BRANDON HOCURA / VOWLS
Return to: Home / Exclusive Interviews & Profiles / Composers
.
Unlike Hollywood, which abandoned silent movies soon after the introduction of sound – MGM’s silent swan song was Greta Garbon’s The Kiss in 1929, whereas Paramount’s travelogue/documentary Legong is reportedly the last silent production in Hollywood – Japan continued to produce movies well into the late thirties, although they weren’t exactly free from dialogue.
Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Water Magician / Taki no shiraito (1933) was presented using benshi, a tradition in which an actor performed the characters’ dialogue, narration, and commented on the characters as the film was projected, with intertitles and music.
That unique tradition of live vocal theatre and film exhibition eventually disappeared with the full implementation of sound, not to mention the bias against silent films, and yet it worked extremely well, even if one wasn’t familiar with its roots in kabuki theatre.
A rare screening of The Water Magician recently occurred at the Shinsedai Cinema Festival in North York, Toronto, and featured an original score performed by live its creators, the group VOWLS, whose work is a marriage of styles and instruments from different cultures.
In our conversation, VOWLS leader/composer Brandon Hocura eloquently discusses his involvement with the film, composing the music, and the current acceptance of reinterpreting classic films works with new music, even if the style differs from the original material and pastiches of songs performed with the original silent film.
Film music, in its best form, bridges the gap between the project image and the audience, and creates an emotionally immersive experience unaffected by idiom or contemporary instruments. At the end of our dialogue, please check out some of the links, which include samples of VOWLS music, as well as a sample clip of Mizoguchi’s film with its new score.
.
.
Mark R. Hasan: How did you get involved in the project?
Brandon Hocura / VOWLS: Naomi got to know Chris McGee, one of the programmers of the Shinseidai Festival, through a screening of Japanese short animation films that she organized last summer. Since then we’ve gotten to become friends with Chris and are working together to do Angura! (http://angura.org/) screenings. Chris has always wanted to have a live soundtrack performed at the festival and it seemed like a natural fit for us to work on the Mizoguchi film.
MRH: Had you done any prior film work?
BH/V: Yes, all of us have some experience working with film, and collectively we scored a re-edited version of D.A. Pennebaker’s iconic documentary The Monterey Pop Festival. Basically we only used the footage of the hippies and created a revisionist narrative based around the idea that things would be different today had rhythm and communalism been more central to the hippy movement than spectacle and misplaced angst. Imagine the drum, rather than the guitar, became the fetishised object of the Seventies. (You can see the film HERE.)
MRH: Mashing-up elements of a work to create something new is something you accomplished by re-editing and scoring the montages of D.A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop Festival. Purists might argue the whole concept is an affront to the filmmaker’s original intention (or artist or photographer or composer, for that matter), but I wonder if you think we’ve moved into an era where creating new art from the digital elements of old is a wholly acceptable form of art (with perhaps copyright issues being the only real stumbling block in some cases)?
BH/V: Artists and musicians have been copying works they admire for hundreds of years, long before copyright laws. In fact, the process of imitation was considered one of reverence and helped younger artists develop their own style. In terms of music, especially folk idioms, the only way for songs to survive over generations was for younger musicians to ‘cover’ songs meaningful to their community, a process that both changed and renewed the song often giving it a revived contemporary significance.
However, after the age of mechanical reproduction began appropriation took on a new meaning since images and sounds could be quickly and wholly reproduced. Unfortunately, copyright laws were created as a response to this new under the guise of protecting artists, when in fact most copyright laws are created to protect the companies that control the art and music industries.
In many ways I feel that this new era of digital reproduction is a chance for us to return to the previous mindset wherein engaging with and using sounds and images from pre-existing works is a natural part of the creative process and helps bring works of art into the zeitgeist while simultaneously keeping us grounded in the past. Just by the sheer rate of cultural exchange going on nowadays on the internet copyright laws simply can’t keep up and hopefully this will help us to mature to a point where we openly embrace people’s re-contextualization of the past.
MRH: The mash-up concept also reminds me of indie poster artists who make use of ‘found’ clip art, archaic fonts, older forms of mechanical colour reproduction, and the degradation of pop culture images (a snapshot of Clint Eastwood, a Cadillac, for example.). Do you feel VOWLS has a similar philosophy where iconographic and popular sounds are recombined to create music, be it to evoke a period, a mood, or perhaps comment on a type of idiom?
BH/V: VOWLS certainly does mine the past for ideas and sounds, but we consciously decided to avoid using samples or direct references as we prefer the process to filter through our subconscious so that these influences are recombined in new and surprising ways.
MRH: Were there unique differences in the way the group composed The Water Magician score compared to their work for VOWLS?
BH/V: Fundamentally the process of composing the score is similar to the way we work on VOWLS; we individually bring sketches to the group and then collectively work to expand and improve on them. This being such a long film though, we are improvising a lot more than we do for typical VOWLS sets. Also, we are working with Matt Shaw who sometimes performs with us as The Alpine Continuum and having an extra voice revitalizes our creative process and moves us in new directions.
