Ethploitation: The Use of Ethnic Film Music

A major technique at the disposal of film composers is that of using ethnic elements. By using ethnic elements I do not mean exactly using ethnic music. Film composers do not use recordings of ethnic music compiled by ethnomusicologists for their scores (though they might look at them for ideas). Here I must bring up another distinction: in this paper I am not discussing source music, by which I mean music which, in the world of the film, the characters onscreen would assumedly be able to hear. I am discussing the "background" score, the existence of which Alfred Hitchcock questioned for his film Lifeboat (1944): "But where is the music supposed to come from out in the middle of the ocean?" (Composer David Raskin replied, "Ask Mr. Hitchcock to explain where the cameras come from.") (Prendergast, p. 211) Source music could easily include an entry in an ethnomusicologist's fieldwork archives, but the score could not; scores are deliberately written by a composer, the same person who perhaps wrote some non-ethnic music for the same film. Even if the composer incorporates ethnic elements, the product usually does not sound like a field recording.

I must be careful in defining ethnic elements in film music. In America's Ethnic Music, Theodore Grame defines folk music as "a music almost always of the non-dominant groups of a culture, in contrast to the music of the upper classes (which is often termed art music), and the music of the urban proletariat (which is called popular music)." (Grame, p. 1) This definition is useful for us, but not complete. It takes what I think is the right approach for us, which is to say what ethnic film music is not. I am going to assert without proof (I actually think it is an over-generalization) that composers have a film music style which does not include ethnic elements. There is a typical "Hollywood sound," which may change over time, grounded in the art music tradition, to which most film composers seem at least to try to conform; this explains the usual disparity between a composer's film music style and his/her concert style (which may be, for example, more avant-garde). Assuming that composers have such a "plain vanilla" style, ethnic elements are musical ideas ("flavors"), not present in the composer's usual style, which evoke a certain ethnicity, and also perhaps a certain time and place.

Now we must define ethnicity. R.A. Schermerhorn defines an ethnic group as "a collectivity within a larger society having real or putative common ancestry; memories of a shared historical past, and a cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements defined as the epitome of their peoplehood." (Schermerhorn, p.5) I will take this to be my definition of ethnicity. However, for simplicity, though it might be appropriate in general, I will not consider modern dominant ("pop") American, or European, culture to be a possible source of ethnic elements in film music.

Finally, my thesis: I have identified three major functions of ethnic elements in film music. One is simply as a source of ideas for composers. Thus here the ethnic elements have no grand purpose. Also, sometimes composers use ethnic elements simply to establish setting. The most interesting purpose to me, though, is to establish orientalism (conceptual distance from self, identification as "other") or occidentalism (proximity to self). First I will discuss the less interesting uses.

Especially in leitmotivic scores, ethnic elements can be a source of ideas for a film composer; this is often related to the desire to realistically portray setting. In leitmotivic scores, there are several themes which represent different characters, emotions, or concepts in the film. However, a discussion of possibilities for the clever and effective use (through, for example, interweaving or development) of leitmotivs in film music, while very interesting, is beyond the scope of this paper.

A famous deliberate use of ethnically-based leitmotifs (in film music circles, anyway) is in Miklos Rosza's score to the religious epic Quo Vadis? (1951). Rosza went to enormous length to try to create music with some degree of historical accuracy. With this score, and its successors such as Ben-Hur, he essentially created a music (still somewhat recognizable in popular culture) which evokes "antiquity" (ancient Greece and Rome) almost as well as most "real" ethnic music evokes its particular ethnicity. In addition to being as historically accurate as possible, the music also needed to serve the film dramatically, however; as I stated above, one cannot simply use archival ethnic music for the score. He says, "As the music for Quo Vadis? was intended for dramatic use and as entertainment for the lay public, one had to avoid the pitfall of producing only musicological oddities instead of music with a universal, emotional appeal. For the modern ear, instrumental music in unison has very little emotional appeal; therefore I had to find a way for an archaic sounding harmonization which would give warmth, color and emotional value to these melodies." (Prendergast, p. 126)

"These melodies" are melodic fragments which Rosza found (or perhaps obtained from an ethnomusicologist). He based the music for the Roman Nero on a song entitled "Skolion of Seikilos," an example of Greek music (probably similar to Roman music) dating from around 150 B.C. He based the music for early Christians on a Gregorian anthem "Omnes sitentos venite ad aquas," which actually appeared about 400 years after the period depicted in the film. For the slaves, which included Babylonians, Syrians, Egyptians, Persians, and people from other Roman vassal states, he used fragments of Arab-influenced music which had been allegedly found in a Sicilian monastery in 1650. In his quest for historicity, Rosza also devoted a lot of time to investigating the instruments which might have been used in classical times. He had Italian instrument makers construct instruments based on sources such as Roman statues, antique vases, and bas-reliefs on columns and tombstones. (Prendergast, p. 126)

