Original soundtrack of the week

To begin with it seemed almost incidental – the pianist down there at the foot of the screen, battling to be heard over the din of the projector.  But music rapidly sound its place within the cinematic art and ultimately became  inextricably linkedwith the making of films. As the titles begin to roll, the seats are clattered, and the crowd of viewers head for the exit, pushing open the doors, scattering and segmenting the image. Long after they have gone, the music lingers – Flora continues to run on the sands in New Zealand, while Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace twist the night away in Hollywood.

Through these original soundtracks and compilations, we wanted to share once again the written and emotion of some great Cannes masterpieces, through their music.

#1 : Timbuktu BY Abderrahmane Sissako – CompEtition, 2014

As the regime of terror of the jihadists comes to power in Timbuktu, , musicians are  hounded and their music outlawed. In this chronicle of the silent struggle of men and women whose daily lives and the smell and the iron fist of the extremists,, Abderrahmane Sissako Charles to commission the composer for the first time. The subtle themes that acts as a counterweight to the film’s violence is the work of the Tunisian Amine Bouhafa – 29 minutes of poetic music that asserts its cosmopolitanism: koras, ngounis, oud and duduk borne aloft on a wave of symphonic music played by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.

“Timbuktu is a film with a universal message. What happened in Timbuktu could have taken place anywhere in the world. And so the music accompanies this universal message: it takes local colours, instruments, language  and a local identity as its starting point and elevates this language with a fuller, richer, more lyrical music to convey this message of tolerance and peace.” ⁽¹⁾

it is a message tinged with melancholy  in the voice of Fatoumata Diawara, the singer and writer of the lyrics for the theme song “Timbuktu Fasso”.

► Listen to the original soundtrack in its entirety on Deezer

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^{(1) The words of} Amine Bouhafa at the inaugural ceremony of the Maghreb des Films Festival at the Arab World Institute on 24 November 2014 (Source BALKİS)