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The Madagascar Journals Soundtrack

by Matt Kresling

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Mantsonyane 02:14
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We're Birds 01:47
Absurd what I told you, what a mess I made. I'm afraid that my mouth's gone blind. I have the feeling, but just can't find the words, the words. It's a sort of a language that we spoke tonight. We invoked with a sigh what we had in mind. We're rendered speechless, but never flightless. We're birds, we're birds.
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The Fox 01:20
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The Fox Farm 02:22
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Here’s a foreign hostelry, we're drinking from a cardboard box. A little bit unorthodox. Should this be chilled? Well, don't ask me. Hoping that the wine will do what I can't make my mind up to. Another swig may pull me through with the courage of the drunken few. I propose we share a room and save ourselves a little Rand. She sharply reprimands me prior to joining me— who's kidding whom? We drink as we're required to to do as we desire to. Those I've most admired knew the courage of the drunken few, but without recourse to wine. No rhine to thank, and with no Windhoek Lager drank could do what took us beers to do with the courage of the drunken few.
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Motorcade 01:51
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Misy misioka any an-tokotany any Namana Misy miantso eny an-dalambe eny Namana Namana ireo Tena namana Solon-drahalahy Tsy mba nananana Namana ireo Tena namana Namana ireo Tsy mba namanamana Hitantarana ny zava-manjo Namana Mankahery sy mampitraka ny loha Namana Namana ireo Tena namana Solon-drahalahy Tsy mba nananana Namana ireo Tena namana Namana ireo Tsy mba namanamana Mitsikitsiky ao…
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When we look back at this it may look differently, but now it seems very smart, so smart. Be careful not to think too hard, to put much scrutiny upon the floor of straw we're standing on. For the moment, the less we ponder it, the smarter.
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Look how well a dog can impersonate a man and learn a set of rules and seem by sheer obediency to rise to great success; it wouldn't matter if he ran through a maze or for the presidency. Give him a reward, the one who best remembers all the platitudes, the master of etcetera, acquired at the School of Pate de Fois Gras. You may already recognize your ideal son-in-law? Look how well the dogs have risen, every one of them, to greatness, the standard now for greatness being someone with whom you can have a beer. Man of the year, year of the dog, man of the year. And when it's time to factor out who's best, which actor will it be? These are their days the dogs are having now. These are their days the dogs are having now. These are their days. Drawing to the close of a catastrophic term, the man of the year proposed that he assume the mantle permanently. The electorate rose and then began barking their approval of his well-tailored clothes. But this can’t last. Their fall is near. This time next year, I’ll be nostalgic for the past when it’s the year of the pig. Oh, have I mentioned whom we’ll toast that year? Only the most conventional prigs. These are their days the dogs are having now. These are their days the dogs are having now. These are their days.

about

Soundtrack of 'The Madagascar Journals.'

Series trailer: youtu.be/PIPXFZF_720

I always felt that using someone else's music in one's movie or video was cheating. I took a film class when I was 16 in which the teacher showed footage of a WWII dogfight, first with triumphant music underscoring it, then with mournful music. "I get it," I thought, "the music does the lion's share of the emotional labor. So using someone else's music is allowing the composer to do the emotional labor for you."

So when I made 'The Madagascar Journals,' I thought I'd take a crack at doing the music myself, and stop cheating. I was already writing ukulele songs while traveling anyhow, just to pass the time, so why not use them as the score?

Where possible I tried to use music written approximate to the time of each particular scene. What better way to express the mood of a particular period than to use music written contemporaneously? That was generally a successful method, except when it wasn't. Some of the songs were really shitty. I re-wrote the really shitty ones sitting in my apartment in LA, and said to hell with the theory.

'The Madagascar Journals Theme,' for example, was written on the 11-day passage from Durban to Tulear, and you can hear me working on it at the end of Episode 5. I didn't know it would end up being the theme of the series though, and wrote lyrics for it, as I normally did, about whatever political issue was preoccupying me at the moment. It ended up being a song called 'Year of the Dog,' included here for the sake of comparison.

Another track, 'Diamond on the Beach,' was written while staying on the White Diamond in Richards Bay, but for a different purpose. While visiting Durban to find a boat to Madagascar, I met a very nice Polish grad student, and wrote a song about the experience called 'Courage of the Drunken Few.' I kept the music for the White Diamond scene, but the lyrics were obviously incongruous. As was often the case, the incident with the Polish grad student didn't appear in the series, partly because it didn't resonate with the themes, and partly because she said, 'Don't put me in your video.'

In addition to using music written at the time, I tried to incorporate music I heard. 'Weather Window' was based on a random tune whistled by Bernard (he was one of the great passive aggressive whistlers). 'Motorcade' and 'The Photographer' and 'The Ambassador Is Coming' are largely just edits of music by Malagasy musicians I encountered, with a few supporting tracks added. As you can hear when played at length in Episode 6, the songs are mostly improvised and irregular in their time signatures. They were somewhat beyond my ability to play along with, so I edited them in Logic to fit a 3/4 signature, simplifying them enough that I could play along in my rudimentary way. That's probably a metaphor for the reductivism of the series as a whole, but I hope I didn't smother the life out of them. You can hear the authors coughing and laughing in the loops--I would definitely share royalties with them if the royalties amounted to anything more than zero.

I would have liked to have left the songs in their original sophistication, but the truth is that my musicianship is very bad. I mean: the very practical matter of making good sounds come out of an instrument--I just can't do it. But I wanted to write the soundtrack nonetheless, reasoning that what was lost in performance would be gained in having a tailored score. It gets quiet where appropriate, loud where appropriate--it's precisely how I think it should be. Better to wear a cheap suit that's tailored than an expensive suit that doesn't fit, I say.

Computers make it possible for musically disabled people like me to record tolerable-sounding music. They have infinite patience, and allow you to play your song poorly twenty times, then isolate the one time you played a note correctly, and paste it onto the one time you played the next note correctly. It's not a pretty process, and may well extend the production of your travel series by years, but the result is a closer representation of your sensibility, rather than some composer's.

I hope this soundtrack proves that it's possible for any fool to write his own soundtrack, and encourages you to make your own. It may prove exactly the opposite, that composing should be left to composers. Not sure. Too late now.

credits

released June 11, 2020

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Matt Kresling Los Angeles, California

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