One of the most remarkable aspects of the Avatar’s film score is the integration of a wide range of traditional ethnic music elements derived from cultures across the world. Unique sounds from Swedish herding calls, Burundi greeting songs, Vietnamese work songs, and numerous other musical cultures were explored and incorporated into the film score. This amalgamation of global musical features is likely what gives listeners the experience of listening to the music of an unfamiliar, alien culture, and yet subconsciously arousing certain sentiments associated with the more readily recognizable “human” sounds.
As with many other Hollywood films, Avatar retains many conventional styles of film scoring, including the use of a leitmotif that can be heard throughout the film, and what is probably a standard orchestra to provide the background music. However, as mentioned earlier, James Horner, the late film composer for Avatar also incorporated many unorthodox elements into both the diegetic and non-diegetic music of the film. Listening to the music for the first time, I got the sense that I was listening to something that might resemble North American indigenous music. The primary features that most likely contributed to this perception are the distinctive drumming pattern, the chant-like singing, and the presence of a single flute voice and its musical behaviour in the score.
What makes the drumming an important component of the film score’s character is the level of attention that it receives throughout the film. While standard-sized orchestras typically have a percussion section, instruments in this section rarely featured at the forefront of a musical piece, most often, they supplement other instruments of the orchestra while remaining in the background. In the case of Avatar, the percussion instruments are given significant emphasis alongside the flute (they can be heard very clearly in tracks like “Becoming One of ‘The People’”). Added to this is the fact that the percussion instruments retain a very natural sound, as if the skins of the drums are made of original rawhide and are free of any “artificial” sounds that might be produced by its more metallic counterparts. Another unique feature that I quite enjoyed in this film score is the way the flute is used. I noticed that in almost every piece that the flute is featured, following the delivery of a musical phrase is a dwindling of the flute’s tune as if the notes eventually get lost in the depths of a forest. This is especially noticeable in “The Bioluminescence of the Night”. Similar to the flute in Titanic, the role of the flute in Avatar seems to be to provide the organic feel to an otherwise alien music. After all, while the Na’vi people are indeed alien, their culture is highly intertwined with their natural surroundings.
Yet, even with these musical features, the music as a whole only loosely resembles Indigenous North American music. Certain other musical features bring to mind images and feelings associated with completely different cultures. For instance, the funeral chant (“Funeral of Eytukan”) resembles something of a Gregorian chant from medieval Western music, each musical phrase following an upward trajectory and then returning to a lower tonic. In another instance, the overlapping sound of high-pitched wind chimes produces a more celestial sound, reminding listeners that this isn’t a story taking place on Earth, but on extraterrestrial soil.
This integration of musical elements from different cultures and different time periods is truly what makes the Avatar film score such a unique work of art. Given that authentic musical identity takes centuries to form, I can only imagine how complex the task was for Horner and his team to invent a new body of music unique to a fictional race and managing somehow to give it its own cultural identity.