We saw images of the Na’vi for the first time and began to ponder the types of music that these big blue creatures would produce. At our first face-to-face meeting, Horner, music editor Jim Henrikson and I were guided to the moon of Pandora by producer Jon Landau. Our new sounds would represent the music culture of Cameron’s Na’vi race. In our initial phone conversation, Horner asked me to find unusual musical sounds that “no one has heard before,” by which he really meant sounds not readily recognizable by the average American movie-goer as belonging to a specific culture, time period, or geographical location (Horner 2007a). How could we create an alien music without alienating film audiences? The old vaudeville query, “Will it play in Peoria?” was always in the back of our minds. Avatar’s huge budget -a reported $310 million-meant that marketability was a key concern (Fritz 2009). The film composer’s job is also, according to composer Leonard Rosenman, “to help ‘sell’ the film” (Rosenman 1968:127). Since no Na’vi culture exists, we had to create a convincing atmosphere in the absence of the two principal sources for achieving musical color in film: indigenous musical material and culturally identifiable musical devices (ibid.:214).
The preparations that I undertook for those courses, as well as during my education at UCLA, served me well in my work with Horner.Īaron Copland stated that the first purpose of film music is to “create a more convincing atmosphere of time and place” (in Prendergast 1992:213).
WHO SANG INSTRUMENTS OF DESTRUCTION SERIES
1 Unlike many ethnomusicologists who focus on one primary musical tradition or cultural area, my teaching positions at CalArts and also at Pasadena City College required that I teach not only the typical world music survey course but also courses on contemporary western art music, music and film, the history of rock, and (at CalArts) a six-semester series of world music courses featuring an in-depth look at a different musical culture each semester. Lightstorm Productions reached out to the Music Office at the California Institute of the Arts where I was teaching, looking for an ethnomusicologist with a broad knowledge of many diverse music cultures. I was contacted about the opportunity to work on Avatar in the spring of 2007. In this case, Horner and I constructed the musical culture for the imaginary Na'vi of Pandora. In Global Soundtracks, Mark Slobin states that the job of a film composer is "to construct an integrated and logical society, music and all" (2008:4).
I was privileged to be part of Avatar's creative team as ethnomusicology consultant to film composer James Horner. On January 25, 2010, James Cameron's Avatar became the highest grossing film in history.
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