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Amistad
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Composed, Conducted, and Produced by:
Soprano Solos by:
Pamela Dillard
Orchestrated by:
John Neufeld Conrad Pope
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LABELS & RELEASE DATES
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ALBUM AVAILABILITY
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The 1997 Dreamworks album was a regular U.S. release. The 2022 La-La Land set
is limited to 5,000 copies and available only through soundtrack specialty outlets for an
initial price of $30.
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AWARDS
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Nominated for an Academy Award and a Grammy Award.
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ALSO SEE
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Buy it... if you are drawn towards John Williams' more intelligent
exercises in restraint, with themes that won't sweep you off your feet
but rather engross with their cultural adeptness.
Avoid it... if a comparatively muted Williams score ultimately
defined by its multi-cultural title theme doesn't offer enough
overwhelming melody or robust action to sustain your interest.
BUY IT
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Amistad: (John Williams) While the history books
had never pointed much light on the events of the Spaniard slave ship La
Amistad and the 1839 rebellion of its 53 captured Africans, director
Steven Spielberg revived interest in the topic with a quality 1997 film
that follows most of the basic historical facts. After the slaves kill
most of the crew of the ship and inadvertently sail onward to the
American coast and are captured, their trial represented the tug of war
between the claims of the American government, Spain's queen, the ship's
surviving owners, and the American naval officers who captured them.
Inspiring their defense is former president John Quincy Adams, whose
portrayal by Anthony Hopkins is a highlight of the film. The production
qualities of Spielberg's effort are exactly as you would expect, raising
memories of the equally powerful Schindler's List. But
Amistad failed to muster the same emotional attachment in
audiences as the previous classic, and the film withered after causing a
flurry of initial public inquiry about the event. Nevertheless, an opera
based on the subject debuted the same year, countless books were offered
about the subject, and the film received its fair share of recognition
during the next awards season. One of the production's Academy Award
nominations came to John Williams, who extended his lengthy streak of
nominations during his years of production with his highly respectful
music for Amistad. The year of 1997 was one of much anticipation
for fans of the maestro; after three years of rather mundane and sparse
activity, he wrote a respectfully strong score for Rosewood, a
satisfyingly robust sequel for The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and
a melodic and rich effort for Seven Years in Tibet. Technically
speaking, Amistad may be the best of these four scores, showing a
side of the composer's ethnic elegance that is rarely heard. The
centerpiece of the score, the "Dry Your Tears, Afrika" adaptation of a
1967 poem, is a rousing, victorious song with spoken African vocals. The
African flavor inhabiting parts of Amistad was of interest to
Williams fans at the time because the composer had been commissioned to
write music for the forthcoming Olympics, and many had thought
(erroneously, as later revealed) that he would provide music of
precisely this international flavor for the opening of the event.
The personality of Amistad is split into two
halves, which is perfectly understandable given the plot of the film.
The African elements, heard in the primary theme's song performance and
a sub-theme for Djimon Hounsou's character of Cinqué, both
feature instrumentation atypical to Williams for the period and are a
refreshing exploration of percussive and vocal tribal spirit. The
American counterpart to this African half is scored with Williams' usual
noble ideas for trumpet and French horn, respectfully tasteful at every
moment. The main theme informing "Dry Your Tears, Afrika" is the score's
most obvious identity, and it offered Williams a chance to assemble 50
vocalists and a variety of authentic percussion, including a slapping
metallic sound unique to this score, to accentuate the powerful bass of
the orchestral ensemble, that region sometimes aided electronically. The
poem "Dry Your Tears, Afrika" by Bernard Dadie is adapted with all the
victorious bravado that Williams can raise, though the upbeat nature of
this theme is a somewhat surprising choice for the composer. For the
slaves, there would be decades of hardship to come, and "Dry Your Tears,
Afrika" seems to handle the topic with valiant defiance that perhaps
doesn't apply necessary gravity to the concept. The underlying theme's
presence in the score is pervasive in that it features an elegant
repetition late in its progression that is used to tie the score
together. This five-note conclusion to the theme is appended masterfully
to the end of both Cinqué's theme and the American theme,
symbolizing the eventual and inevitable merging of cultures. Full
reprises of the song explode in "The Liberation of Lomboko" and the
official concert-suite arrangement at the end of the album, though the
theme's most beautiful performance comes from the wordless vocals in the
latter half of "Middle Passage." This cue alleviates some of the
problems with abrasive, dry mixing from which the three full song
performances suffer. The theme for Cinqué in Amistad is
provided with a concert arrangement of its own in "Cinqué's
Theme" and features the solitary longing in flute performances that
Williams collectors will best remember from Hook. This theme is
interestingly handed over to the full, lush ensemble and concludes with
a horn solo that seemingly foreshadows the America that the character
would come to encounter. This melody receives a haunting resolution in
the subdued choral performance of "Going Home" at the finale of the
film, once again followed by a subtle reference to the main theme.
