“This thing is hard to describe if you haven’t been there,” says Marcus Miller of the Black Movie Soundtrack concerts. “Now we have artists calling us.”
In 2013, musician/composer Miller joined forces with filmmaker Reginald Hudlin to create a Hollywood Bowl concert celebrating the songs and music from Black movies. The show proved popular and in 2016 Black Movie Soundtrack II took place. On Wednesday, Black Movie Soundtrack III will take place. Amongst the artists joining this year are El DeBarge, Raphael Saadiq, Meshell Ndegéocello and Chaka Khan.
I spoke with Miller by phone just before yesterday’s rehearsals for the show. We talked about the evolution of the shows, the state of music in film and the power of music to make tough times better.
Does it get harder or easier each show to pick the music?
We try to keep some of the classic stuff because it’s classic. We also go through what’s been happening in the last period of time since the last [concert] and what’s been added to the canon. It’s not difficult, it’s exciting. We need something from Hidden Figures or Black Panther. I don’t think people are ever going to get tired of seeing classic 70s things we do. I’ll never forget the first meeting and Reggie walked in with 100 songs. If we uses Reggie’s list, we have a few years before we run into problems.
What comes first, the artists or the songs?
Both. Between us one of us knows an artist who is a film music buff and then we’ll be at their concert or run into them at the airport. They’ll tell us what they dig and we’ll make suggestions. With the songs, particularly the newer songs, we go, “Okay. Who did it? Are they available?” If they are not who can we imagine that can perform this song. It’s a lot easier now because the word about this event has gotten out.
How has music in Black movies evolved?
Issac Hayes (Shaft) and Curtis Mayfield (Superfly) showed us the possibilities for music in Black movies where it can be a really integral part of the film rather than just underscoring the emotion of the film and having a song at the beginning and the end. The subsequent filmmakers in the Black genre are very serious about music. There was always this thing as a film composer where you were taught to stay out of the way. Make sure it doesn’t have too much rhythm and it doesn’t distract. With Black films we found a way, because of hip-hop, to keep rhythm in the score because the audience is so used to hearing dialogue over music it doesn’t confuse them or distract them.
In 2016 you told me that Shaft was your all-time favorite. You said, “You instantly get the entire vibe of the 70s when you hear those instruments.” What soundtracks today give you the entire vibe of today?
There hasn’t been a song that embodies a whole decade like Shaft did. I think if you listen to Kendrick Lamar’s All the Stars (from Black Panther) you can really get a sense of what’s going on specifically right now. I don’t know if it describes the decade we’ve just been through or the decade to come or if we’re right smack dab in the middle of it. But it definitely sounds like today.
So many movies use existing tracks for their movies instead of hiring songwriters to write new material. Are you concerned about that trend?
If you use existing things you’ll run out of new music. There are a lot of talented people there to create a Shaft for today. It would be a shame if we just rely on music that already exists. That would be the end of the era and I don’t want to see this happen.
It was just announced that composer Terence Blanchard, who has scored many of Spike Lee’s films, will be the first Black composer to have an opera performed by the Metropolitan Opera in New York. What are your thoughts on that announcement and why do you think it took this long?
That’s really exciting. But everything takes long. But at the same time, you know, it’s incredible in America. I’m 60 years old. I literally lived from an era where people in the South were drinking from separate water fountains and four years ago there was a Black president in the White House. That’s in my lifetime. When you read about social history in school books, we’re not talking 60 years, we’re talking hundreds of years. It doesn’t surprise me that Terence is the first one, particularly in a genre that has been predominantly European. Once he cracks the door, hopefully it will stay open. It has been a long time coming for him.
You once said, “I think jazz is a beautiful, democratic music. It encourages musicians with very strong, and many times, very different points of view, to work together as a team while, at the same time, giving them the space to express their individuality. It’s a very important art form and can be used as a model for different cultures to work together.” As a nation we are more divided than at any time in our history since the Civil War. Can music still accomplish all you said?
I’m a little biased, but I really feel like music can do almost anything or can help to do almost anything. When I was a kid around 8 or 9, I woke up to the news and my parents told me this guy Martin Luther King was shot. I got a quick education that morning before going off to class. I came home that afternoon and on the television I saw all these people – black, white – walking hand-in-hand. It sounds like a cliché now, they are walking hand-in-hand singing We Shall Overcome. I never heard that before.
It instantly described the entire struggle; the entire emotion that was being felt and the wholesomeness. All in one song. Music is powerful and speaks straight to the soul. Hopefully we can use music in these times. We’re in strange times and I never thought we’d be in these issues.
For tickets go here.
Photo of Reginald Hudlin, Craig Robinson and Marcus Miller courtesy of the LA Philharmonic Association.
Update: This post has been updated to correct two typographical errors: Marcus Miller’s name was misspelled in the headline. Raphael Saadiq’s name was also misspelled. We regret the errors.