This story about “The Woman King” composer Terence Blanchard first appeared in “The Race Begins” issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
Terence Blanchard’s resume is full of big accomplishments: The jazz trumpeter from New Orleans is the first Black composer to have an opera performed at the Metropolitan Opera and the only one besides Quincy Jones to be nominated for two Oscars for scoring films; his nominations came for “BlacKkKlansman” and “Da 5 Bloods“, just a pair of the more than two dozen projects he’s done with Spike Lee.
But back in 2000, Blanchard wrote the music for a little film, “Love & Basketball,” from an aspiring director making her debut feature. And that little movie paid off big, because that director, Gina Prince-Bythewood, enlisted Blanchard to write the score for “The Woman King,” her new epic set in the West African nation of Dahomey in the 19th century.
The film is a heroic tale that places Black women in places of power, and Blanchard’s score uses the vocal and percussive rhythms of Africa to span an ocean and 200 years.
“When I saw the film, I told Gina, ‘As an African American, I know people have been waiting to see a film done about this part of the world with such majesty and elegance,’” Blanchard said. “I was glad that she let me watch it by myself, ’cause I was a blithering idiot by the time it was done.”
The film also tied Blanchard to his own history. “It brought me back to my grandmother, in a way,” he said. “All different cultures and ethnic groups talk about the strong-willed women in those cultures, and growing up in African-American culture in New Orleans, I could see a direct link to the Agoje (female warriors in “The Woman King”). I wanted to create something that was powerful but universal, and I kept thinking about how in African-American culture, the church is a huge thing and music is a powerful thing. Well, if you listen to [South African choral group] Ladysmith Black Mambazo, even though the harmonic progressions are different, there seems to be a connection to African-American, spiritually based music.”
He also drew from African rhythms and then brought in American jazz singer Dianne Reeves to improvise wordless vocals over his music. “From the very first note, we knew we made the right choice,” he said. “She broke everybody up in the control room. This is one of those projects that was healing for a lot of people.”
It was also an exploration for Blanchard. “I try not to come in with any preconceived notion,” he said. “I literally just look at the scenes and allow them to speak to me. That’s always been the way that I’ve operated. I did this album years ago and had Dr. Cornel West do some spoken word on it, and he said something that was really profound. He said, “Jazz musicians always step out on nothing expecting something.” That’s kind of the way that I felt with this.”
And speaking of jazz musicians, Blanchard also wrote music in 2022 for “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues”, a documentary about another jazz trumpet player from New Orleans. “That was an honor, man,” he said. “When I was called to do it, I got really excited, and then I got nervous. I was like, ‘Wait a minute — this is Louis Armstrong.’ But the thing I realized was, don’t play on it. Let his music speak for itself.”
He also keyed off the sound of the rocking chair where Armstrong sat when he recorded audio tapes about his life that are heard in Sacha Jenkins’ film. “I took some of the harmony from that old rocking chair and based my theme around that sound,” he said. “There was something about that old rocking chair sound that hit me in my heart and soul, and I wanted that to be the emotional backdrop to the film.”
Read more from the Race Begins issue here.
