美国国家公共电台 NPR 25 Years After Scoring 'The Lion King,' Hans Zimmer Returns To Pride Rock（在线收听）

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The version of "The Lion King" that's out today features photo-realistic animals and celebrity voices. There's Beyonce, John Oliver, Donald Glover. There are also some things familiar to fans of the original Disney film. Composer Hans Zimmer won an Oscar for that score. He has returned to Pride Rock, and as Tim Greiving reports, he's brought along collaborators new and old.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CIRCLE OF LIFE")

LEBO M: (Chanting in foreign language).

TIM GREIVING, BYLINE: That's South African musician Lebo M. singing the iconic proclamation that opened the original "Lion King" in 1994.

LEBO M: I didn't even know anything about the movie. I just knew that it's something to do with conflict between a father and a brother that has a son in it - no detail.

GREIVING: Composer Hans Zimmer called on Lebo M. to help bring some cultural authenticity to this animated movie about lions.

LEBO M: I noticed the image of Mufasa. And my entire system went to, what happens when a important person in my country, my culture walks in? What happens when a king walks in? The musicality of my thought became (speaking foreign language) - then it translates to all hail the king. All bow down in the presence of the king.

GREIVING: Lebo M. fled apartheid-era South Africa in 1979 when he was 16. He eventually moved to LA in hopes of being a superstar but ended up living on skid row. A few years later, he was working as a coffee gofer for a music producer, which is where he met Zimmer. "The Lion King" felt personal.

LEBO M: I am the Simba, at this point, who grows up in exile. I don't go back home to take over the country, but I go back home a professional. And Mufasa, to me, becomes immediately the image of Nelson Mandela.

GREIVING: Heavy subtext for a Disney cartoon, but there's a seriousness that anchors the whole score.

(SOUNDBITE OF HANS ZIMMER'S "REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE")

GREIVING: Hans Zimmer, who is best known for grown-up movies like "Rain Man" and "Backdraft," originally took the job for two reasons.

HANS ZIMMER: I didn't like Disney musicals. And then they were going, great, that's exactly what we want. We don't want somebody who wants to do what we did before.

GREIVING: The other reason? His little girl.

ZIMMER: It wasn't for my daughter. It was for her dad because every dad wants to show off. I thought, oh, no, this will be good. It'll be a cartoon. It'll be funny. It'll be harmless. It's about fuzzy animals. And I didn't realize it was profoundly going to go and hit me in a really hard way because my dad died when I was 6 years old, which was her age.

GREIVING: In "The Lion King," Mufasa, the king of Pride Rock, tragically dies saving his son Simba from a wildebeest stampede. The rest of the movie is about how Simba deals with that.

ZIMMER: There I was, and the only way I could go and write the score was to open those deep and dark boxes and let all the darkness out.

(SOUNDBITE OF HANS ZIMMER'S "MUFASA DIES")

ZIMMER: Don't ever talk down to the children, they'll catch you at it. Be sincere. Be absolutely genuine. Be absolutely legitimate about this. Let's not make things easier. Let's not be funny for, like, the wrong reasons. At the same time, you know, the genius of the film is that you go from death of the father to fart jokes.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE LION KING")

NATHAN LANE: (As Timon) Pumbaa, not in front of the kids.

ERNIE SABELLA: (As Pumbaa) Oh, sorry.

GREIVING: Zimmer won his first and only Oscar for that score. When Disney asked him to score the hyper-realistic remake, he knew he wanted a fresh musical justification. That's when he saw a video online of the Re-Collective Orchestra, a new all-black orchestra co-founded by Stephanie Matthews. They formed last year to record their own arrangement of the Kendrick Lamar and Sza track "All The Stars" from "Black Panther."

(SOUNDBITE OF RE-COLLECTIVE ORCHESTRA PERFORMANCE OF KENDRICK LAMAR AND SZA'S "ALL THE STARS")

SZA: (Singing) All the stars are closer. All the stars are closer. All the stars are closer.

STEPHANIE MATTHEWS: We were really inspired by "Black Panther." And so when the film came out, we decided to kind of do a concept piece. What would the orchestra of Wakanda look like?

GREIVING: Matthews as a session violinist and strings contractor, and she met Hans Zimmer in 2014 when she accompanied Pharrell Williams on "Saturday Night Live." But she was shocked when he emailed her saying he'd seen the video and wanted Re-Collective to play on the new "Lion King."

MATTHEWS: He was really, really passionate about the diversity and representation of having these musicians collaborate with the LA session musicians, who are extraordinary players, and just elevate the level of this project.

GREIVING: Hans Zimmer's new "Lion King" score was recorded at Sony Studios in April. Many present, with decades between them, said it was the most diverse film-scoring session ever.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE")

UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing, unintelligible)

ZIMMER: I was going for diversity. And then as soon as everybody started playing and sitting next to each other, it became this amazing thing which wasn't diversity at all. It was a unity.

GREIVING: So even if you're fatigued by these endless remakes of classic Disney movies, it's hard to be mad when it sounds like this.

For NPR News, I'm Tim Greiving.