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•	1997 Album

•	2022 Album

•	1997 Album

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

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