When Rosza speaks of using these materials, he treats as a priori the fact that the music should have some degree of authenticity, abhorring anachronism. He says, "It is interesting to note what painstaking research is usually made to ascertain the year of publication of, let us say, 'Yes, We Have No Bananas,' if it is to be used in a picture about the Twenties, but no one seems to care much if the early Christians in the 1st century A.D. sing 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' by Sir Arthur Sullivan, composed 1800 years later." (Atkins, p. 109) In the production of Ben-Hur, Rosza also had to threaten to leave the film to avoid using, as the producers wanted, Adeste Fideles for the nativity scene in Ben-Hur. This disdain for anachronism certainly grows out of a desire for realism. It is much easier for an audience to suspend their disbelief if the number of anachronisms, musical or otherwise, is kept to a minimum.

Another good example of using ethnic elements in leitmotifs is in Jerry Goldsmith's score to The Ghost and the Darkness (1996). In this film, set in 1898, Val Kilmer plays Lt. Col. John Paterson, an Irish-American bridge engineer who goes to East Africa to build a railway bridge. There, he encounters two lions who terrorize and slay 130 of his workers over a nine-month period. There are two main ethnicities present in Goldsmith's score: African (representing the setting) and Irish (representing Paterson). Here, the African music not only establishes the setting, but is functional. It represents the scary "otherness" and the perils of the location where Paterson finds himself. African elements are almost always found in the music, at the very least in the percussion and other instrumentation. On the other hand, Goldsmith's use of a jig-like Irish tune to represent Paterson seems to come from the paradigm of "he's (sort of) Irish, so let's make his theme Irish." (Even though Paterson's Irishness is not especially important to the film.) Goldsmith often puts the two themes together in counterpoint, which nicely portrays musically Paterson's unlikely appearance in a jungle with ravenous lions (listening example 2: "Main Title").

Sometimes, ethnic elements are used less effectively to establish setting. Here is an extended quotation from Doug Adams:

In [The] Devil's Own, [James] Horner is doing yet another of his takes on Irish music. Whenever Horner does these pseudo-ethnic scores he always seems to approach them the same way. If it's an Irish score, he just diverts us with some pipes or whistles playing folksy melodies before returning to his "real" palette of strings and block chords. The ethnic stuff and the non-specific score never are reconciled with one another. It seems to be saying, "And now a word from our setting." Or, it feels like a throw away reference, like one of those Indiana Jones-precursor adventure serials where you see a map and hear a snippet of some local instrument to reinforce the setting, then it's back to the score. It works fine in that kind of movie, but in The Devil's Own the Irishness is basically what the whole film is about in a round-about way... a film score needs to have at least some sense of continuity... the ethnicity and the plot are not supposed to be thought of as separate elements -- they're interrelated. (Adams, 1997)

Sometimes elements are drawn from the wrong ethnicity, too. In Braveheart, Horner uses Uileann pipes to convey the Scottish setting, even though the pipes are actually Irish. Ethnic materials are also rather cavalierly applied in Joseph Lo Duca's music for the television series Xena: Warrior Princess. (Perhaps he should not be blamed for this, however; the producers seem to think anachronism is humorous, and sometimes it is.) This is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Rosza's fastidious desire for historical accuracy. Jeff Bond writes, "LoDuca's Xena scores ... call on that reliably angst-ridden Celtic tradition for its heavy-duty emotional moments" (Bond, 1997) Now, Xena is from Thrace, has her adventures in and around Greece, and has only a tenuous link (if any) to the British Isles.. Nevertheless, the opening titles in each show begin with a flyby over the verdant Greek seashore, accompanied by "angst-ridden" slow Irish music involving Uileann pipes. LoDuca also uses various other ethnic musics, such as Indian and Arab.

It is all very fine to criticize such "ethploitation," but hidden here are clues to the use of ethnic music in film. Most obviously, ethnic music, with the important exception of Irish and other Western European folk music (which I will talk about later), emphasizes the idea of "otherness," or orientalism. This goes toward heightening realism, but also toward heightening escapism, persuading audiences that they are not watching a film, and trying even to distance them from their own society and time. The interchangeability of ethnic music in shows such as Xena demonstrates that the point which the producers/composer are trying to get across is not the exact setting, but its exotic nature. Some (like Rosza) do their homework to keep their nits from being picked, and some do not. However, for the casual viewer who is not especially attentive to film music (the "layman," in Rosza's words), it probably does not matter.

