美国国家公共电台 NPR Michael Abels, Composer Of Jordan Peele's 'Us', Balances Terror With Empathy

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

The Oscar-winning director Jordan Peele is terrifying audiences again with a new film called "Us," which opened Friday. It's the follow-up to peals¹ Oscar winning horror pic "Get Out." To ratchet up the fear factor, Peele went back to Michael Abels, a classical composer and teacher who had never scored a film before "Get Out." Tim Greiving has the story.

TIM GREIVING, BYLINE²: "Get Out" may have been Michael Abels' first film score, but he's always known what makes music scary.

MICHAEL ABELS: I actually have a memory of hearing "In The Hall Of The Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg when I was in a crib.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA'S PERFORMANCE OF EDVARD GRIEG'S "'PEER GYNT' SUITE³ NO. 1, OP. 46: 'IN THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING'"

ABELS: And that piece terrified me.

GREIVING: After "Get Out" arrived in February 2017 - making 40 times its budget, becoming a cultural event and eventually earning an Oscar for best screenplay - writer-director Jordan Peele remembers getting a call from Steven Spielberg who mentioned Michael Abels. You've got to use him again, Spielberg said. It's like me and John Williams. Peele was already planning to keep working with Abels, but that sealed it.

JORDAN PEELE: His skill set is immense, and he has mastered many different genres⁵ of music. The best way for my movies to feel new and fresh is for the soundtrack to feel like something familiar but also something that we've never heard before.

GREIVING: For "Get Out," Peele asked Abels to conjure⁶ the sound of gospel horror. So the composer wrote a choral piece for the opening titles where African-American voices sing warnings to the main character in Swahili.

(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL ABELS' "SIKILIZA KWA WAHENGA")

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Brother, sikiliza kwa wahenga. Brother, sikiliza, sikiliza, sikiliza kwa wahenga.

GREIVING: For "Us," Michael Abels says it wasn't so much about creating a new genre⁴ of music but about reflecting the film's underground dwelling⁷ doppelgangers, the Tethered.

ABELS: There was a real need to convey the tortured emotions of those characters because they are us, and yet they're angry and mistreated. So the score is a balance - I think - emotionally, between sheer terror and a sort of despair and an empathy with what they're going through.

GREIVING: For the main titles, Abels wrote an anthem⁸ for a chorus of children and adults.

(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL ABELS' "ANTHEM (FROM 'US')")

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Vocalizing syllabically).

ABELS: The anthem really represents the spirit of the Tethered and the uprising that they're about to stage. There's a group of people, and they're organized. And they're angry.

(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL ABELS' "ANTHEM (FROM 'US')")

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Vocalizing syllabically).

ABELS: It's a nonsense language. I made up the syllables⁹.

GREIVING: The score for "Us" plays with the duality and mirror imagery in the film. Abels paired normal instruments like a solo violin for the young girl Zora with much more abnormal ones, like a cimbalom for Zora's Tethered counterpart, Umbrae.

(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL ABELS' "ZORA DRIVES")

ABELS: The film is really about individual characters confronting their own mirror images. So it's a very intimate, personal story. So the score needed to feel like it was right with you and not about invaders¹⁰ from another universe or something.

(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL ABELS' "ZORA DRIVES")

GREIVING: Michael Abels was born in Phoenix¹¹ and raised by his grandparents on their South Dakota farm. He was immediately interested in writing music.

ABELS: At some point in my early childhood, I went to see "The Sound Of Music." And in "The Sound Of Music," Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein tell us, it's one word for every note by mixing it up like this. And I thought, well, how simple as that? (Laughter).

GREIVING: He studied composition at the University of Southern California and has spent the past 30 years writing orchestral compositions, operas and commissions of all kinds. In 2017, he was running the music department of a private school in Santa Monica when Jordan Peele went looking for an African-American film composer.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "URBAN LEGENDS")

GREIVING: There were disappointingly few in the industry, so Peele turned to YouTube.

(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL ABELS' "URBAN LEGENDS")

GREIVING: Peele found a live recording¹² of a concerto¹³ for string quartet and orchestra called "Urban Legends." He tracked down the composer, and they met for coffee.

