Tina Kakadelis
For ’90s kids, The Lion King remains an influential film. It was likely their first exposure to Shakespeare through the form of lions, catchy musical numbers, and the warm heart of the Disney Renaissance. The Lion King told the story of Simba, son of the king of Pride Rock, Mufasa. While we all know the end of Mufasa’s story, we don’t know where it began. That’s all due to change with the release of Barry Jenkins’ Mufasa. With this prequel, audiences will get to see how Mufasa came to power and what life was like before Simba and his friends took the spotlight. As with all Disney movies, Mufasa needs an epic score and who better to turn to than Dave Metzger? Metzger has spent over two decades living and working in the world of The Lion King and Mufasa gives him the chance to take the wheel for the score.
Ahead of the December 20, 2024 theatrical release, Dave Metzger sat down with Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis to discuss the role of an orchestrator, honoring the original score, and cultivating the blending of epic and intimate sounds.
The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Film Obsessive: For my first question, I want to start off with an explanation. I think a lot of people might not know that the role of an orchestrator exists. Can you talk a little bit about what an orchestrator does and then your experience doing that job with The Lion King?
Dave Metzger: You know, that’s always one of the really tricky questions. What the heck is an orchestrator? The reality is there’s several different answers and it depends on the composer that you’re working for. In the old days, when I began my career, everything was done by pencil and paper. It was before computers, so you’d usually get a sketch. Maybe 6 to 8 staves. A line would be the woodwinds that the composer wanted and another line would be the brass, etc.
The orchestrator’s job was to essentially translate that onto the full score, which has all the instruments and parts notated for all the different musicians. As time went by, computers became more and more prevalent. All the writing was done inside of computers and sequencers, so the orchestrator’s job shifted to transcribing what the composer had written in the sequence onto a printed score page.
Then, there’s another role that orchestrators will do a lot of times. The composer in today’s world doesn’t really fill in all the blanks, you know? They’ll sketch out sometimes just with a piano guide part track. The orchestrator will decide and assign all the instruments. The job can fall anywhere between those two extremes. As a composer, I’m extremely detailed in all of my sequences. It’s all very explicit about what notes I want every instrument to play. The orchestrator’s job is essentially transcribing that into printed notation.
My journey with The Lion King began with working on the orchestration for the Broadway show. I was the orchestrator on that show and had a very immersive crash course on the world of The Lion King at that point. That was 27 or 28 years ago now. One of the great things about that is I learned so much about African percussion and traditional rhythmic patterns. It was a really great education for me, just in expanding my world music viewpoint.
I’ve lived in The Lion King world ever since. I’m still involved in the Broadway version and it’s still playing in 12 places around the world. Every couple of years, I’ll take a little spin around to some of the different productions and make sure that things sound the way they’re supposed to.
My sister is a percussionist, and plays a lot of African drums. I always try to talk to her before I interview a composer because I was a band dropout, and she still plays very much. She specifically mentioned how great the added drums in the Broadway show were. She loved it.
I’m so glad to hear that. It was a wonderful experience for me. I did the Broadway version of Tarzan not shortly after the Broadway version of The Lion King. Then I’ve done all sorts of world films in my career, and they all have their own subtleties of differences of regions and stuff. At its core, though, I really learned a ton from The Lion King when I got that exposure.
At what point did you get involved in Mufasa?
It would have been, about April of this year. I got a call from Tom MacDougall, who’s the head of all music at Disney. I would say he’s kind of The Guy. I’ve known Tom all the way back to Tarzan. He called me and was just wondering if I’d be interested in getting involved and, of course, you know, what am I going to say? No? No (laughs). So I was thrilled to be asked and to be brought into the process.
The Lion King is one of those, you know, for someone who grew up in the 90s, it’s quintessential. “The Circle of Life” is such an iconic opening, but when I listened to “Ngomso,” the first song of the Mufasa soundtrack, I felt like I was, like, six years old again. What was the process of ensuring that you were calling back to this history that you deeply know, but then also wanting to tell a different story and your own story as the composer of the film?
That’s a wonderful question. It was a tricky project, to be honest. Tricky is not bad. Tricky is good in this case where I had all of these elements that I needed to really take into consideration when I was working on this project. Amongst those was the desire to make sure that the viewer feels that they are very much a part of The Lion King. That we haven’t abandoned that.
But then also Barry Jenkins, the director, very much wanted this to be its own unique film and to have its own voice. In between that, my job was essentially trying to figure out that balance of where I honored Hans Zimmer’s fantastic and iconic themes. I made sure that we had those, but not too much so that we weren’t taking away from the newness of this adventure. I think a very helpful thing was that I’ve lived in The Lion King so long that it really is just a part of me. There’s no way that I could not know what instruments to use and what to do. That was a very natural part of it for me.
So, “Ngomso” is a great example. When I came on the project, it was still fairly sketchy as far as the percussion. There was a marker for percussion, but not really a lot of depth there. When I was recording the percussion, I was able to expand upon the marker. Adding more of the patterns that I knew and making it a little more in the world that we wanted to hear. The orchestra, too. My mind was going back to, well, what did I do in “The Circle of Life?” How can it build? How can I build it orchestrally to give it that cinematic scope and depth and breadth that I think we all want to hear? Just one example of many in this film that I had to kind of put on my thinking cap and figure out the best way to do it.
