Music in Film: More Than Just "A Soundtrack"

Daniel L Smith wrote: 


Music and movies have always gone hand in hand. Can you imagine watching a movie with no music? Without music, we would lose an enormous emotional aspect of any movie. Even in the days of silent films, there was still a musical accompaniment. Music stirs something primal in one’s soul. The right music can bring forth emotion that spans the entire range from laughter to tears. A blog written by John Hopkins media studies students states the relationship between film and music: “Music’s function is deeper than simply background music. Focus on the songs the director chooses and you will have a much greater understanding of a film, you’ll learn and experience a good deal more.” In Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? the music while not exclusively, is distinctively southern. The musical genres work well as the movie is set in Mississippi, where our trio escaped a prison camp. The movie makes use of Blues, Bluegrass, Country, and Gospel to help tell its tale. Of these, the Blues is the only genre born in the South while the others are usually associated with the south. The movie makes use of the blues and even puts in a reference to the blues legend of Robert Johnson selling his soul to be the greatest blues guitarist. The actor playing the role of “Tommy Johnson,” the Robert Johnson-esque character is, in fact, Blues artist Chris Thomas King, who is credited with essentially creating his own style called hip-hop blues. The character he portrays is actually Tommy Johnson who was a Blues musician that lived from 1896 to 1956 and claimed to have sold his soul for his guitar playing skill. This plot was later picked up and used by Robert Johnson, who is commonly associated with making a deal with the devil at the crossroads. Bluegrass was actually created when southerners moved to Illinois to find jobs in industrial cities. Bluegrass is a mixture of traditional Irish, Scottish, and African American music blended with blues and Jazz. The instruments of Bluegrass are fiddle, five-string banjo, acoustic guitar, mandolin, and the resonator guitar often joins the upright bass. Bluegrass got its name from Bill Monroe’s band “The Blue Grass Boys.” The “style” of Bluegrass came about when Earl Scruggs joined the “Blue Grass Boys” and developed his three finger roll, or repeated four step picking pattern: Strike the third (middle, "G") string with the thumb pick. Pick the second string (the string just below the middle string, "B" string) with the index finger. Strum the fifth (top, drone, high "G") string with the thumb pick. Pluck the first (bottom, bass, low "D") string with your middle finger. The four notes should sound something like the first four notes of a clock's quarter-hour chime. This pattern became known as “Scruggs Style,” which is viewed as a key development in the genre, even though Scruggs learned the style from someone else, who learned it from someone else, and so on. The music from the movie was very popular; in fact, it won a Grammy, and spawned a documentary Down from the Mountain and a revival in the interest of Bluegrass music. The sound track has even surpassed the movie in sales volume. The song “I am a Man of Constant Sorrow” played a main role in the film and the song itself is a bit of a mystery. No one knows where or when “Man of Constant Sorrow” was written. The song has been recorded and performed by no less than 27 times by artist such as Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Jerry Garcia, and Waylon Jennings to name a few. Dick Burnett, the artist credited with the original, said in an interview near the end of his life that he was unsure if he had written the song of if he had been given the song. The song has been adapted many times, by many artists to fit into the times they are living. For our trio on the run, the song is about their journey and hardships of escaping prison and making their way home. In the words of the song, we find a tale of strife “For six long years I've been in trouble, No pleasures here on earth I found”. The song laments a longing to be home, fear that they will never make it home, and that if they do at last make it home, they will be unrecognized.

The Music is such an integral part of Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? that it would have been impossible to have the movie without the music. It’s opening scene shows the importance from the song of the prison chain gang leading into “Big Rock Candy Mountain” as the trio is on the run looking for better life. Would Pete and Delmar have been moved to be baptized, had it not been for the singing of the congregation moving through the woods to the river? The haunting sound of Allison Krauss is absolutely amazing; I could have been moved to be right there with them in the river. Without the Siren’s song to stop the trio’s journey, we would have missed out on a fantastic stumbling block on their way home. “Sweet Jesus Everett, can't you see them Sirens did this to Pete they loved him up and turned him into a horny toad.” As part of writing this paper, I bought the soundtrack ($5.99 on Amazon). Listening to the soundtrack while writing this paper takes me straight back to the movie. As each song comes on, I can see flashes of exactly what was going on in the movie. Of course, the movie’s outcome could not have been more different if our trio hadn’t stopped by a radio station in the middle of nowhere and recorded their hit “Man of Constant Sorrow” had they not performed in front of the Governor they would have still been on the run and Everett could not have become “bona fide”

In both Homer’s poem and the film, the main characters are after the same thing. They have lost their families and their homes. They are far away from home and both want more than anything to get back to their homes and resume their life. They are both living the life of a country song. As the saying goes what do you get when you play a country song backwards? You get your house back your wife back and your dog back. The difference being in Everett’s case he gets his daughters, and in Odysseus’ his cows and goats. With Country, Blues, and Bluegrass, the songs aren’t really uplifting—more of a “you’re not the only one who’s got it bad” message.