Joseph Kamaru showed us a very interesting lecture despite being a Kenyan musician he spoke a lot about his views on culture and the politics behind protecting this. He urged for the voice of Kenyan music and as a result, has sold half a million records. His inability to embrace his culture and spread this to the westernised world inspired me. I believe this message is so important. Authenticity should be protected in all arts especially sonically.
His message to the world reminded me of a lecture when we talked about authenticity and Disney’s corruption of this.
After watching clips of Disney’s ‘Brother Bear’ we discussed the use of indigenous artists used within the making of the score. With little credit and almost 0 authentic influence from Native American culture, this creates a few controversial issues.
Despite Brother Bear being a celebrated successful Disney film, the lack of authenticity can not be noticed. In a day and age of ‘cancelling culture,’ we should take the director’s notice of situations like this film. With the use of an African American singer Tina Turner during the main songs, some could argue the irony of this and how once again certain racial groups are singled out and gatekeeped into one. As well as the score being untrue to its story and traditions are shown within the film, it sends little representation of true Native American People. Although theoretically, the score was a huge success I strongly argue that by using authenticity you will only get better results.
A good example of this is Hanz Zimmer’s ‘Mother Africa’ score. Despite the film being Pan- African he blends his artistic twist with a variety of arrangements; using South African choirs alongside multiple traditional south African instruments.
To me, this speaks volumes of authenticity and paints a better storyline cinematically. However, with Hanz Zimmer being a German writer I don’t believe it is truly authentic without the use of a South African composer.