Did I notice a little bit of “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” at the end of “My Love?”
It’s actually close. It was a kind of a fun mashup. I wanted to have that Mufasa majesty of Hans’ theme, but the other counter melody that you’re hearing is actually from “I Always Wanted a Brother.” That’s one of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s fantastic songs for Mufasa. You have Taka and Mufasa, who are brothers. I was trying to figure out, well, how do I do this? Give the majesty of The Lion King, but also tie in their relationship together.
I have then this counter melody of “I Always Wanted a Brother” going on alongside with the Mufasa theme. You were very close and you’re very aware which is great, but not quite (laughs).
I am the band drop out in the family (laughs). But bringing up Lin-Manuel Miranda’s songs, I’m curious how composers and the people writing the musical songs make sure that their songs are talking to each other.
The irony of it is that for the last 12 years or something, I’ve kind of been known as a song arranger. A lot of my career was arranging songs for all these other movies, and then all of a sudden my role is reversed where I’m the score guy now.
The songs for Mufasa were all finished by the time I came on board with the exception of “Bye Bye.” Because of what I had done with Kiros, the villain character, musically in the score, I was asked to then do a new arrangement of that song to tie in some of the elements that I had come up with in the score. I was kind of reverse engineering a little bit and did a brand new arrangement after I was onboard. That’s what’s in the film, my arrangement of that song.
Having been a song arranger for so long, worked on Broadway, and listened my whole life to musicals, I’m very much a believer of you have to have continuity between the songs within the score. If you aren’t doing that, you’re doing a disservice to the film. That’s a big part of it. In this case, since I’m deeply aware that I was always looking for spots that I could tie in Lin’s songs into the score, that made sense. The most common usage was that song “I Always Wanted a Brother.” There are moments throughout the film, I don’t want to give away, but where you’ll find different interpretations of that song. That was one of the cool things for me, trying to figure out how to capture the specific moments of their relationship as it evolves and develops.
A score composer should always be aware of the songs. The songs are almost always done before the score because, since they’re lyrics, they’re an integral part of the story arc. They’re written at the very beginning of the process. The score’s composer usually comes in later, and if they’re really trying to honor the film the best, they will incorporate themes from the songs where appropriate.
I would say the score goes between absolutely epic and then very intimate in a way that really reminded me of The Lion King, obviously. I grew up watching Hercules, Anastasia, that was what I grew up on. It’s that blend of epic and intimate that I feel like creates such a lasting impression on the listeners. It’s something that I still remember to this day. How do you feel, composing it, but also as a listener to those kinds of scores that create that balance?
I mean, you nailed it. I’m a student of historical film scores. I still to this day study scores from Bernard Herrmann and Alex North who is another favorite composer of mine. I still study and try to pull from them. If you listen back to those classic scores, especially the musicals like West Side Story, you have these epic moments and then these extremely intimate, tender ones. It’s that emotional range that I think we respond to as humans, you know?
If everything is on the same level all the way through, that doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t give you that emotional thing that as a filmmaker, you want to have the audience feel as well. I’ve just always been aware of that. I’ve been around so long that it’s just sort of intuitive for me at this point. That’s a great observation because that’s exactly where the core of the enjoyment of watching, especially musicals for me comes from.
My last question for you is about the choir. It’s such a beautiful, distinct part of the score. I heard it was a blend of a bunch of different people from around the world to create one.
I’d love to talk about it. I used two distinctly different choirs. There was one that was a 40 voice Western cinematic choir, the London Voices. A lot of the big traditional choir sounding things. came from that group. Then, in a separate recording session, I had a group of 24 singers. They were the South African Cultural Gospel Choir of the UK. Those folks were all from South Africa that are now living in London and the UK. The cool thing about that is a lot of those folks had been in, at one time or another, on the West End production of The Lion King stage show. They’re all very, very aware of the vibe, what it’s all about, and the sound that we were looking for.
One of the most enjoyable parts of it for me was the intertwining of these two groups. Being able to use not only a traditional cinematic choir, but also to have this beautiful, cultural component as well. Involved in that also then was Lebo M, who’s one of my longtime buddies. We’ve been around together for 28 years. When you watch the film, near the very end, you have this big, epic Mufasa or Lion King moment. Then it switches into a new piece of music that is the South African Choir with Lebo singing on top of it.
One of my most enjoyable parts of this whole score was Lebo. We went in together to record that song. Lebo took my theme for Kiara, which is a new character that Blue Ivy voices, and “Lebo-ized” it as I call it. It was so cool because we’re sitting there together, I’m playing my theme for Lebo, and he’s just sitting there, absorbing it and thinking.
All of a sudden he goes out to the studio with the singers and starts just singing. He’ll sing a phrase and point at a group of maybe four singers and they start singing the phrase back. He built up this whole thing. We get along so well and have known each other for so long. It was just like, that was magic for me that moment.
That’s awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Because I met a lot of my friends while working at Disney World in college, they’re all so familiar with your work. They looked at your Wikipedia and were like, oh, tell him I love this, tell him I love that. So truly, thank you so much for your time and for everything you’ve done.
Tina, thank you so much for taking the time and talking with me. I enjoyed it very much.I hope you have a great time with the film and enjoy it!
