Western Films as America’s origin story, and why they sound the way they do.
The Western is a historical genre that generally takes place between 1850 and 1900, somewhere in North America west of the Mississippi River. Neither of these parameters are impenetrable — borders rarely are — but that general time and place gives us somewhere to start.
…the way we, as a country, approach the West says a lot about our view of ourselves. It seems to have become our origin myth, although what happened to everything before the Civil War? I can’t answer why we have Western music and Western writers but no such category for the century before, or the one before that.
- Carter Burwell via Email
To score the frontier, this wide open place, you use those so called intervals of 4ths and 5ths. And big long leaps in the melodic lines… jumps and leaps to suggest the vast openess of the western space. And these Harmonies, these modal harmonies… that kinda becomes part of the nomenclature: this is what constitutes what sounds western.
- Kathryn Kalinak
…through our history there is so much we don’t know, so much we misinterpret. So many things our children and grandchilderen will look at and think “they got that really wrong.” — Just as we look at our ancestors and say they got it wrong. I think it’s sort of a metophorical representation, the Wildlands, of the darkness, of the unknown. Which is beautiful because there’s still stuff to discover. But there can be a whole lot of ugliness in our ignorance…
-Rion Amilcar Scott
Guests
Kathryn Kalinak • How the West Was Sung • Music in the Western • Richard Hageman
Rion Amilcar Scott • Insurrections • The World Does Not Require You
Jeff Grace • The Artist’s Wife • Meek’s Cutoff • In a Valley of Violence
Gary Farmer • Dead Man • Powwow Highway • Smoke Signals • First Cow • Winter in the Blood • Gary Farmer and the Troublemakers
pick your corporate poison:
Youtube • Playlist of Western Film Scores
If the western is our origin story, we must deconstruct it. Every story we tell about this country is built on this foundation, and if we are to understand who we are and where we’re going we must first fully understand how we got here.
List of films watched for this episode:
A Fistful of Dollars
Yojimbo
A Few Dollars More
The Good the Bad the Ugly
Once Upon a time in the West
Rio Bravo
The Searchers
Magnificent Seven
Seven Samurai
Butch Cassidy + the Sundance kid
El Topo
True Grit (2010)
The Big Country
The Shootist
Silverado
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Meek’s Cutoff
Ravenous
There will be Blood
The Revenant
The Hateful Eight
In a Valley of Violence
Joe Kidd (1972)
Stage Coach (1939)
Django
3 burials of Melquiades Estrada
Winning of the West
The Bronze Buckaroo
The Lone Ranger (2013) (oof)
Virginia City
Tombstone
Dead Man
High Noon
No Country for Old Men
Morricone Doc BBC
Death Rides a horse
First Cow
Rango
My Darling Clementine
Lone Star
A Man Called Horse
Powwow Highway
Smoke Signals
Billy Blazes Esq
Johnny Guitar
Further Reading:
Native Film Talk - An excellent podcast + more source material for this episode.
Kathryn Kalinak - How the West Was Sung • Music in the Western
Janet Walker - Westerns: Films Through History
Richard Slotkin - The Fatal Environment , Gunfighter Nation, Regeneration Through Violence
Sarah Winnemucca - Life Among the Piutes
Rion Amilcar Scott - The World Does Not Require You
Topics, Tags and Mentions: Westerns, Western films, Carter Burwell, Richard Slotkin, Ennio Morricone, Clint Eastwood, Sergio Leone, John Ford, John Wayne, Smoke Signals, Dead Man, Stagecoach, The Big Country, Frontier, Frontier Thesis, Gary Farmer, Rion Amilcar Scott, Jeff Grace, Kelly Reichardt, Kathryn Kalinak, Dead Man, The World Does Not Require You, Meek's Cutoff, In a Valley of Violence, How the West was Sung, Music in the Western, The Revenant, There Will Be Blood, El Topo, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jim Jarmusch, Neil Young, Magnificent Seven, Seven Samurai, Elmer Bernstein, A Fistful of Dollars, Rio Bravo, John Wayne, John Ford, A Few Dollars More, The Good the bad the ugly, Richard Hageman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Diegetic Music, Western guitar, western sound, Gary Farmer interview, Jeff Grace Interview, Rion Amilcar Scott interview, Kathryn Kalinak Interview the american west, movie podcast.
