World Music is Good, Can I Please Start the Story Now?

Babel, the last film by Alejandro González Iñárritu that completes his trilogy which began with Amores Perros and 21 Grams, weaves together three compelling stories united by something stronger than fate. In the course of just a few days, they will each face the dizzying sensation of becoming profoundly lost - lost in the desert, lost to the world, lost to themselves - as they are pushed to the farthest edges of confusion and fear as well as to the very depths of connection and love.
Gustavo Santaolalla, who wrote the score for Babel, won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Score for Brokeback Mountain, which sold 165,000 copies in the U.S. alone. To give his music for Babel an authentic Middle Eastern feel, Santaolalla taught himself to play the oud, an Arab lute with a distinct, percussive sound. His work for the soundtrack album includes solo oud meditations, folkloric recordings of the Gnawa brotherhoods of Morocco and orchestrated pieces that combine electronic percussion with the sounds of classical Arab music.
A global story needed a global soundtrack, but Iñárritu didn’t want a hodge podge of folk music or songs that sounded like incidental music for a National Geographic special. Iñárritu, Santaolalla, Anibal Kerpel (Composer and Music Editor) and Lynn Fainchtein (Music Supervisor) locked themselves up in a recording studio both in Marrakech and Tijuana, where they listened to and recorded the music of the Gnawa and other traditional Arab musicians in Morocco, and delved into various Norteño sounds in Tijuana. In Japan, musician, producer and DJ Shinichi Osawa and musician, producer Cornelius guided Iñárritu and his collaborators through the sights and sounds of Tokyo at night. The resulting soundtrack takes us on a journey with no beginning or end, with music that illuminates the film as well as the creative process behind it.

Give it a Whirl