An interview by CBC News with Hanson was posted on Youtube recently. Towards the end of it is a part of the discussion that I just loved because it hit on a typical argument, particularly with film, that has always bothered me: Discrediting the importance of emotional impact from a soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO7H2Pu6w0Q
How often do you hear: "Well, it was the soundtrack that added the impact not the [dialogue/performance/setting]." Like writing off the importance of music to communicate internal, human experience is an acceptable argument, as if a soundtrack is somehow not valuable as a translator of general moods and intensity of some human experience, compared to an acting performance?
Does this common (and I'd say shabby!) argument about the role of music in film and plays ever bother you?
People sing lullabies to their babies to soothe and communicate love. Music has been shown to inexplicably allow those suffering from assumed, permanent memory loss to recall experiences from their past. People have sung through war, famine, slavery, protest, at weddings, birthdays, funerals. We sing to worship, to pray, to communicate gratitude, to communicate infatuation; we sing to celebrate the beauty of a life lived, with those we love, while they're on their deathbeds. Musicians played as The Titanic sank.
Playing instruments and music found from the past allows us to collapse the distance of time into a sense of a perpetual present. We can sense the vibrations, feel the universal emotions of the continuous, shared presence of being human, that string of humanity throughout time that we are all part of, one moment connected (perhaps overlapping) with the next.
Right here, right now, we take a stand against this stale ol' position about the alleged inferior value of soundtracks! Compared to what? Says who?!
