Its difficult to look back at South Africa in the 1970s and 80s and remember that, for decades following the end of World War II, the country operated under a legal political system called apartheid, whereby white South Africans held all the power and black South Africans were second class citizens, subjugated by a minority in their own country. This systematic racism was decried all over the world until 1991, when the policy was formally abolished. Director Richard Attenboroughs film Cry Freedom is a look at one of the most notorious events of the apartheid era: the death of activist Steve Biko at the hands of the local police in Pretoria, and the complicity of the South African government, who tried to cover it up. The film starred Kevin Kline and Denzel Washington, and was a major critical success in the winter of 1987, eventually receiving three Academy Award nominations: one for actor Washington, and two for the music by George Fenton and Jonas Gwangwa.
English composer Fenton, a stalwart of prestigious British television and cinematic fare, had scored Attenboroughs previous directorial effort Gandhi in 1982, and continued his collaboration here. Fenton had worked with Indian composer and instrumentalist Ravi Shankar to develop an ethnically authentic score for Gandhi, and on Cry Freedom Fenton again sought out the help of a local musician to create a truly genuine South African sound. To this end, Fenton shared scoring duties with Jonas Gwangwa, a South African jazz musician, songwriter and producer, who had been an important figure in South African jazz for over 20 years previously, and who was the leader of Amandla, the cultural ensemble of the African National Congress (ANC), Nelson Mandelas political party. The resulting score is about as authentic a representation of South African traditional music as one could ever find in a film, which blends Fentons contemporary dramatic orchestral writing with the tribal rhythms and vocals of the Xhosa people to whom Steve Biko belonged.
Vocals actually play an enormously important role in the score, acting as the spiritual soul of the movie. Gwangwa and his singers offer a wide array of styles and emotional resonances to convey the life and death of Steve Biko, and his struggle for justice; sometimes they are joyful and uplifting, sometimes they are dramatic and defiant, sometimes they are somber and full of regret and reflection.
Several vocal cues stand out as being especially noteworthy. The opening piece, Crossroads A Dawn Raid, features African vocals that are epic and soaring. They carry the main melody, supported by both Fentons orchestra a bed of intense thrusts with imposing brass and clattering percussion and synths arranged by Ken Freeman, who is still best known in England for his theme to the long-running BBC drama series Casualty.
The subsequent Gumboots is a joyous, upbeat guitar piece accompanied by chanted, raucous African vocals, and hand claps and foot stomps in the percussion section which pre-date James Horners The Mask of Zorro by a decade! Black Township is distant and wistful, with humming female voices and sighing males, accompanied by Fentons string washes and moody, breathy woodwinds, offering a sobering musical depiction of the harsh realities of life the black communities suffered under white oppression.
Later, Asking for Trouble is a suspense piece, in which female vocals whispering in Xhosa are offset by an incongruously light woodwind line, in a style which reminds me very much of Michael Abelss opening piece from the 2017 film Get Out. The Mortuary is a dark piece, filled with nervous tremolo strings conveying a sense of danger and apprehension, while faint, bitter chants keep time with a slowing heartbeat in the percussion section.
The Funeral (September 25, 1987) is an album standout, filled with operatic African acapella vocals and humming harmonies that simultaneously celebrate Bikos life and lament his loss. When the cue segues into a spine tingling rendition of Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika, which would eventually be adopted as the post-apartheid South African national anthem, the emotional impact is enormous.
The rest of Fentons underscore tends to be understated, a combination of strings, harp, piano, soft woodwinds, and muted horns, which accompany Kevin Klines character Donald Woods, the editor of the East London Daily Express, as he attempts to escape from South Africa to break Bikos life story to the world. Cues like Detention, At the Beach, and The Phone Call offer some interesting textures, and cues like The Getaway and Deadline become more urgent and intense, but Fentons two most important contributions come elsewhere.
The first, The Frontier, is a genuine highlight, which begins with lilting, lyrical piano and horn writing, moves through a nervous sequence for bass flutes, pizzicato strings, and odd chord progressions, before concluding with a joyous, celebratory finale full of bold vocal calls and an open, buoyant thematic idea. The second, Telle Bridge, uses muted brass to add a touch of elegant jazz to a cue otherwise full of drama and pathos, and the fanfares towards the end have the rousing catharsis similar to his score for The Blue Planet.
The score concludes with an original song, Cry Freedom, written by Fenton and Gwangwa, and performed by Jonas Gwangwa himself with soulful passion and raw emotion. The song bares little relation to the music as heard in the score itself, but Gwangwas performance is important, especially when you listen to the lyrics: Gwangwa opens the song by rattling off lists of names of anti-apartheid activists imprisoned or killed by the South African government, and places where subjugation of blacks by whites reached violent conclusions, before imploring the world to cry freedom for South Africa. Gwangwas performance of the song at the 1988 Oscars brought the house down, although it eventually lost to Bill Medley and Jennifer Warness Ive Had the Time of My Life from Dirty Dancing.
- Movie Music UK Review
076732622421
MCAD-6224
MCA Records, 1987
Country: USA
Good condition
C03
