How Composer Germaine Franco Brought Her Own Take On “The Sound Of Magical Realism” To ‘Encanto’
25.01.2022 - 22:12
/ deadline.com
When Germaine Franco began composing the score for Encanto, the directors knew they didn’t want the sound of a traditional Disney film. Franco began experimenting with Colombian instruments and rhythms to create the sound of Latin American magic.
Encanto takes place in a magical town sheltered by mountains, created when Alma Madrigal (María Cecilia Botero) lost her husband and prayed for a miracle to save her three children. The idea of magic being born out of emotion was important to make the film based in Latin American magic, rather than European.
As opposed to the sounds associated with European fantasy, Latin American magical realism comes with the influences of Afro-Colombian and Indigenous cultures. Franco used traditional Colombian instruments and cumbia, the national rythym of Colombia, to score this Latin American Disney film.
Franco’s score for Encanto has been shortlisted for the Best Score category at the Oscars this year.
DEADLINE: What did the directors have in mind for the score?
GERMAINE FRANCO: Well, they wanted it to not be a Hollywood score. They didn’t want it to sound like a traditional, huge score for with the Disney-fantasy sound. They weren’t sure what the direction would be, which was actually good for me because I got to experiment and come up with my own sound, but still within the Disney world. I really wanted to make it sound like this idea of magical realism in literature, which is like another world beyond this world.
So, how can we get that magical feeling without doing the traditional score? They weren’t 100% sure what that would sound like, but they asked me to experiment. Overall, they wanted me to obviously use traditional Colombian instruments and some traditional Colombian rhythms as
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