The Lion King, was the first movie he saw in theaters as a child now he had the opportunity to work with the new voice of Nala (Beyoncé). For Ilya, the chance to work on a song for the CGI-remake was a full-circle moment. Ilya Salmanzadeh and Labrinth, the duo responsible for the soundtrack’s new Beyoncé contribution “Spirit,” were contacted about the project at the beginning of 2019. Metro Boomin Flexes His Superpowers With The 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse' Soundtrack “Thankfully, it all ends up in magic, the blend and the performances were amazing.” “I guess my biggest worry and beautiful surprise, I was more worried about the medley with Beyonce and Donald on “Can You Feel The Love Tonight,” because I’ve seen that so many times on Broadway and I’ve seen the many different dynamics that we deal with putting out the medley of Simba and Nala,” Lebo shares. Nowhere was this more apparent than the potential chemistry between the movie’s new stars. The one looming concern over The Lion King soundtrack was the new generation of voices tasked with updating songs ingrained in the pop psyche. Lebo travelled back to South Africa to record with a choir, and Edie assembled multiple ethnicities (African-American, Indian, and Israeli) in the States. and Edie, that meant stitching together a choir that spanned generations and continents. “I was going for diversity,” Zimmer told NPR. The primary goal for updating the orchestral and choral arrangements of the remake was adding a level of variety the original film lacked. “Because at Coachella, the Millenials were openly weeping when he started The Lion King… I don’t think they realized how iconic, how much a part of our culture that song and that movie has become.” “I think Coachella is what prompted Hans to go ‘I really need to do the remake of The Lion King with Jon Favreau,’” Edie admits. Edie Lehmann Boddicker, a studio singer from the original Lion King, had been working with Zimmer since his 2015 Grammy performance with Pharrell and helped put the choir together for the festival. Hans Zimmer was performing his most popular songs, but it was the response to “Circle of Life/Nants’ Ingonyama” with Lebo M. The possibility of an updated Lion King soundtrack began, in part, at Coachella in 2017. If the 1994 version of The Lion King needed to sell the gravitas, credibility, and emotional weight of a world populated with singing lions, then the task in 2019 was imbuing that same depth into Jon Favreau’s world of photo-realistic animals without ruining the generation-defining songs in the process. would return to work with Hans Zimmer on the score that would introduce a generation to an African world of talking lions, farting warthogs, and Hamlet-inspired familial drama.Ģ5 years later, that same cast of musicians, coupled with a new generation of pop titans (Beyoncé, Donald Glover, Pharrell) faced a similar challenge. That demo helped create “a signature tone for the movie” and three months later, Lebo M. “Fortunately, I was never asked what that meant, but I saw that and realized in my culture and tradition when a king or person of royalty arrives I created the call that says ‘all hail the king’ or ‘bow down in the presence of the royal family.’” I looked at it and turned the mic back on, and I said, ‘Nants ingonyama bagithi baba,’ and I left,” Lebo M. Then the prince was going to be announced. “As I was leaving the studio I saw the image of Mufasa, and I asked what’s that about, and I was told that’s the king arriving. In 1994, though, The Lion King began with an animated sun rising against a crimson sky, a now-legendary voice booming “Nants ingonyama bagithi baba.” Nothing would eclipse it. One of the most iconic musical moments in cinematic history was a spur-of-the-moment freestyle, recorded for a demo for a movie that many thought would be overshadowed by a beautiful cartoon from Disney: Pocahontas.
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