Finally, film music may emanate from sources
within the story—a television, a radio or stereo set,
a person singing or playing a guitar, an orchestra
playing at a dance. For example, Ridley Scott’s Black
Hawk Down(2001) depicts a complex and failed
attempt by a group of U.S. Army Rangers to depose
a Somalian warlord, a conflict between Americans
and African Muslims. For this film, composer Hans
Zimmer decided against writing the sort of score
we hear in other classic war movies, such as Cop-
pola’s Apocalypse Now(1979; composers: Carmine
and Francis Ford Coppola) or Oliver Stone’s Platoon
(1986; composer: Georges Delerue).
Instead of using familiar classical themes for
theatrical effect, Zimmer relies heavily on diegetic
music that emanates from soldiers’ radios, street
musicians, or mosques. Thus the score juxtaposes
Western and African music, Irish tunes, and songs
by Elvis Presley and popular groups such as Alice
in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, and Faith No More
on the one hand, and traditional Muslim prayer
music and chants, mournful piano and strings,
African pop music, and tribal drums on the other.
At times, such as the beginning of the attack on the
marketplace, Zimmer fuses elements of both. His
“score” goes beyond music to include many sound
effects that function as rhythmic elements (e.g., the
constant hum of military and civilian vehicles, the
beating of helicopter rotor blades, the voices of
American soldiers and African crowds). In this
expanded sense of a musical score, Zimmer and Jon
Title, the sound designer, worked together to create
an original, seamless entity in which there are few
distinctions between music and other sounds. Of
course, at times in Black Hawk Downmusic is just
music and sound effects are just sound effects. But
the major achievement here is the fusion of sounds.
With this score, Zimmer does not make conflict
appear to be the work of godlike warriors (such as the
helicopter gunships in Apocalypse Now) but rather
conveys the hell of war, reinforces the bond among
the soldiers, and helps us understand the agony they
suffer on each other’s behalf. Near the end, we hear
his “Leave No Man Behind,” a beautiful tapestry of
piano and strings that includes familiar patriotic
musical motifs, and his soft, martial arrangement of
the heartbreaking Irish ballad “Minstrel Boy,” sung
by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros. This score,
derived from many sources—both diegetic and
nondiegetic—is not background music but central to
portraying the movie’s almost unbearable tension.
Although a movie’s characters and its viewers
hear diegetic music, which can be as simple as sound
drifting in through an open window, only viewers
hear nondiegetic music, which usually consists of an
original score composed for the movie, selections
chosen from music libraries, or both. John Carney’s
Once (2006; score: Glen Hansard and Markéta
Irglová) is a contemporary love story about a “Guy”
(Glen Hansard) and a “Girl” (Markéta Irglová). Its
song lyrics virtually replace the meager dialogue.
The story is simple enough: boy meets girl, boy
sings to girl, girl helps boy to perfect his songs, boy
gets music contract and leaves girl to make his first
recording. Its goofy charm is almost completely
dependent upon this diegetic music.
Nondiegetic music is recorded at the very end of
the editing process so that it can be matched accu-408 CHAPTER 9 SOUND
Diegetic musicDebra Granik’s Winter’s Bone(2010) is a
horrific narrative film that shows how methamphetamine
abuse destroys the lives of people in the rural Ozarks. Actor
Jennifer Lawrence gives a brilliant performance as Ree
Dolly, a teenager who takes charge and tries to keep her
family together under the worst of circumstances. Her
efforts are hampered by local traditions of patriarchy,
secrecy, and resistance to authority, but in this image, when
she listens to local bluegrass musicians, including Merideth
Sisco singing “High on a Mountain,” she momentarily forgets
the strife. Here, a traditional folk song not only offers her
and the others a moment of peace but also reveals a
creative side of their culture.