Musical Review: Lion King
I decided to do my musical review on one of my favorite movies growing up as a child, Lion King. This musical has been being performed at Disney for the last few years and I thought it would be interesting to see the musical version of it as well as being appropriate for studying both the music and cultural side I’m less familiar with. One of the things I liked most about the musical was the authenticity that it maintained in keeping up with the original story and plot. The musical maintains the appearance of an African story while maintaining to keep all the original characters and cast that was displayed in the movies. It features 5 original songs in the soundtrack written by Elton John and Tim Rice with one being discarded and later brought into production through the musical. The score for the musical was produced by Hans Zimmer The musical starts off similar to the movie you can hear the world music sounding trumpets and horns as the orchestra starts off on the first and possibly most well known song, the circle of life. It features a solo by a woman singing english with the backup singers singing a melody to compliment in an African language. It features a solo by a flute with a light texture. It ends off with the circle of life chorus and the scene starts. From here we go on to “Grasslands Chant”. This starts off with a xylophone solo that's preceded by a mixed choir singing in an African tongue. This is one of my favorite ones as it is more of an instrumental but yet it features significantly less instruments than many of the others. You mainly have hand drums and a xylophone sounding instrument. What makes up for the lack of the instruments is the choir making different complimenting sounds with their mouths so it sounds like a lot more is going on than is. The harmonies and tones they are able to get sound authentic and beautiful. World music seems to let the native culture shine through more than traditional music does and it's nice to see and appreciate. A little over halfway through the musical we get to one of the shows most popular hits, Hakuna Matata. This is a classic that features many different instrument solos as well as solos from simba and both Timon and Pumbaa and is sort of the climax for both the musical score as well as the play. It ends with a classic disney trumpet solo before the next scene begins. One of the most intriguing parts of the score was how well it flows with the play. At times its as if the music alone is telling the story which is why this is one of my favorites.
Jordan Palmer
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