While music in movies might now be more for effect, this element still lends an important role in the stories that are told in movies. If you click here, you will find a video where animator Don Hahn explores the importance of music in Disney movies. But there’s no way that an abstract piece of music can specifically tell a story” (NPR Online). You can retell a story that people know, like ‘The Pied Piper,’ because they can make the associations, because they already know the story. “It’s impossible to tell a story specifically. Contemporary American composer John Corigliano says that it helps when the story is well-known to the audience. Music without words need a context to tell a story. In this case, the music isn’t necessarily telling the story, but it is enhancing it. When you’re watching a movie, and the key drops into a minor tone, you can tell that something bad or ominous is about to happen. This results in what we see in musical scores in film today. However, after the stock market crash in 1929, songs were no longer inextricably tied to a film and its narrative instead, they were used to help develop mood and atmosphere. In Hollywood, initially, songs were used to reveal information both to the characters within the film and to the audience to advance the plot (Foley, 2016). I may not understand the language which means I can’t discern the story being told, but the video is still entrancing. Here is a video of Kannikeswaran conducting hymns. Kannikeswaran ends his blog on this positive statement, “We as musicians and composers have with us a unique opportunity and a responsibility that of telling stories that can empower communities and enable six billion of us human beings to create new possibilities for a shared future” (2013). This created a new genre of music that represented innovation and connection. Kannikerswaran explains that in the 1800’s, during the dark ages of Colonial rule in India, Muthuswamy Dikshitar, one of India’s foremost composers wrote Sanskrit lyrics to Celtic and other folk tunes that came with the East India company. In his blog on his work he also muses on the transformation of these hymns over time. Indo-American composer and scholar Kanniks Kannikeswaran, writes on Sanskrit hymns, “When we sing timeless Sanskrit lyrics invoking peace on every aspect of creation - in raga based polyphonic choral arrangements, the air that we breathe changes and resonates with peace” (2013). In these performances, the image containing the major action of the performance is summarized in a song (Herbst, 2004). In Zambia, the Bemba community also has Inshimi storytelling. UCLA professor Rachel Fretz, who specializes in ethnographic studies, cultural diversity, oral storytelling, and African Studies, writes, “Story-song condenses thoughts and feelings central to a recurring episode” (1995). They feel that through this medium the storyteller gains a deeper connection to their audience. In fact, in these communities, listeners prefer to hear a story with a song (Fretz, 1995). The Chokwe people of Southern and Central Africa have incorporated a call and response song into many of their traditional folksongs. What I have done today was look at the backgrounds of different ways in which music has been incorporated into stories throughout time and around the world. To trace every genre of music and their roots would lead to a manuscript of epic proportions. Ancient hymns told stories in Europe while in African traditional stories also implemented call and response songs. In fact, song originated in storytelling at different times in different places. When it comes to the history of telling story through song, there is not one significant moment that started the movement.
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