It was supposed to be a stopgap, a way to mark time between real records — a soundtrack project released ten months too late to support the movie (in this case, Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ), its 22 wordless tracks of largely nonwestern rhythms and scales had zero chance for radio play. As a follow-up to the commercial juggernaut that was So, it was a disappointment. But in the arc of Peter Gabriel’s career, Passion is a high point and a milestone.
Gabriel’s previous soundtrack effort, Birdy, was more of a remix record, consisting mostly of reworkings of previously-released material. Passion, though, was all-new in a number of ways. It marked Gabriel’s first full-on foray into world music. Where African and Brazilian rhythms had underpinned much of his previous solo work, he had previously combined them with classic pop structures. Passion announces its break from this approach with the opening track, “The Feeling Begins.” An Armenian doudouk, playing a traditional lament, is answered by L. Shankar’s Indian violin; the conversation simmers until it explodes in a flurry of North African rhythms, punctuated by roaring rock guitar.
Too much so-called “world music” cops only the exotic surfaces, forcing them into tried-and-true pop contexts: Scottish fiddles with drum machines, Senegalese vocals with drum machines , Gypsy guitars with drum machines … you get the idea. But by building their compositions from the ground up with elements from different traditions, Gabriel and his collaborators create something entirely new — a world music that is truly global, partaking of many musics but ultimately tied to no single source. Passion paved the way for later experiments in the same vein by hybrid artists like Afro Celt Sound System and the late Hector Zazou. (more…)
We have now reached the last of a three part series concerning the three taboos of cinema. Thus far we have discussed the use of profanity and violence, leaving us left with only one subject to discuss, and the most mystifying topic of them all.
In 1998, Terrence McNally’s play “Corpus Christi” was first performed in New York City. It wasn’t hard to predict that portraying Jesus as a promiscuous homosexual living in Corpus Christi, Texas would inspire vehement condemnation from religious groups – and it most certainly did, as “Christians” spewed death threats against the members of the Manhattan Theater Group that first produced the play, and when the play opened in London in 1999 a British Muslim group issued a fatwa calling for the assassination of the playwright.