“Is all or a portion of your spouse's income deposited in a checking account, joint checking account, your spouse's separate checking savings account, your separate checking and savings account…?” The administrator's tedious voice continues in this fashion, stern and unforgiving. More questions concerning money, welfare checks, and the daily American grind, asked by faceless system operators on the other end of a telephone line build layers of sound on top of metallic instruments, bells, and the buzzing of Los Angeles and the advertisements of an American dream. The dissonance of this swirling sound design, the intro of Haile Gerima’s Bush Mama (1979), takes one specifically to a place, a class, and a people: The Black working class experience, the sounds of a restless city.
The opening of this mixtape encapsulates the vitality and experimentation of sound design and music in the films of the L.A. Rebellion, a film movement begun in the late 1960s in UCLA’s film department, eventually finding a worldwide platform through filmmakers such as Charles Burnett and Julie Dash. The L.A. Rebellion was pioneering in its exposure of an authentic Black voice in world cinema. These films did not accommodate a perceived idea of what Black art should look and sound like. In many films from the movement's broad history (the late 1960s to 1990s) sound is a character, a seamless part of a film's tapestry and timing—a serious force within the picture. The L.A. Rebellion films featured within this mixtape show the revitalizing and exciting power that imaginative sound design can have on cinema.
The mixtape has been styled in a nonlinear fashion, a dedication to the radical stylistic form of the films featured within. Sounds, dialogue, and music are patterned together lyrically; deep and spiritual jazz, rhythm & blues, Caribbean rhythms, and Gospel collide with inner city Watts and African allegories of the metaphysical past. The radio plays funk and soul as we tune into a melancholy voice: “Oh, it’s raining,” whispers the leading female from Melvonna Ballenger’s poignant and tender Rain (Nyesha) (1978). Women lightheartedly discuss their period cravings in Zeinabu Irene Davis' Cycles (1989), a moving portrait of a woman performing African purification rituals while anxiously awaiting her period. Ice Cube is stopped by cops at a petrol station, characters voice their anger at the racial inequality they experience daily, Aretha sings gospel, and Julie Dash’s haunting characters from her 1991 masterpiece Daughters of the Dust echo secrets from generations past, present, and future throughout the mixtape. The L.A Rebellion mixtape showcases the movements use of sound design and music, told through stories, sacred and ancient messages of hope, resistance and urgency and love.
1. Excerpt - Bush Mama (1979) (edit) 00:00
2. Sister Rosetta Tharpe, To Sleep With Anger (1990), “Precious Memories” 01:56
3. Excerpt - Killer of Sheep (1978) (edit) 07:02
4. Excerpt - Daughters of the Dust (1991) (edit) 07:33
5. Mickey Hart / Planet Drum, Sankofa (1993), “Jewe 'You Are The One'” 08:58
6. Excerpt & Zulema, Ashes and Embers (1982), “American Fruit, African Roots” (edit) 12:37
7. Excerpt - Ashes and Embers (1982) (edit)
8. Archie Shepp, Daydream Therapy (1977) (edit), “Things Have Got To Change Part One & Two” 18:16
9. Excerpt - A Different Image (1982) (edit) 25:37
10. Nina Simone, Daydream Therapy (1977), “Pirates” (edit) 26:09
11. Excerpt - Rain (Nyesha) (1978) (edit) 27:53
12. Excerpt - Ashes and Embers (1982) (edit) 28:37
13. Excerpt & Faye Adams - Killer of Sheep (1978), “Shake A Hand” (edit) 32:02
14. Excerpt - Haile Gerima on filmmaking & Don Cherry, Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification (1979) (edit) 34:07
15. Excerpt - Ujamii Uhuru Schule (Swahili for Community Freedom School) (1974) (edit) 37:36
16. Excerpt - Daughters of the Dust (1991) (edit) 38:36
17. Excerpt - The Glass Shield (1994) 40:39
18. Aretha Franklin, Sankofa (1993),”Take My Hand Precious Lord” 41:55
19. Excerpt - Your Children Come Back To You (1979) & Excerpt - Illusions (1982) (edit) 47:27
20. Excerpt - Ashes and Embers (1982) (edit) 49:05
21. Excerpt - Cycles (1989) (edit) & Excerpt - Ashes and Embers (1982) (edit) 53:12
22. Dinah Washington, Killer of Sheep (1978), “This Bitter Earth” & Paul Robeson, “Going Home” 55:57
Part of our on-going series Notebook Soundtrack Mixes.