Music and Film: Arts in Motion

The 81st Academy Awards got me thinking about how incredible the power of the motion picture has become in the modern era. Since Thomas Edison first invented moving pictures and The Jazz Singer first brought sound to the film screen, the American fascination with the film industry has been incomparable. However, as the power of the motion picture became as dominant as it did, it's beyond a script and cinematography, it's most ideal component was, by far, music.

This got me thinking: how prevalent have the Academy Awards become in reputable music? We hear tunes every day, those magical mosaics of music that resonate in our ears and leave an everlasting impression. But do we know where they came from or what they reall mean?

There was a period in film where the musical was an elaborate part of award-winning cinema. Fantastic musical numbers like "Over the Rainbow", "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", "It's Magic" and "White Christmas" were all part of musicals and all part of the hearts of many. Even songs like Pinochio's "When You Wish Upon a Star", Mary Poppins' "Chim Chim Cher'ee" and "Chatenooga Choo Choo" have been part of Oscar nominees and winners and are unmistakeable to any music fan.

Then, we move into the modern setting: cinema moves into technicolour, special effects are blooming and the Western and War movie genres are blossoming. Yet music is still phenominal, with unbelievably memorable songs like "Moon River", "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" and Dr. Doolittle's "Talk to the Animals". Finally, today, in the CGI-enriched, plot-less action-filled blockbusters, a song is still able to captivate. After a trend of Disney wins (Under the Sea, Beauty and the Beast, A Whole New World, Can You Feel The Love Tonight, Colours of the Wind, You'll Be In My Heart and If I Didn't Have You) in the 1990's and early 2000's, the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Annie Lennox, and the great Bob Dylan have also contributed excellent tracks. Even artists like Eminem and Three 6 Mafia have contributed Oscar-winners that have stuck with fans eternally.

This Oscar season, be it Slumdog or Wall-E, that song will have an unbelievably lasting impression on the public who pay $10 for pure magic.

Featured Song: Köhntarkösz (Part II) by Magma
Christian Vander is an incredibly interesting person. Not only is he the son of a renowned French jazz pianist, he has developed himself into a renowned drummer and songwriter himself. What separates him from general musicians is that he has developed his own language and sings in it as well. This has been the basis of Magma for the past 40 years. Magma is a genre creating, jazz-fusing spectacle of outstanding and bizarre sounds. For most listeners, Vander's music has a WTF factor of about 14, but move past the bizarre storytelling and vocalizations and the presence of incredible jazz, scat vocals and the fusion of good old fashioned rock n' roll are clearly present. Köhntarkösz (Part II) blends drums, organ and piano with ridiculous vocalizations and strings that make 16 minutes of purely bizarre work into something concrete and surprisingly listenable.