The increased presence of the American mores and
setting of Amistad in "The Long Road to Justice" is announced
with a buoyant and optimistic trumpet and French horn theme that
represents the better halves of JFK and Born on the Fourth of
July. Williams' positive themes for Americana settings seem to blend
together after a while, and the one for Amistad remains rather
anonymous in this history. While well performed, these good-natured
passages in later cues like "Adams' Summation" and "The Verdict" lack
the powerfully genuine touch that Williams had provided them in times
past. In both "The Long Road to Justice" and "Mr. Adams Takes the Case,"
the American theme yields to the African main theme but maintains the
Western instrumentation. Outside of these soothing thematic passages,
there are few other cues worth noting. Much of the remainder of the
score is darkly suspenseful, scored with a slight hand by Williams. An
exception is "Sierra Leone, 1839," which features a deep male chorus
chanting to tribal rhythms that combines the raw menace of Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom with the synthetic edge of Jurassic
Park. The same style extends into "Crossing the Atlantic," which
opens with an electronic pan pipe rhythm synonymous with James Horner's
career. These more subdued tracks are expanded on a 2022 La-La Land
Records set containing a fuller presentation of the score and a wealth
of alternate takes. Because of available recording time, Williams
availed himself of several additional recordings that served both the
suite-like arrangements and alternate cues. The 155-minute edition of
Amistad is admirable but definitely overkill, especially given
the redundancy in the newly revealed passages. The additional cues do
offer renditions of the American theme to a greater extent in the first
half of the score, though their performances don't yield any new insight
into the theme. Added cues of tribal minimalism for percussion and
exotic flute are competent at establishing a mood but are too
understated for appreciation apart from the film, elongating the first
CD on the set to tiresome lengths. The score, despite the appeal of its
highlights, simply cannot sustain such expansion on album unless
intellectual appreciation is the goal. Overall, Amistad does not
offer sweeping melodies or attractive action material. It is an
intelligently successful exercise in restraint, though its major
detraction is the overly optimistic nature of the primary song and a few
of the suspense cues. Otherwise, Amistad is a very impressive
score that compensates well for its slower passages with outstanding
thematic integration and execution.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check: |
For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.68
(in 91 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.54
(in 360,131 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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Orchestrations Expand >> N.R.Q. - November 2, 2005, at 9:58 a.m. |
2 comments (5802 views) Newest: July 9, 2006, at 11:53 a.m. by N.R.Q. |
appreciation s.venkatnarayanan - December 30, 2004, at 1:17 a.m. |
1 comment (3854 views) |
Anyone? Expand >> Doug - November 23, 2003, at 4:34 p.m. |
4 comments (5733 views) Newest: June 30, 2004, at 10:31 a.m. by JS Park |
1997 Dreamworks Album Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 55:51 |
1. Dry Your Tears, Afrika (4:18)
2. Sierra Leone, 1839, and the Capture of Cinqué (3:39)
3. Crossing the Atlantic (3:21)
4. Cinqué's Theme (4:12)
5. Cinqué's Memories of Home (2:35)
6. Middle Passage (5:18)
7. The Long Road to Justice (3:16)
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8. July 4, 1839 (4:01)
9. Mr. Adams Takes the Case (7:15)
10. La Amistad Remembered (5:08)
11. The Liberation of Lomboko (4:09)
12. Adams' Summation (2:55)
13. Going Home (2:02)
14. Dry Your Tears, Afrika (Reprise) (3:37)
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(track times not listed on packaging) |
2022 La-La Land Album Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 154:35 |
CD 1: (77:59)
1. Introduction and Retribution (4:40)
2. July 4, 1839 (4:04)
3. Steering East (1:27)
4. The Capture (5:00)
5. Introducing John Quincy Adams (5:15)
6. Meeting of the Minds (3:58)
7. Counsel Meets Client (1:36)
8. The Ship Remembers (5:32)
9. Visiting Adams (1:32)
10. What is Their Story? (3:44)
11. Learning to Count (1:57)
12. Tale of the Lion's Tooth (5:48)
13. The Capture of Cinqué (4:03)
14. The Crossing (4:41)
15. Tales of Horror (7:40)
16. Discovering the Bible (5:05)
17. Prisoners' Song (1:33)
18. The Letter to Massachusetts (2:09)
19. Cinqué's Legal Mind (2:26)
20. African Violet (5:33)
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CD 2: (76:36)
1. Adams' Address to the Court (7:21)
2. Adams' Summation (Film Version) (3:01)
3. The Verdict (5:10)
4. Liberation of Lomboko: Dry Your Tears, Afrika (2:17)
5. Going Home (2:05)
6. Dry Your Tears, Afrika (Reprise) (3:37)
7. The Long Road to Justice (3:19)
Additional Music: (49:41)
8. Cinqué's Theme (4:13)
9. Introduction (Alternate) (1:12)
10. The Capture (Alternate) (5:02)
11. Harbor Tavern (3:05)
12. Cinqué's Theme (Solo Flute) (2:07)
13. Meeting of the Minds (Instrumental Version) (3:45)
14. The Ship Remembers (Alternate) (5:26)
15. What is Their Story? (Alternate) (3:33)
16. The Crossing (Alternate) (4:23)
17. Tales of Horror (Alternate Excerpt) (3:19)
18. Discovering the Bible (Alternate) (5:11)
19. Cinqué's Memories of Home (2:39)
20. Going Home (Alternate) (2:06)
21. Dry Your Tears, Afrika (Alternate) (3:35)
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The insert of the 1997 Dreamworks album includes the standard note from Spielberg, though he
makes some serious film music spelling mistakes in his notes. He mispells the names of two major
composers out of three. The insert of the 2022 La-La Land product contains details about both the
film and score.
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