“WONDERFUL! Expresses the joys and sorrows of human nature…”

Those are the words of Roger Ebert about the beautiful film Mark and Suzanne Bamford made while living in South Africa, Cape of Good Hope. The story focuses on the day-to-day lives of a few people working at an animal shelter in Capetown, and while not an overtly political ‘message’ movie, it does deal with the glaring issues of class and race that still define much of life in that country. I was honored to write the musical score and to work with Mark and Suzanne on their first full feature (as well as mine).

Because of the intimate tone of Cape, I couldn’t pull out all the stops and use a lot of big African elements without it sounding like the Lion King. (And you know I wanted to!) So instead, I looked for sounds that transcended geography and focused more on the universal and personal themes in the script. The music had to play the role of another ensemble cast member, staying out of everyone’s way and matching their rhythm while raising the stakes just a little.

To acheive this, I relied on softer sounds like nylon-string latin guitar, solo clarinet, oboe, marimba and upright bass. Strings were used as texture rather than structure, and percussion, voices and electric guitar were muted to fit in with the overall sound. I never dreamed I would play what sounds like romantic Mexican music in an African film, but… there you go. I also got to have some fun learning how to play a bit of Congolese soukous guitar, so that the character Jean-Claude could listen to a tape from his home country while driving the truck. I’ll post a sample.

Hopefully we can secure the rights to make the music of Cape of Good Hope available right here in my online store. A few remixes and we could have a nice little album for your downloading pleasure… I’ll put it up the moment I get the go-ahead.

By the way: there’s still plenty of good African music live on-screen in the movie, played by real Africans and not some sandy-haired composer in a studio in California. Let me know what you think of the film – it’s available at Amazon.

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