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| Blanchard |
The Woman King: (Terence Blanchard) Despite
twisting history for the benefit of its narrative, the 2022 historical
epic
The Woman King is among the most powerful and well-received
genre films of its generation, capturing a perfect blend of
socio-political interest and engaging action. It tells of the dominant
female warriors of the West African kingdom of Dahomey in the 1820's,
whose population was fighting the slave trade and the superior,
neighboring Oyo Empire. Against this backdrop is the film's family story
involving the lead warrior, the fictional General Nanisca, and her
training of and battles alongside her fighting force. A young warrior,
Nawi, is revealed to be her relation, and Nanisca uses all her knowledge
of life and the enemy, along with her closeness to the king of the land,
to achieve peace, victory, and a better path for Dahomey. Her exploits
eventually lead her to be crowned the "woman king" next to the actual
king. The movie was protested by some in the black community for
glossing over Dahomey's actual involvement in the slave trade despite
the British Empire's efforts to stop them by the mid-19th Century, the
king's character in particular re-written to make him more palatable.
Still, the movie received immense critical and popular praise, and while
it reaffirmed studio doubts by struggling to achieve the box office
success up front to cover its costs,
The Woman King is the kind
of production that yields its best returns over time, especially once
awards consideration takes effect. Much of the positive response to the
movie has been aimed at its employment of music. Director Gina
Prince-Bythewood sought a very specific blend of Western orchestral
melodrama and West African authenticity in the work, all the while
employing black artists as much as possible. Her collaboration with
composer Terence Blanchard has long existed on screens big and small,
and his score for
The Woman King is joined by original source
chants and songs written by Lebo M. and an existing pop song, "Keep
Rising" by Angélique Kidjo, for the end credits.
The Lebo M. recordings for
The Woman King, made
separately from the score, were presented to the cast and crew during
shooting to provide as much authenticity as possible to the
vocalizations seen on screen, a counterbalance to the fact that the
dialogue in the movie is otherwise in English. These passages for a
South African choir and percussion are therefore extremely raw, with a
recording quality specifically constrained compared to that of
Blanchard's score. (Anyone expecting something sounding remotely like
The Lion King will not encounter such popified influence here.)
Blanchard approached his work on
The Woman King with awe for the
picture. While he has tackled high-profile films and garnered major
awards nominations, he didn't really prove his chops in the action arena
until
Da 5 Bloods in 2020. The extent of his planning for
The
Woman King is impressive, the composer combining the Royal Scottish
National Orchestra with American jazz singer Dianne Reeves for specific
vocal highlights and the nine-voice Vox Noire ensemble he had
collaborated with on an opera for other vocals. A separate group of
percussions was recorded for mainly the battle sequences, and Blanchard
himself performed a metallic, African soundboard instrument called the
kalimba. As an ensemble, this combination proves fantastic in its
ability to represent all aspects of the tale and, of course, audience
expectations. The composer weaves each of these elements amongst a few
other notable accents, including some modern elements in the mix;
electric bass, electric guitar, and synthetic effects contribute an
almost timeless element, though one cannot help but think a touch of
Quincy Jones figured into these stylings. The solo vocals by Reeves are
key to the whole affair, her improvised performances sounding like a
language but are instead created to fit the inflection necessary for
each moment. Her contributions are sadly rarer than they probably needed
to be for this score. Compositionally, Blanchard professed to being
familiar with historical West African rhythms and harmonies via his
relationship with other musicians. His writing for
The Woman King
is only as melodic as it needs to be for a basic narrative arc,
though.
Much of Blanchard's score is not concerned with advancing
any structural element of his writing, whole sections of slower
movement, such as cues from "To the Vector" to "Oyo Battle,"
accomplishing little narratively. When fully expressing his themes, the
score often succeeds best, with several cues of remarkable power and
even joy resulting from these performances. Still, Blanchard shows some
limitation in his ability to manipulate his themes for different
emotional situations, his main theme of the film needing transitioned
from major to minor key at times, especially for the horror of "Nawi and
Izogie (Part 2)," but the composer unable to make that shift. (In that
particular case, the cue offers some marginal sadness but not any sense
of dread or significant loss.) Also of interest is Blanchard's scope of
the music, which is immensely broad but not necessarily deep. Don't
expect all but a few moments in the work to achieve resounding resonance
in the soundscape due to lack of counterpoint or a spread of instruments
within the full range of the ensembles, especially the middle. Many of
the work's short cues accomplish little more than ambient tonalities or
percussive rhythms, few of which leave a lasting impact. While the
recording for
The Woman King may sound somewhat sparsely rendered
in parts, it does strive to compensate with its compelling performance
stylings and the themes it does employ. Blanchard's melodies in the
score are highly inconsistent in how they are applied, some of them
clear winners while others struggling to enunciate themselves in ways
that really define particular concepts or characters. The composer, for
instance, tends to apply fragments or only underlying chords to
secondary ideas without providing enough reminders of the full melody to
make such deconstruction potent. This challenge applies to Blanchard's
four most prominent secondary ideas, as well as a slew of "one-off"
melodies that he explores for singular scenes but never returns to. The
main theme is less hindered by these difficulties, however, because it
receives truly outstanding renditions in several cues and thus retains
its powerful impact throughout. This primary idea consists of rising,
three-note phrases over shifting chords, switching to descending
equivalents for its interlude sequence. It opens "Agojie Return" in
noble and optimistic form for full ensemble and accents and becomes
playfully light on choir, percussion, and electric bass in "Agojie
Training Montage."
