One of my favorite parts of the post-production process is working with composers and musicians on film music. When I began working on Peace in Our Pockets, I listened to a good bit of traditional and contemporary Kenyan music. From hip hop infused tracks, to sparse compositions performed on traditional Kenyan instruments, to the wide variety of Kenyan contemporary and dance songs, I wanted the film music to resonate with Kenyan musical traditions, rhythms, and sounds but also connect to the peace and mobile technology message. As we get very close to final cut, I’ve placed the final music into the edit timeline and wanted to share how we got here.
I first came across the music of Sven Kacirek during my May 2012 production trip to Nairobi. After googling traditional and contemporary/electronic Kenyan music, I came acrosss Sven’s outstanding album, “The Kenya Sessions”. His compositions captured a feel, rhythmic energy, and aural texture I was searching for:
Sven Kacirek travelled Kenya with many microphones, this was a brilliant idea! On “The Kenya Sessions”, we hear musicians with whom he recorded in Kenyan villages blended with his own instruments (percussion, marimba, piano) played in the studio back in Hamburg.
As I began cutting the film, I placed several of Sven’s compositions into the edit timeline. I loved how his music worked with the film story and pacing. I highly recommend exploring his “Kenya Sessions” album and other great work. Below is a video of Owino Koyo and Sven performing “Old Man Small Studio”, one of the pieces featured in the film.
About six months ago, it was time to replace music cues featuring the nyatiti, a traditional Kenyan string instrument. I reached out to a former student, Jonathan Henderson, who plays in the African band Kaira Ba with kora player Diali Cissokho. Kaira Ba is known for “taking West African music into new territory”. Jonanthan and band mate Will Ridenour accepted the challenge of composing new works drawing on Kenyan and East African sounds. Will actually built what we think is an entirely new instrument to mimic nyatiti sounds. After several drafts of compositions, we got to a place where we were very happy with this new music. Below is a clip shot in my studio on my iPhone featuring Will’s faux nyatiti, an instrument featured in the film soundtrack.
For a third set of music cues, I wanted a very different sound, one leaning toward ambient, ethereal, techno music. I reached out to another former student , Eric Kuhn to help fill this musical hole. Eric records and performs in a number of bands including Eric + Erica. I was especially interested in collaborating with him as he’s also composed music for film. Eric took a listen to the music placeholders and pretty quickly created several great cues, including a beautiful, peaceful closing composition.
I love this process of collaboration in the creation of film music. A big thanks to Sven, Jonathan, Will, Eric for contributing their musical talents and compositions to this project.