Ethnic elements can also be used to make the characters and themes in a film seem closer to the audience. This is straightforward enough, but is somewhat at odds with our definition of ethnic elements in film music. That definition made central use of the existence of a "non-ethnic" film music, which, extrapolating from the general definition of ethnic music, should be the closest to the hearts of members of the American pop culture ethnicity (for whom films are made). In this line of reasoning, one should not notice the music of one's own ethnicity as being ethnic.

However, the non-ethnic film music style is not the music of the American pop culture ethnicity. It is from the Western symphonic art music tradition, usually from about the late romantic period. It is good at generating abstract emotions, but generally nostalgia is not among them. But when we hear European folk music, we associate it with the good old days, before heavy industrialization, back in the old world. In Phil Bohlman's words, "One of the most common ideas about music in ethnic North America is that it functions to recall another time and place: the old country in the age of our ancestors." (Bohlman, p. 277) This is the "reliably angst-ridden Celtic tradition" that Jeff Bond speaks of.

It is hard to mention "reliably angst-ridden Celtic" film music without thinking of James Horner's Oscar-winning score to Titanic. Not only did it become by far the best-selling soundtrack album of all time, but it spurred a revival in Celtic folk music. (Billboard, 1998) What Horner does in this score is to idealize Jack and Rose's love to the point of myth. In Doug Adams' words,

There is no love that is both tenuous and torrid, it leans completely in one direction or the other. In fact, the drama of Horner's music is so extreme, so absolute in intent, that it often feels like Horner is scoring beyond the situations at hand and referring to some sort of greater truth.... When Rose falls in love with Jack, the music lets us know that the love is true, complete, and all-encompassing ... The Rose character, for instance, is scored with almost nothing but sweet melodicism ... to the extent that she becomes fairytale-like... Suddenly, with the music on their side, these lovers are pushed into becoming every classical image of true love. (Adams, 1998)

It is good that the ship Titanic was built by Irishmen (as was mentioned in passing in the film), for it gives Horner the excuse to use Irish elements to evoke old-world fairytale wist. I think that one of the points of Titanic may (or should) have been the idealization of the past: "In my youth, I, the one I loved, and my love itself, were purely beautiful and good, and my unsuccessful suitor and my irritating mother were evil." In any case, emotion and post-industrial nostalgia are really the only reasons that Titanic's score was predominantly Irish, which compellingly shows their force as connotations of Irish music.

Other occidental ethnic musics have been used to evoke tradition and the possible preferability of tradition and the olden days. There are countless examples of films about "coming of age in a small town" which incorporate American folk music elements both to establish setting and to make the audience think, "gee, maybe it really was better, simpler in the good old days." Italian music has been used in this way, too; for example, in Luis Bacalov's Oscar-winning score to The Postman (Il Postino) (1994). The film is about a "simple" postman living in a small Italian town who learns to love poetry in delivering mail to a local poet; he then uses poetry to woo the local beauty. This film is Italian, not American, so the notion of non-ethnic film music is a bit different here. However, there are still ethnic elements being used; the film takes place in the mid-twentieth century, and the Italian folk music elements used are analogous to American folk music elements being used in an American film. Whatever the audience, the music creates the same sort of nostalgia (for something which the audience has probably not even experienced directly!) as Celtic music does.

Another excellent example is Carter Burwell's score to Fargo (1996), which contains Norwegian folk elements. These elements both accentuate (pun not intended) the ethnicity of the characters in the film (sometimes humorously evidenced by their accents) and evoke the supposedly tight-knit, sheltering communities of the old world. This score is a particularly good example in this regard because there exists another film which is similar, but whose score does not include ethnic elements: A Simple Plan (1998), with music by Danny Elfman. This allows an almost scientific analysis of the role of ethnic music in Fargo, with A Simple Plan acting as a control.

