I can't live without this specific music!! I have the tape and the cd!
April 29, 2008 |  | I've forgotten about this CD.... |  |
I've had this CD in my music library for a number of years and haven't listened to it for a long time. I had it buried somewhere collecting dust. I dug it out tonight and replayed it. It all came back to me. I've forgotten just how powerful and moving this soundtrack is and the reason why I bought it in the first place many summers ago. I saw the movie only once but I fell in love with the music from the start. The sheer grandeur of those beautiful African choir voices. It brought tears to my eyes once again, as it did before. I even discovered that the beginning part of the last track "Mother Africa Reprise" was used in the 2001 trailers for the first Lord of the Rings movie "The Fellowship of the Ring". I remember asking myself when I saw the trailers what was that African-sounding "chantlike" music that was used in the background. It sounded familiar to me but I didn't make the connection that it was from this soundtrack. I had it all along and didn't remember! I'm not letting this one out of my sight again. It's going back on top of my CD rack where it belongs for more deserved replays. Listening to it reminds you why music is THE universal language.
May 9, 2006| | | Perhaps the best score ever written | |
This generally unknown score by Hans Zimmer is his best work to date, besides Gladiator (and this score is better than Gladiator's). The songs on this album are some of the most powerful I've ever heard, and you can't help but get goosebumps listening to "Woza Mfana" or "The Rainmaker". Highly highly recommended.
December 12, 2005| | | Take it from someone who has been there | |
Personally being from South Africa, I think that this is a great CD. For more on this item watch the movie, except keep in mind that South Africa has changed because this movies is about at lesat a decade or more ago. This music is truly South African, and is great fun to listen to. You can feel the joy in the music, a kind of joy that can only be African. The songs capture the joy and sadness from the movie and are awsome to listen to.
December 4, 2005| | | You don't have a music collection, if you don't have this. | |
Rid the words "powerful" and "moving" of their triteness--learn them anew by hearing this incomparable soundtrack. The harmonies! The instruments! The richness and precision of the African voices! And lyrics that some have said move them to tears. Put on headphones--this is something you listen to with full attention to the details. No music can stir the soul more than Mother Africa, for example, with its slow crescendo (14 minutes including reprise) that gathers like a storm and then fades into the distance leaving a lone voice in the calm.
I thought the inclusion of African-American Teddy Pendergrass, singing the title track ("Standing lost by a river / In a land far from you...") was a brilliant touch.
I have already used one track of this CD, so far, as background music for a slideshow of pictures I've taken in tribal Africa. Senzenina, like most of the music on the CD, it is not in English, enabling it to speak to each listener individually. (I know what it says to me....) The one thing people invariably say after seeing my slide show is, "What is that music? Where can I get it?"
Over all, I would say this music is a blend of both earthy and choral sounds, both primitive and contemporary percussion and rhythm, both sorrow and courage, a nod to the hard past and the rivers of blood that continue to forge a strong and powerful and endless march into the future. In spite of the seeming triviality of our every-day lives, in the end, life is profound--and that's what this is about. That it is about life that continues to this day in the cradle of our birth makes it all the more profound.
It's hard to imagine anyone not being blown away by this work of Hans Zimmer.
November 6, 2005More reviews at Amazon.com ...
