The Beat at the Heart of ‘Lovers Rock’

 

 

"Beyond the historical significance of songs like “Silly Games,” McQueen and his team also endeavored to make the soundtrack period accurate, rather than a well-curated anachronistic pastiche.

“A guiding principle was to not just get into crate digging territory, because at the end of the day it’s a community party,” said Ed Bailie, a music supervisor who worked on “Small Axe,” adding that they looked for tracks that would “make people who are in the garden go into the living room.” A relatively light moment takes place early on in the night, when the D.J. transitions from the disco group Sister Sledge to Carl Douglas’s novelty single “Kung Fu Fighting,” prompting Martha and the other partygoers to pantomime martial arts action as they dance.

The diversity of music mirrors the film’s arc, with the playlist transitioning from poppy crowd pleasers to dreamy ballads to, near the end, a predominantly male dance floor exuberantly cutting loose to murky dub cuts by the Revolutionaries and Augustus Pablo. That reflected reality, too, as there would come a point in the night when the couples had paired off, leaving the male stragglers to reclaim the dance floor. “It was warrior-like, because you could be the person you wanted to be,” McQueen said."

read te  report by Jeremy Gordon

The Beat at the Heart of ‘Lovers Rock’ – Repeating Islands