I Dreamed of Africa

Label: Varèse Sarabande     
Catalogue No: VSD 302-066-143-2

Release Date: 1-May-2000

Total Duration: 59:46

UPN: 0-3020-66143-2-9

Hot on the heels of SUNSHINE comes another grand and eloquent new Jarre score. Films about Africa always seem to inspire especially powerful music, and this is no exception. Jarre minimizes the ethnic music, although there are some percussion rumblings and some tribal stringed instrumentation here and there which add a neat texture to Jarre’s very fluid, string-driven rhythms. There’s even a neat didgideroo bass tone in the midst of “The Storm,” a powerful action cue full of raging, tumultuous percussion and horns. Jarre is scoring tonality and texture, not strict ethnic accuracy, and the placement of the Australian instrument in this African setting lends a neat grain to the music, as if suggesting that this story of multiracial connections exceeds national or continental boundaries. But the main musical sensibility of the score remains pure Jarre.

The CD mixes up five score cues with three African folk songs, which tend to merge nominally well with the music, although the purist in me would program the cues so as to hear all of Jarre’s material by itself. But the songs are only minor distractions – it’s not as if all of a sudden a Metallica cue popped up in the middle of Jarre’s gentle rhythms.

There are a lot of shadings of the Jarre of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA period in the score tracks on this CD, a pleasant reminder that the Jarre of today is just as potent and powerful as the Jarre of 1962. The CD opens with the kind of instrumentation and style reminiscent of LAWRENCE, before merging into a brief African vocal textural phrasing, and then growing into Jarre’s main theme, an effective ascension of violins overcome by a ringing tonality that keeps the theme from totally resolving its climax until later. Jarre’s main theme is a 5-note ascending motif, full of soaring violins held in order by percussion and brass.

The five score cues are quite generous, ranging from 6:06 to 11:16 in length, allowing plenty of musical development to occur within each cue. “A Different Rhythm” is a powerful and grand composition, a nearly 11 minute suite of some of Jarre’s best recent music.

Randall D. Larson – Originally published in Soundtrack Magazine Vol.19 / No.74 / 2000