Royal score from a musical king
Five-time Grammy winner Terence Blanchard, talks about composing the score for ‘The Woman King’
Imagine for a minute the spectacle that is Amabutho, the Zulu warriors you have probably seen a lot of in the media recently, with the death of King Zwelithini kabhekuzulu and the coronation of King Misuzulu kazwelithini.
Think of them doing indlamu, the war dance — the chanting and stomping of their feet to the big, rhythmic, loud sounds of the heavy traditional drums, izigubhu. Now take that image of their song, dance to the drumbeat, and imagine them performing it with the Kwazulunatal Philharmonic Orchestra.
This is the sound that accompanies the action sequences in The Woman King, creating an unusual, breathtaking harmony.
The film’s euphonious score, the work of acclaimed jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard, expertly fuses the worlds of powerful orchestral music and traditional African instrumentation and then
marries that with evocative, spiritual and wordless vocals. He recorded the music with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Glasgow.
Blanchard, who has won five Grammys and received two Oscar
nominations, told me that, from the beginning, the film’s celebrated director, Gina Prince-bythewood, wanted to make sure The Woman King score carried the sound of West African-influenced instruments.
“But I convinced her Africans played in orchestras as well,” he laughed, “and that that would also be a great part of developing a sound for the score.”
Jazz fans will need no introduction to Blanchard, a native of New Orleans. If, however, you don’t recognise his name, but have seen films like Love & Basketball, which was written and directed by Princebythewood, or any of the more than 40 films he has scored, including the 17 films and three TV projects he’s collaborated on with Spike Lee, such as Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, Da 5 Bloods, Blackkklansman and Red Tails, then you have heard the musical magic that he creates when he dons his film-composer hat.
Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones was the first opera by a black composer to be staged at The Metropolitan Opera in New York in its 138-year history. It reopened The Met, the US’S leading opera house, last year after the Covid-19 restrictions were lifted and played to soldout houses.
The Woman King, which is set in the 1820s in the West African kingdom of Dahomey, in what is now Benin, snatched the number-one domestic box-office spot when it opened in the US on September 16.
The critically acclaimed film, which stars Viola Davis, Mzansi’s Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim and John Boyega, smashed projections by bringing in $19-million instead of the expected $12-millon.
The film, which was shot in
Mzansi, starting in November, is based on the true-life story of the Agojie, the all-female warrior unit which protected Dahomey from the 17th to 19th century.
At an advance screening of the film in New York, Prince-bythewood said Blanchard was the obvious choice for the composer job and working with him was “the most inspiring musical collaboration” of her career.
She brought in Mzansi’s Lebo M, also a Grammy winner, to write three songs to be sung by a South African choir in Fongbe, a language spoken in Benin.
Prince-bythewood said during the initial research they learned the Dahomey used to create songs and elaborate dance sequences to get ready for battle and to honour the king and each other. The cast sang the Lebo M songs — Tribute to the King, Agojie It’s War, led by Jabu Chirindah, and Blood of Our Sisters, led by Nokukhanya Dlamini — during the dance sequences.
Blanchard’s music does not have lyrics but it does carry vocal improvisations and choir. For that, he brought in jazz powerhouse Dianne Reeves, another Grammy winner, as well as an ensemble of opera singers with whom he worked on Fire Shut Up in My Bones. The music which features Reeves is easy to distinguish because it sounds spiritual.
Her scat improvisations in cues such as Stronger Warriors and A Shark’s Tooth are reminiscent of the ancient Zulu music style ukuhuba, which can sound like the spiritual groaning of the inner being.
I asked Blanchard why Reeves had been his choice for soloist on this project and where he drew the inspiration for these sounds.
“It’s interesting when you talk about Dianne Reeves and the spiritual side of the music because I was influenced by Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the harmonic and melodic nature of some of the things that they do,” he told me.
“I think it was totally appropriate for this type of film, given its emotional side.
“It’s not just an action film, there’s a story and a drama to it that’s really beautiful and I wanted to make sure that the score would reflect that emotionally.
“The vocalists were doing the choral recordings on the same day she was there and, when Dianne sang her first improvised phrase, those guys just lost it. We all did.
“It just all made so much sense and I told Dianne that I really feel like everything that we’ve both done in our careers has led us to this moment, right now, doing The Woman King,” explained Blanchard.
Blanchard said a few things influenced him when he worked on the Oyo battle scene.
“The scene itself, I think the way it’s shot, is just totally amazing.
“Lionel Loueke, the guitarist from
Benin, was a big help when it came time to develop the rhythmic ideas for the battle scenes. I wanted to change it up and not necessarily have the same type of rhythm because, when you hear these drummers play live, the thing that I really love about what they do is that somebody can give a cue and the whole thing can switch on a dime, but the momentum still stays the same. And that’s what I tried to do for all of the battle scenes in The Woman King.”
The film’s battle scenes have been widely discussed since the first trailers were released. They are brutal, yet artistic, and well-choreographed.
At the New York advance screening, Mbedu recalled how difficult training for those scenes had been.
“We had strength training, martial arts, combat training, weapons training, because we had to learn to use the machetes and spears. It was two or three hours of training, and I would ask for an extra hour, because it was very important for me to have my stunts match my performance.”
Actor and TV personality Siv Ngesi, who plays The Migan, echoed Mbedu.
“It was the craziest training I’ve ever had,” he told me in a Whatsapp
voice note. “I did my own stunts in this film, it was crazy, but I would never change a single thing.”
Ngesi laughed when I wondered what it was like to do all of those running and fighting scenes with no shoes on.
“When I was younger we played barefoot and it was fun, but now my feet have gone to private school. After every take, they would give us our shoes back because we did all our fight scenes, all our running scenes, through thorns, through bushes and rocks, it was always barefoot.
“What an incredible experience.” I asked Blanchard what he thought of The Woman King overall: “When I saw it for the first time, I was amazed at the way it looked and I kept saying, ‘This is something we’ve needed to see on the screen for decades.’
“These women were extremely powerful. This is based on real events, real people, people that our young women can be proud of. This is not just for women of colour, this is for women in general, all over the world, to understand that they can be part of anything successful, as long as they work hard.
“I’m proud and happy to be a part of this film, not just because it’s a great film, but because of what it means to our culture, and to history and spreading the story.”
The Woman King