Avatar Music Culture

The music from Avatar has such a unique sound included with the typical Western culture that I cannot pinpoint where it is even from; and, from what I can make out from my research, this seems to be the idea. It appears as though James Horner and Wanda Bryant wanted to make a music culture unique to the Na’vi tribe and therefore created their own by combining forms from various real cultures. Horner wanted to combine this Na’vi music culture into a traditional Western orchestral sound in the Soundtrack. If you listen closely, one can most definitely hear this in the soundtrack of Avatar: for example, the song “Pure spirits in the forest” has several sounds that seem like they may have come from some sort of primitive tribe. The musical instruments sound like they are archaic and could have been made out of materials from a forest. An example in the “Pure spirits of the forest” song is the flute that you can hear: the timbre is not as high quality as the rest of the instruments and it appears as though this was done on purpose. Also, some of the sounds in this song are quite unique and resonate similar to a marimba combined with various other sounds that could definitely be associated with various tribal instruments. One can easily pass up these little nuances in the music since they usually only consist of part of the songs. Lastly, the drums are quite prominent in the music, and in the movie they can be seen in various forms; again, these were modeled after true instruments such as the Japanese Taiko. This only scratches the surface of the effort put into creating an entire music culture and putting it into a Western album; the feat is quite impressive!