MRH: The film (as is currently available in Japan on DVD) comes with a music score that’s a patchwork of themes and period music of the thirties, alternating between Japanese folk instrumentals and chamber versions of Western songs. Unique to the mix, however, is the Benshi track where an actress performs the film’s dialogue parts and narration. For most western audiences, the Benshi track may take some effort to get used to, but for composers, you had more than a straight dialogue track to work around: the actress’ voice is almost ongoing, and doesn’t provide you with specific visual cues.
How were you able to score and develop material around the Benshi track, or did you regard it as a free-form instrument around which you had to do perform?
Secondly, audiences who don’t speak or read Japanese may find the film initially tough because Mizoguchi’s editing style is quite brisk, there are title cards, and a narrator/performer. How did you compose the score to ensure there wasn’t a kind of sensory overload? Or was that a concern?
BH/V: Our basic rule for this composition, especially since there will be five of us performing, is less is more. Given that this is such a ‘chatty’ silent film due to fact that room was left in the editing for a Benshi to perform the dialogue our main objective is to have our soundtrack replace the Benshi. Our focus has been on enhancing the emotional content of the narrative using sound without compromising the film’s unique visual voice. To do this we are using repeating themes that work with the narrative and are stitched together with very quiet almost silent passages when there is a lot of dialogue on screen. [see VIMEO sample HERE]
MRH: VOWLS is comprised of musicians who play a unique mix of ethnic, western, and electronic instruments, and that doesn’t make the music specific to one culture. Do you feel that asset is something which will make The Water Magician perhaps more accessible to contemporary audiences?
BH/V: Although we are fans of traditional Japanese music, and I even studied Nagauta shamisen in Tokyo for a few years, we have a very personal lexicon in VOWLS that has resulted from listening to and studying many different kinds of music from around the world. I think that this is definitely an asset and hopefully results in something unique and cohesive that will have appeal to any open-minded listener.
MRH: Because the score will be performed live, and the film runs around 2 hours, have you written specific cues with hard running times, or is the score comprised of concepts the group will explore within scenes, much in the way jazz musicians improvise over the course of a song?
BH/V: The jazz model is one that I think applies to this situation. We do have themes, cues and even what might loosely be called songs, but there is always and element of improvisation, especially in the transitions. That said, we are using the film itself as the score and will be playing facing the screen and allowing the images and action on there to be our main guide for pacing and tone.
MRH: How did the audience react to the live performance, and do you feel you accomplished some specific creative goals, both personally, and for VOWLS?
BH/V: The response was incredible! We had a great time and people seemed to really love our performance. We feel very honoured to have been chosen to score such a masterful film and proud that we were able to create something that was received so well. We are also extremely proud of ourselves for playing for the full hour and forty minutes, our longest set to date!
MRH: Although it isn’t very common, there have been a number of silent films that have been scored by contemporary artists in different idioms, and the results have been very successful because ( and perhaps due to the nature of the job) composers will meet the dramatic demands of a film. I wonder if you have thoughts on the way Mizoguchi’s 1933 film inspired you, and whether there’s a special emotional purity that makes silent films more visceral for composers?
BH/V: Certainly this experience has been very educational and has allowed us to grow as musicians approaching composition in new and challenging ways. In terms of the Water Magician itself, the film has a way of presenting very emotional content in a very understated way, and even the action is presented in this way. This style is typical of many great Japanese works that I admire such as the films of Yasujiro Ozu, Imamura Shohei and Itami Juzo. It can also be found in the writing styles of Kawabata Yasunari and Osamu Dazai. I think there is something inspiring here from a musical perspective; a way of allowing subtleties such as texture and silence add voice to the overall emotional tone of the piece, rather than placing all of the emphasis on the melody which seems to be the most common mode in the West.
In terms of silent films in general, the way in which silent filmmakers had to convey mood and narrative simply with images gives these films a very rich atmosphere that is ripe for interpretation by musicians. I also feel that images and sounds are very natural bedfellows and the mind loves to draw parallels between the two, which is why anytime you put on a film and play your favorite record they will have incredible moments of seeming synchronicity. Pink Floyd’sDark Side of the Moon isn’t the only album that works with The Wizard of Oz, trust me!
MRH: Lastly, are there any specific films or genres you’d like to tackle as film composers?
BH/V: We are open to trying any genre really as each one poses its own challenges and has its own rewards, but we’d really love to try doing a slow science fiction film like Solaris or Lathe of Heaven. Or maybe a Carlos Reygadas film.
.
.
KQEK.com would like to thank Brandon Hocura for his generous time in discussing the work of VOWLS.
For more information on VOWLS, please visit the the group’s website, or their Facebook page.
For brief reviews of the evening’s performance, click HERE and HERE.
All images remain the property of their copyright holders.
This interview © 2010 by Mark R. Hasan
.
Related external links (MAIN SITE):
DVD/Film: Died Young, Stayed Pretty (2008)
.
Return to: Home / Exclusive Interviews & Profiles / Composers
Category: Uncategorized
Connect