The main theme of
The Woman King turns soft in
the choral opening to "Nawi Trains Alone," switching to more uncertain
harmonies at 0:14 into "Choosing Agojie for the Oyo;" In this harrowing
cue, humming joined by improvised voice accents is joined by rare
woodwinds that peek through in the middle. The main theme opens "Palm
Oil" with optimistic jubilation on female voices, shifting nicely to
cello. (This cue's tone amplifies the reasons for some of the
controversy in the film's handling of the slave trade versus the
kingdom's palm oil aspirations.) The theme eventually prevails over
striking percussion action rhythms in "Final Test," gains leverage
throughout "Oyo Battle" before finally prevailing, and explicitly
returns in "Coronation." As the clear highlight for the orchestra,
percussion, and vocals together in
The Woman King, the main theme
opens and dominates "The Woman King," a magnificent presentation that
finally achieves true comfort in supplying each of its parts in
satisfying sonic depth. The layering of "The Woman King" helps it reside
among the best single moments of Blanchard's career, and it's the kind
of finale cue that will appropriately attract significant mainstream
attention, much like the closing of Ludwig Göransson's
Black
Panther. Even so, this arrangement does not address the secondary
ideas of the work, which represents a missed opportunity to wrap up the
score's loose ends. Blanchard's secondary themes in
The Woman
King are only present to the extent that they are basically
necessary. The most significant of these ideas is also the work's most
frustratingly unfocused, seemingly representing the Dahomey cultural
identity. It is more lyrically dynamic than the main theme but starts
with the same ascending phrase, most clearly developed through all of
"Road to Abomey" in humming, Blanchard adding the orchestra nicely at
the end. The underlying chords inform the quiet, regal tone of "Entering
Palace" and occupy "The Kings Entrance." The theme does subtle battle
with the Oyo theme in "Sometimes a Mouse Can Take Down an Elephant,"
tangentially informs "To the Vector," and opens "The Blade of Freedom"
and "Oyo Battle" in subdued fragments. The performance in "The Blade of
Freedom" and the middle of "There Will Be No Prisoners" does betray some
influence from John Williams'
Amistad. The chords alone return in
the latter half of "The Final Battle" while the melody is tentatively
stated throughout "Nawi and Malik" on choir and figures softly in the
middle of "Coronation," the idea slight in the affable "Mother Will You
Dance."
The aforementioned Oyo theme for the neighboring
villains is a somewhat meandering melody on menacing brass layers and
low strings; many listeners will simply associate Blanchard's array of
aggressively banging and clicking percussion with the Oyo. This material
opens "Oyo Warriors to the Village" and stews in its melodic line later
in the cue. It's developed further throughout "The Oyo Arrive" and
fights against the heroic themes in "Sometimes a Mouse Can Take Down an
Elephant." Bass strings carry the theme in "We Bring Tribute" under
imposing percussion, and the idea eventually diminishes in "The Final
Battle." Two even less cohesive themes are tougher to nail down. What
sounds like a destiny theme is heard throughout all of "To Be Great You
Must Focus," reprised in "I Have to Try to Save Her" on woodwinds and
opening "The Final Battle" valiantly. A theme possibly for the Malik
character isn't entirely clear in purpose, opening "Malik Arrives" with
uncertainty and nervous percussive clicking, and variations are explored
in "With One Purpose" and "Through the Jungle." Other singular ideas
that Blanchard explores but never maximizes include one that opens "Nawi
and Izogie (Part 1)," others heard late in "We Bring Tribute" and the
latter half of "You Fought Well," and a particular solitary highlight
for excellent improvisational vocals throughout "Whiskey for Izogie."
The absence of larger purpose or clear organization to all of these
wayward melodies causes some consternation for listeners not enamored
solely by the scope of performance sounds in
The Woman King.
Those stylings are fantastic, and those who don't particularly care
about melodic details will find the score to be a magnificent treat of
performances spanning Western orchestral conventions and West African
history. The recording's presentation is dry and does at times lack
depth of layers, the absence of counterpoint lines a particular
detraction. On its album, the 74 minutes of score spread over 38 cues
isn't arranged for an optimal listening experience, those contents
requiring rearrangement and combination for a half hour of very engaging
highlights. For those who appreciate Blanchard's combination of Western
and African styles in
The Woman King, especially in the vocal
lines, it's difficult not to compare this work to the obscure but
fantastic and dynamic
Elephant documentary score from Ramin
Djawadi in 2020. While both scores offer the same general foundations,
Elephant remains superior by a clear measure due to its better
melodic development and remarkable depth of mix. That said,
The Woman
King is an admirable career achievement for Blanchard and provides
its topic with appropriately intelligent dignity and scope.
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