Lisa Gerrard: a magical soundtrack album

iPod stores 7,500 songs (in MP3 form) and has been a must-have music accessory for a handful of years. Made by Apple, it’s been threatened by the major labels, but the company went on with launching a legal music-downloading service called iTunes. In its first week it had a million subscribers and has quintupled by now. The major labels are still in their online trading infancy, a couple of years after Napster went down and more than half a decade hence they should have been there.

But, that’s not he point here; the iPod capacity means that (depending on their length, obviously) some 700+ albums can be stored and among my choices would be very few soundtracks, live albums and compilations. One sure inclusion would be Lisa Gerrard’s ‘Whale Rider – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack’, a superb, mesmerising, magical selection of pieces.

The film is a story about a Maori community and its tradition although it is as much about the global situation of the female gender, still commonly oppressed. For over a millennium a male heir born to the Chief succeeds to the title. Twins are born, a boy and a girl, but the boy and mother die in childbirth. The surviving girl is named Pai and there is no way she could inherit the Chiefdom. Or… ‘Whale Rider’ of the title is the mythical forefather, Paikea, as well as the film’s ‘resolver’ that involves a herd of whales.

Using traditional Maori instruments, combined with contemporaneous gear, Gerrard creates a hypnotic sonic carpet that flies into the most distant corners of your imagination. It is a pensive, moving, avid, serene, alien (ocean’s bottom is as enigmatic as the heaven), eerie, numinous, flowing and ethno-respectful. It truly is a crossroads of World and classical musics with the heavy experimental slant.

Commencing with ‘Paikea Legend’ composition, the mostly instrumental ‘Journey Away’ combines the present with the ancient lore and weaves such a delicate tonal web that appears as vulnerable as a spiderwork. Purity of notes is a reflection of living in harmony with nature, its pull as deadly as the call of the deep, its laid-back funkiness is as subtle as being sublime. Until it does ‘Go Forward’…

This is not the first soundtrack album by former half of Dead Can Dance member: the lady scored ‘Ali’, ‘The Insider’ and ‘The Gladiator’, for which she won a Golden Globe and received an Oscar nomination. (She’s also had a couple of solo albums out, ‘The Mirror Pool’ and ‘Duality’.) ‘Whale Rider’ has already won an armful of international awards and one can only add, it would be a much poorer flick without its stunning OST that also, as rare as Britney’s virginity, can musically stand on its own and work as a chiller-out, wake-upper, sun-worshiping entertainment, with a bottle of Chiraz or during the bedroom Olympics.

‘Whale Rider’ is a very gracious album, a sentiment not usually associated with popular culture.

9/10