PEELE: You know, when I first met him, the first thing he asked me was, how did you find me?

GREIVING: It's an inspiring Cinderella story, but it has darker undertones. After he graduated from USC in 1984, Michael Abels tried to find work scoring films but couldn't find any opportunities. It took decades until this young African-American auteur, who wanted to make a thriller¹⁴ about a young African-American staring down an evil, white system for Abels' dream to come true.

(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL ABELS' "CHRIS AND ROSE (LOVE THEME)")

GREIVING: In addition to "Us," Abels is scoring an upcoming Netflix film. And he recently co-founded the Composer Diversity Collective, which seeks to increase visibility for composers that Hollywood has overlooked. Jordan Peele says it's really Michael Abels' heart that makes him a great horror scorer.

PEELE: Michael's a guy - a man of immense empathy - very soft spoken but a very sweet person, very loving. I think that the best horror is created by those who are in touch with their empathetic side. And that's him.

GREIVING: But don't worry. He'll still scare your pants off. For NPR News, I'm Tim Greiving.

1 peals   

n.（声音大而持续或重复的）洪亮的响声( peal的名词复数 )；隆隆声；洪亮的钟声；钟乐v.（使）（钟等）鸣响，（雷等）发出隆隆声( peal的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• She burst into peals of laughter. 她忽然哈哈大笑起来。
• She went into fits/peals of laughter. 她发出阵阵笑声。 来自辞典例句

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 suite   

n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员

参考例句：

• She has a suite of rooms in the hotel.她在那家旅馆有一套房间。
• That is a nice suite of furniture.那套家具很不错。

4 genre   

n.(文学、艺术等的)类型，体裁，风格

参考例句：

• My favorite music genre is blues.我最喜欢的音乐种类是布鲁斯音乐。
• Superficially,this Shakespeare's work seems to fit into the same genre.从表面上看， 莎士比亚的这个剧本似乎属于同一类型。

5 genres   

（文学、艺术等的）类型，体裁，风格( genre的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Novel and short story are different genres. 长篇小说和短篇小说是不同的类别。
• But confusions over the two genres have a long history. 但是类型的混淆，古已有之。 来自汉英文学 - 散文英译

6 conjure   

v.恳求，祈求；变魔术，变戏法

参考例句：

• I conjure you not to betray me.我恳求你不要背弃我。
• I can't simply conjure up the money out of thin air.我是不能像变魔术似的把钱变来。

7 dwelling   

n.住宅，住所，寓所

参考例句：

• Those two men are dwelling with us.那两个人跟我们住在一起。
• He occupies a three-story dwelling place on the Park Street.他在派克街上有一幢3层楼的寓所。

8 anthem   

n.圣歌，赞美诗，颂歌

参考例句：

• All those present were standing solemnly when the national anthem was played.奏国歌时全场肃立。
• As he stood on the winner's rostrum,he sang the words of the national anthem.他站在冠军领奖台上，唱起了国歌。

9 syllables   

n.音节( syllable的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a word with two syllables 双音节单词
• 'No. But I'll swear it was a name of two syllables.' “想不起。不过我可以发誓，它有两个音节。” 来自英汉文学 - 双城记

10 invaders   

入侵者，侵略者，侵入物( invader的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They prepared to repel the invaders. 他们准备赶走侵略军。
• The family has traced its ancestry to the Norman invaders. 这个家族将自己的世系追溯到诺曼征服者。

11 phoenix   

n.凤凰，长生(不死)鸟；引申为重生

参考例句：

• The airline rose like a phoenix from the ashes.这家航空公司又起死回生了。
• The phoenix worship of China is fetish worship not totem adoration.中国凤崇拜是灵物崇拜而非图腾崇拜。

12 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

13 concerto   

n.协奏曲

参考例句：

• The piano concerto was well rendered.钢琴协奏曲演奏得很好。
• The concert ended with a Mozart violin concerto.音乐会在莫扎特的小提琴协奏曲中结束。

14 thriller   

n.惊险片，恐怖片

参考例句：

• He began by writing a thriller.That book sold a million copies.他是写惊险小说起家的。那本书卖了一百万册。
• I always take a thriller to read on the train.我乘火车时，总带一本惊险小说看。