There are three types of characters in Fargo: well-adjusted members of the community, badly-adjusted members of the community, and criminals who do not even pretend to be members of the community. There are two musical themes: one, the main theme (which opens and closes the film), is based on a Norwegian folk tune, and usually is orchestrated for violin in a way to imitate the sound of the Norwegian hardanger fiddle. It also is harmonized with a lot of perfect intervals, which recollects medieval music. This theme characterizes the "community," members of which speak in a somewhat humorous North Plains accent (presumably related to a Norwegian accent). The role of the community in Fargo is to shelter its members from isolation and amorality, which can be nicely correlated to the harsh, wintry landscape in the film. The moral centers of the film are Margie the pregnant police chief and her husband Norm. (I could provide ample evidence for this, but that would be beyond the scope of this paper.) The cue entitled "The Mallard," one of the most prominent uses of this community theme, accompanies a slow pan over the warm, protective environment of Margie and Norm's bedroom, showing Norm's nature landscape paintings and the decoy ducks which he makes. The communal ethnic music also sometimes accompanies the badly-adjusted members of society, but usually this creates an ironic effect. For example, one of the only times this theme is not orchestrated for violin (instead, a clarinet) is when it accompanies the badly-adjusted, financially-troubled (but not evil) character Jerry Lundegaard, who is ultimately the cause of the mayhem in the film.

The other theme in the score is for the criminals whom Jerry hires to kidnap his wife so that he can get money from her father, who (justifiably) hates him. This music is surprisingly tranquil for "bad guy" music. Slowly moving and orchestrated with flutes, mildly dissonant strings, and bells, this music, I believe, portrays the isolation of the North Plains landscape without the shelter of a community and a moral center. It is not evil music, just neutral, without the ethnic elements which represent the community. This, of course, reflects the oft-observed communal importance of ethnic music.

The music in A Simple Plan is actually closely related to the "bad guy" music in Fargo. The film A Simple Plan is actually quite similar to Fargo, but it is darker. Like Fargo, it takes place in a small, wintry town in the North Plains, and has characters with bottled-up amorality. In the film, two brothers and a friend find a large amount of money in a crashed plane and decide to keep it. Slowly, their moralities fray until a few people are murdered, and those who survive must deal with guilt for the rest of their lives. The score is fairly monothematic, except for an interesting effect (the first sound heard in the example) created with de-tuned pianos. This bell-like effect crystallizes the inevitable amoral pull throughout the film. The rest of the score makes heavy use of low-register alto flutes and high-register piano, which nicely evoke the film's wintry landscape. However, there is not really a moral center, or a satisfying sense of community in the film. Thus it is appropriate that the music for both A Simple Plan and the criminals in Fargo is unsheltered, without many ethnic elements to represent community.

I do not pretend that every use of ethnic elements in film music falls neatly into one of my categories. However, I do believe that for the most part, the existence of an ethnic element in a score can be explained either by its convenience as a source of musical materials, a desire to realistically portray setting, or a desire to evoke orientalism or occidentalism.

I have neglected something in my discussion, however, which I should probably mention. Is it exploitative of composers to use ethnic music in films? When a composer uses an augmented second to evoke orientalism, is that wrong? No, I do not believe so. However, I do think that copying an entire melody or performance from an ethnic group, which probably means more to them than a simple commodity, is a bit suspect. I heard an Australian friend singing a popular march by John Philip Sousa (it may have been "Stars and Stripes Forever"). I was a bit surprised, so I asked him what he was singing, and he told me that the title of the song was something like "You've Won the Sweepstakes" and it was used in a popular Australian game show. I did feel a bit angry, that another culture had used this music without regard to its importance to myself and to millions of others. I do not know exactly where to draw the line between stealing culture and allowing oneself to be musically influenced. But I think it is important at least to try to draw that line.

Adams, Doug. "The Devil's Very Own Bagpipes." Film Score Daily (website: http://www.filmscoremonthly.com), 5 May 1997

Adams, Doug. "A Score to Remember? James Horner's Technique Critiqued." Film Score Monthly March/April 1998: 38-41.

Atkins, Irene Kahn. Source Music in Motion Pictures. Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1983.

Bohlman, Philip V. "Ethnic North America." in Excursions in World Music. Bruno Nettl et al. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1997.

Bond, Jeff. "Joe LoDuca's Semi-Legendary Journeys Continue..." Film Score Daily (website: http://www.filmscoremonthly.com), 15 Dec 1997

Graeme, Theodore C. America's Ethnic Music. Florida: Cultural Maintenance Associates, 1976.

Prendergast, Roy M. A Neglected Art: A Critical Study of Music in Films. New York: New York University Press, 1977.

Schermerhorn, R. A. "Ethnicity in the Perspective of the Sociology of Knowledge." in Ethnicity: a Cultural Approach. Ed. Daniel Weinberg. Cleveland: Cleveland Etnhic Heritage Studies, Cleveland State University, 1976.

Wescott, Steven D. "Miklos Rosza's Ben-Hur: The Musical-Dramatic Function of the Hollywood Leitmotiv." in Film Music I. Ed. Clifford McCarty. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989

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