CH: How did working with Chavez and the filmmakers involved help you determine the direction of the score?

MAL: During the process of writing the score, [co-director] Graham Townsley was already no longer involved with the picture, so I never met him until the premiere. Brad Allgood was the director that I was working with and he was originally an editor on the film, and then took up the reins as a director. He is a wonderful documentary filmmaker with a real sense for story. I also dealt with the producers, like Juliana Penaranda-Loftus and Rodolfo Madero, and to a lesser extent Alejandra Amarilla. These are the three main producers of the film. Rodolfo, as a musician himself, was very smart about the use of music, but Brad really is the great storyteller of the whole bunch. He had taken what was a whole lot of really intriguing footage, and transformed it into a compelling story.

They thought they were done with the film, then the flood happened in Cateura, which is the climax of the third act of the film. Brad and Juliana talked about this—they said, “We’ve got to figure out a way to go down there and shoot some more.” Even though they were out of money, they were out of time and they were out of everything, they made it work somehow.

CH: Did the change in tone during the third act make you adjust your approach to scoring that section?

MAL: There’s always a sense of striving against difficult odds throughout the film. There are places where it seems like they’re on a roll, and there are places where it seems like they hit a wall. The music always has to reflect that inner reality much more so than the external factors. In terms of what the music had to represent, it becomes something that is an ideal composer’s assignment, because you get to run the gamut from joy to despair, and everything in between.

CH: It’s basically as if the people that are featured in the film are characters in their own right, even though this is a documentary. The peaks and valleys, story-wise, are reflected by their real-life experiences.

MAL: From an audience’s viewpoint, there’s very little difference between a dramatic film and a documentary. These are still stories about humans dealing with human problems, and how they respond to them. In this case, it’s a classic story of a group of people who really had very little, yet they managed to achieve something of importance in the world through their sheer determination and a little bit of luck.

CH: In addition to the violin (constructed from the landfill materials) that you played on this score, what were some of the other recycled instruments found in the soundtrack? And where in the score can people hear them?

MAL: I felt that I couldn’t do justice to this story without at least incorporating some degree of recycled instruments into the score. The violin itself was one that was made by Cola, who’s the instrument maker for the orchestra, and the orchestra was kind enough to give it to me. However, everything else was stuff that came from my own recycled trash. That includes bottles that were used as flutes and various objects used as drums and percussion instruments. Even a plucked instrument, whatever I could find. My wife got used to the sight of me digging through the blue container out in front of her house and saying, “Hey, I wonder if this would work.”

You’ll hear it throughout the score, especially in the places where you hear the references to traditional Paraguayan music, because I also did a little bit of extra musicology study of Paraguayan music. To be clear, this is not an authentic reproduction of South American music. It’s more like my interpretation of it based on the listening that I did. The instruments that I used in the score add that sense of unpredictability to the sound that I really feel gives it a special kind of life that you just can’t get by using the usual palette.

CH: Did you construct these found instruments yourself?

MAL: I’m no Cola. I’m pretty much all thumbs when it comes to construction, so I would grab something; if it was a percussive thing, I would try to figure out what I had that I could hit it with that it would sound good. I didn’t do any construction. The only complex recycled instrument I had was the violin.

CH: What was the composing and recording process like for the score?

MAL: Because I have my own recording studio and this was a small budget film, I played most of the instruments myself. We did have a couple of folks who helped out, including a couple of outstanding guitar players on the score. We had a number of people who contributed this and that, but for the most part, a large part of the score is just me recording in layers. I’m a firm believer in the idea of having a thematic through line. This is something that has kind of gotten out of fashion in film and television in the last few decades. It used to be a very common thing. I think of the work, particularly of Henry Mancini for example, who would oftentimes write a song. That song would have a lyricist, but that song would be the basis of the theme of the movie, whether we’re talking Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Two for the Road or Days of Wine and Roses. Anything like that. I like that philosophy of composing. The first composition written for this film was the song.