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After years out of the Hollywood spotlight, Mancina resurrected his career in the industry during the 2010's via the two Planes scores, which contain some surprisingly engaging material, and Moana, returning to a genre that had offered him varied success with Tarzan and Brother Bear. Mancina primarily handled the score of the film while Miranda is responsible for the biggest musical numbers, with Foa'i contributing both the ethnic song material and regional elements to influence the score. More importantly, there was significant crossover of involvement between all the artists to ensure a consistent compositional and recording personality across each portion of the score. Not only did the ethnic element from Foa'i inform both the songs and score, but a common orchestrator and conductor helmed the orchestral backing for the two halves of the recording as well, and Mancina is credited with some production work on some of the songs. As an entire package, the Moana soundtrack's melodic components are dominated by the songs, with Mancina largely adhering to those melodies in his score. On the surface, it would appear that Moana contains more songs than usual for a Disney musical, though in actuality the number of individual melodies is more limited; in this case, there's an unusual number of reprises, not all of which named in such a way as to clearly indicate them as such. The Foa'i songs are "Tulou Tagaloa," "An Innocent Warrior," and "We Know the Way," which deal with the exotic and mythological elements of the story. The first two recordings have a distinctly wetter ambiance in the mix than the remainder of the soundtrack; it would have been great to hear this tasteful reverb elsewhere. A lovely reprise of "An Innocent Warrior" returns to a hint of this ambience in "Know Who You Are," the language switching from Tokelauan and/or Samoan to English for the titular character. Meanwhile, the spirited, easy-going cast song "We Know the Way" is reprised twice, first out of English in "Logo Te Pate" and back in "We Know the Way (Finale)." These songs achieve the right balance of accessibility for children's palettes while retaining enough vital ethnicity to suffice for the location and mythology. The balance between native percussion, vocal backing, and orchestra in "We Know the Way (Finale)" is particularly vibrant and triumphant.

The mostly Lin-Manuel Miranda songs in Moana are geared towards the character development in the story, and while they don't exude the same exotic elements (outside of some Foa'i contributions in secondary elements), they are meant to be the standard Disney showstoppers of Broadway tradition. The introductory ensemble song "Where You Are" exists to demonstrate the disparity between the home island's prevailing thinking and Moana's grandmother's wise contrary advice, and you hear the latter rendition of the song in its reprise, "I am Moana (Song of the Ancestors)." While compositionally sound, the performances of the grandmother don't really function well given that the inflection of the vocalizations sound distinctly male. That reprise is one of several instances in which the soundtrack's primary aspirational song, "How Far I'll Go," returns to center stage. In its major initial performance, you hear this popular "heroine yearning for better" idea take flight with more contemporary acoustic guitar and vaguely pop backing. The same general sound exists in "How Far I'll Go (Reprise)," but with heavier orchestrations. After taking control at slower tempos and with more native percussion and background vocals in "I am Moana (Song of the Ancestors)," you hear this song anchor the end credits with a somewhat obnoxiously hip variant that successfully begged for an Oscar nomination. The other really popular song from Moana is the fun but short "You're Welcome," performed with great humor by Dwayne Johnson. Featuring the soundtrack's most exuberant lyrics, "You're Welcome" will be your kids' favorite tune from the soundtrack, and it goes to prove once again that Johnson can actually sing pretty damn well when he's not simply speaking through his lyrics. The villain's song, "Shiny," is quite different in tone from the rest of the songs, Jemaine Clement's performance and the creative percussion and sound effects joining what amounts to a pretty faithful, amusing David Bowie stylistic rip. Still, the songs altogether are as solid a group to come from a Disney musical for some time, better in sum than Frozen and more consistently listenable. While the songs are all relatively short in length, especially compared to the Alan Menken showstoppers of yesteryear, they benefit from having the voice performers from the cast actually sing their numbers (and do so well), maintaining important consistency absent from some other musicals.

The accompanying score by Mancina for Moana is a bit conservative but effective, judiciously stating the songs' melodies and instrumental backing while maintaining a few hints of Mancina's own style in a few places. The orchestra is not particularly well suited for the more muscular action cues, perhaps due to poor orchestration or mixing. The more "magical" and melodic portions of Mancina's music are very attractive, though, and most of these moments lean on melodies from the songs. Mancina does offer his own primary theme of sorts, and he contributed it as counterpoint to the "Know Who You Are" song. You hear this theme on its own in lovely crescendos at the ends of "The Ocean Chose You" and "Tala's Deathbed" before experiencing a momentous exclamation of victory at 0:40 into "Toe Feiloa'i." Don't be surprised if you hear similarities between these gorgeous choral performances and Marco Beltrami's beloved Soul Surfer score, which accesses similar Pacific region character. Mancina also offers his own suspense theme on brass at 1:55 into "Prologue" and 1:20 and 4:43 into "Sails to Te Fiti." As for notable song melody references in the score, "How Far I'll Go" is referenced at the start of "Sails to Te Fiti" and "Navigating Home" while "Village Crazy Lady" reprises the grandma's sequence in "Where You Are" and "Voyager Tagaloa" wraps back to the film's opening "Tulou Tagaloa" theme. The baseline of "We Know the Way" concludes the film nicely in "The Return to Voyaging." Most of the score's highlights exist in its final half dozen cues, though many of these are clear extensions of the songs' melodies or instrumental backing. Mancina enthusiasts will appreciate a few nice moments less directly adjoined to the songs, including some good choral work in "Cavern" and a woodwind solo early in "Voyager Tagaloa" that will bring back the best of Mancina memories. On the whole, the score is a solid win for the composer but is lacking in its anonymous and underpowered action during its midsection. Had Mancina mustered more robust, convincing rhythmic bravado in these portions and maintained the wet ambient mix of some of the Te Vaka contributions, the entire package of songs and score might have achieved a rare five-star rating for a musical. These children's musicals usually have major detractions mixed throughout their soundtrack, often caused by lousy villain or comedy songs, but Moana has no such detraction. The 2-CD version of the album includes intriguing early variants of the songs, including "More," the defiant predecessor to "How Far I'll Go," and Mancina's demos. It's simply a great and affable soundtrack all around, an easy recommendation for collectors of all ages.  ****   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Mark Mancina reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.31 (in 13 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.14 (in 9,500 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.