Global Soundtracks: Worlds of Film Music (Music / Culture)

Wesleyan U. professor of music draws together 15 articles, including a few of his own, on the topic on "ethnomusicology." Most of the authors are connected with U.S. universities, though one is from Nigeria and others are foreign-born now with U.S. colleges. Ethnomusicology is as yet loosely-defined subject area combining elements of multiculturalism, anthropology, popular art and culture, and music as a foremost feature and influencer of global and local cultures.The articles concern the music of films from various perspectives from theoretical and general to music of specific films in specific countries. But first, starting in the introductory chapter "Preview of Coming Attractions" Slobin lays out "A Topology of Global Cinema Systems" for the sprawling, heterogeneous topic. The topologies are based on films from major regions such as Europe or from major countries such as the U.S. and India and Russia. Exploration and analysis of the typologies is demonstrated in the first section of three articles by Slobin on American films, titled "American Worlds." This treatment is continued in following chapters on films mostly from Asia (India and Indonesia), but also Brazil, Caribbean islands, and Egypt.One notable film Slobin writes about in one of his pieces is Apocalypse Now. In the memorable scene of an attack on a Vietnamese village by American troops, "a three-second sound of chanting schoolchildren...precedes the horrific helicopter attack by the Wagner-laying American choppers, setting up a musical contrast of peace versus horror, and local vernacular versus mainstream, here figured as classical music." Such treatments of types of music, music wedded to visual elements of film, and effects and themes of music enhance one's experience of films.Music is present in almost every film. Many viewers are unaware of it, however, as they are unaware of the color of a room's walls; or they do not think of it distinctly when thinking about a film. In the 1965 horror film "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte," before the credits, the children "mock the title character as someone who chops off hands and heads; their tune becomes the main title music, so infuses the score." The high-pitched violin strains in the murder scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" are one of the best examples of how music adds to a scene, in this case the terror of the murder. This was a highly-compressed instance of music in film.Slobin and the other authors discuss how music is an aesthetic element often regarded as something added, even superfluous, to movies; but which truly and in many cases necessarily has a part in the making and effects of a movie. The authors explore how music is integral to movies even though movies are commonly regarded as a visual medium.