‘Katutura’ sets the screen alight with a burst of music. A young man walks down a street and Gazza’s recently released ‘Oshiponga’ blasts from his earphones as a sonic foreshadowing of a scene which will see him struck down before the film proceeds to rise and fall set to the tunes of some of the nation’s most celebrated stars.
Featuring over 21 songs and a cache of specially produced music, ‘Katutura’ boasts a soundtrack that serves to highlight the love and omnipresence of music in a township whose pulse is set to the crackling of sidewalk radios, cell phones, jukeboxes and shebeens.
“In Katutura you hear music everywhere,” says ‘Katutura’ film director Florian Schott. “If you’re in a house, you hear music from the shebeen down the road. If you’re driving around, you hear someone playing something from their phone. So I knew music would be a crucial element in this film because everywhere you go music floods the streets.”
Originally conceived as a musical, ‘Katutura’ took the music out of the mouths of actors and placed it behind scenes as a result of a year spent collecting, gathering and creating original music that sounded like what one would encounter in bars, cars and on the street.
“My inspiration for the soundtrack was what hear when I’m in Katutura,” says Schott. “Ever since I started thinking about the soundtrack, I’ve been gathering music from my wife’s family in Katutura and we actually ended up trying a lot of scenes with this music and the first cut we made already had a soundtrack.”
Though Schott initially envisioned including assorted songs from other African artists, the end result of going through the film with song supervisors Tshuutheni Emvula and Araffath was to swop the P Square and Davido for Namibian music with a similar energy and feel.
“Though we did end up buying the rights to certain African songs like ‘Oliver Twist’, ‘Xandehla’, ‘Windeck’ and ‘Ruby’, the main idea was to keep it local so I gave my collection of non-Namibian songs to Tshuutheni asking him whether he could find or produce something that is Namibian but conveys the same feeling.”
Currently, the soundtrack features music from Blossom, Tate Buti, Gazza, Damara Dikding, Ethnix, Triple Seven Crew, South West, Becoming Phill, Odile Muller, Moritz, Ronny, Biblos, Cabo Snoop, D’Banj and PDK.
Much of the original music especially created for the film was produced by Araffath who produced Triple Seven Crew’s ‘Katuturian Girl’, Odile Muller’s ‘Crying’, Ethnix’s ‘Vambero’ and ‘Mbeire’ and reproduced Damara DikDing’s ‘Ta Tita Go’. Becoming Phill also added his shine to the show with ‘Fever’ – an original instrumental song played in the big, nightclub scene.
“When it came to considering the music for ‘Katutura’, the main thing for me was that everything should be motivated, all music must come from a shebeen or a car or a bar or radio,” says Schott. “We weren’t just using music as a score because everything had to come from somewhere like it does in the township.”
While music certainly took centre stage, the song that stole the show was ‘Crying’ sung by Odile Muller as written by Lize Ehlers.
“I always wanted Lize to write this song,” says Schott. “I talked to her about Esme’s journey and her ambition to become a singer and I think she put a lot of her own experience into the words and wrote beautiful lyrics while Tshuutheni Emvula and Christian Polloni wrote the melody.”
Inevitably destined for beginner singer Odile Muller, after months of voice training and reworking, recording eventually kicked off in mid-2013.
“We recorded every two months, always changing something small, all the way to shoot,” says Schott. ‘By the last phase of the shoot, we felt we had the voice down but felt we needed an extra push in terms of music so Araffath took a look and in July and August, after Odile had lived as Esme, we got the perfect recording. It really felt that half of Windhoek was working on that song at some stage.”
Scored by Sonja Majewski of Audio Art, ‘Katutura’ sounds as good as it looks replete with an urban and international bent in the more pensive scenes.
Though the soundtrack is yet unreleased, Tulinane Entertainment does currently have plans to distribute ‘Katutura’s’ original soundtrack for those who want their personal playlist of the film’s township tunes. Watch their social media sites for details.
