” Exactly in this moment, we hear again the "fanfare" theme from the ancestral plane, but now with the full rising perfect fourth, exactly how it appeared in T'Challa's scene. Killmonger, then, is finally worthy of becoming one with the ancestors. He is not the evil character we were made to think during the whole movie, but actually, maybe even a hero in his own way. This is why I think Görasson in a way saves the film with his soundtrack. With such a small detail he can then offer some sort of redemption to such a difficult character as Killmonger, solving at least one of the several plot problems of the film. He dies the death of a true hero, even being recognized and allowed to enter the ancestral plane, because in the end he was also trying to fight for a just cause. At least that's how I see it. Anyway, I recommend reading the Boston Review article for a deeper analysis of the plot itself. Also, I had completely forgotten about how Killmonger's quote was exactly, but I found it here. I haven't read the full article yet but it seems interesting. Image source |
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