Beyonce’s reimagined ‘Lion King’ goes global
Beyonce flexes both her musicianship and her cultural leverage with “The Lion King: The Gift,” her companion album to the state-of-the-art remake of “The Lion King.” It’s her latest lesson in commandeering massmarket expectations, as she bends “The Lion King” to her own agenda of African-diaspora unity, self-worth, parental responsibility and righteous ambition.
Beyonce was an obvious choice to be cast in an anointed blockbuster: the 25th-anniversary update of “The Lion King,” the 1994 animated Disney parable set in Africa.
Its story of a young lion fleeing and then reclaiming his birthright had already generated a 1997 Broadway adaptation — still running — and movie sequels. Beyonce has a voice role in the new version as the brave, conscientious lioness Nala; she also, of course, sings on the soundtrack.
On the official
soundtrack album, Beyonce joins in a remake of “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” the Oscar-winning song that ended the original “Lion King,” and caps the existing soundtrack songs with her new one, “Spirit,” a dynamic secular-gospel exhortation to “Rise up!” that is also on “The Gift.”
But “The Gift” (Parkwood/ Columbia) goes much further. With Beyonce as executive producer and a songwriter and performer on most of its tracks, it’s essentially an alternative soundtrack album, tied to the plot of “The Lion King” (and interspersed with dialogue snippets) but decidedly more Afrocentric and more attuned to women’s strengths and experiences.
On “The Gift,” the movie’s plot points are springboards for songs such as “Keys to the Kingdom,” “Scar” and “Already.” The album’s first full song, “Bigger,” is at once maternally protective and acutely aware of generational cycles and, as the video clip emphasizes, ecological interdependence: “You’re part of something way bigger,” Beyonce sings, adding, “I’ll be the roots/you be the tree,” as a somber beat gathers under churchy keyboard chords. She follows “Bigger” with a paternal counterpart: “Find Your Way Back (Circle of Life),” with Beyonce recalling a father’s lessons on a track that samples the Nigerian singer Niniola.
Untethered to previous productions, Beyonce has rethought “The Lion King” as 21st-century global pop, frequently drawing on Africa. Her throngs of collaborators include musicians, singers and producers from the U.S., England, Sweden, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana and Cameroon (though not East Africa). It’s a canny, forward-looking move, both
musically and with an eye to an international market that is increasingly receptive to African innovations and non-english lyrics. Beyonce even sings in Swahili at the end of “Otherside,” a ballad invoking life after death.
American and British songwriters — Paul Simon, David Byrne, Peter Gabriel, Carlos Santana — all have found renewal in African music, as jazz musicians did before them. With “The Lion King: The Gift,” Beyonce joins their ranks soulfully, seeking full-fledged fusions.
Internationalism reigns. “My Power” — with Beyonce alongside Tierra Whack from Philadelphia; Yemi Alade from Nigeria; and Nija, Busiswa, Moonchild Sanelly and DJ Lag from South Africa — is built on the deep bass thuds and jittery double time percussion of the South African dance music called gqom. In “Water,” Beyonce and Pharrell Williams are joined by Salatiel, a songwriter from Cameroon, in a bouncy, sinuous track with leaping vocal inflections that also includes a credit for a Ghanaian songwriter, Afriye. Some of the album’s guest performers have racked up
tens of millions of streams worldwide without extensive recognition — yet — in the U.S. Prominent among them is a Nigerian contingent that draws on the crisp, computerized rhythms that are known as Afrobeats.
The album includes Nigerian stars Burna Boy (who gets a song of his own, “Ja Ara E,” that suavely warns, “Watch out for them hyenas”) and Mr Eazi (who shares “Don’t Jealous Me” with Tekno, Lord Afrixana and Yemi Alade and “Keys to the Kingdom” with Tiwa Savage, all fellow Nigerians). Wizkid, the Nigerian songwriter who collaborated with Drake on the worldwide hit “One Dance,” joins with Beyonce to praise the beauty of a “Brown Skin Girl;” the track also has the voice of Blue Ivy Carter, the daughter of Beyonce and Jay-z.
Each song on “The Gift” is a coalition, almost always a trans-atlantic one. And the African elements are at the core of the music; they’re not souvenirs or accessories. Unlike the movie that occasioned it, “The Lion King: The Gift” is no remake or reiteration, no faraway fable. It tells a story of its own.