Buy it... if you appreciate strong, harmonic integration of African rhythms, orchestral instrumentation, and ethnically charged vocals.

Avoid it... if the striking multicultural sound of dynamic, stylistically-African scores in 2003 saturated your tolerance for that genre's often lamenting tone.

Final Solution: (John Sponsler/Tom Gire) With high praise from both within the international Christian community and from mainstream critics, the 2002 apartheid film Final Solution is a tale of personal transformation, redemption, and confrontation of past crimes. Its premise revolves around the character journey of a young, white South African whose childhood circumstances led him to adopt the idea of genocide as a solution for South Africa and its "black danger." After training paramilitary white groups to viciously strike at blacks, the man is slowly shown and cured of his prejudices by his love interest, as well as a pastor. The film presents a mob scene confrontation that allows the story of this man to unfold, and a fairly expected amount of religious discovery offers him the ultimate opportunity for salvation. Produced for showings in film festivals, on PBS, and in churches, Final Solution was a film created by a partnership of Christian filming and distribution companies. Despite the mainstream theatrical limitations that typically arise for films distributed by such religious organizations, the high quality of Final Solution extended the film beyond that restrictive nucleus. One example of this expanded reach exists in the form of the soundtrack release for the picture. Composed by John Sponsler and Tom Gire, the score for Final Solution was recorded in South Africa with a moderate orchestral group, a local chorale, and several instrumental and vocal soloists. Some veteran collectors of John Debney's soundtracks may already own a snippet of John Sponsler's work, as he collaborated with Debney to provide music for the television show "Doctor Who" in 1996. Since then, Sponsler continued to provide music for television and video films, and Tom Gire had often composed additional material for Sponsler's assignments of the early 2000's. It is likely that Final Solution was their most emotionally charged challenge to date, with a recording process that the composers unequivocally recounted in 2003 as among their very best professional experiences. The score foreshadows an interesting trend in film music in 2003, a year that was surprisingly rich in the integration of authentic African elements into the environment of a traditional, Western orchestra.

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With differences evident in scores ranging from Hans Zimmer's Tears of the Sun to Niki Reiser's Nowhere in Africa in 2003, yet another stylistic approach to the same recipe is taken by Sponsler and Gire for Final Solution. Avoiding stereotypes and synthetic meddling, the ingredients of the music for Final Solution are much more similar to Nowhere in Africa, but with a smaller orchestral presence and a less pronounced thematic performance by those orchestral players. The success of Sponsler and Gire's work stems from the masterful use of the traditional vocalists who often overlap in their solo and ensemble performances. The use of a female lead vocalist, with a deep male choir and rich percussion often in the background, is hauntingly combined with string and woodwind sections to produce a sound that very well balances the need to identify with Western audiences while also adequately representing the tones of the native cultures. While several cues feature only the percussion and solo vocalists to reflect the actions and emotions of the blacks in the story, it is most likely that Western ears will be attracted to the several cues that feature passages of harmonic, orchestral and fully choral explorations of the score's numerous melodies. Ironically, there are a handful of cues that offer electronic keyboarding of a Zimmer methodology, ranging from the uplifting (with a redemption cue very reminiscent of Zimmer's The Preacher's Wife) to those which buttress the African rhythms, as was done in Tears of the Sun. In the end, however, the Final Solution recording remains considerably more rooted in tradition and authenticity than Tears of the Sun, and it is this character which likely assisted the film in its immense popularity. The duo of "Final Solution" and "Interrogation" represent six minutes of superb harmonic material (especially with use of the lovely whistle in the first cue) that belongs on any representation of the best film music from 2002 or 2003. Overall, if you appreciate strong collaborations between African rhythms, Western instrumentation, and ethnically charged vocals, then the relatively rare Final Solution promotional album will be well worth your investment. Those who purchased and enjoyed Nowhere in Africa will especially appreciate this score as an impressive extension of that multicultural style. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download