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Writer and director Shawn Wilson, came to Ilyana and me and asked us to perform our own version of the African American National Anthem "Lift Every Voice and Sing", a poem written by James Weldon Johnson. After listening to other versions of it from Ray Charles, Arethra Franklin, and numerous church choir performances, we realized there was no one particular way of performing it. We then decided to go our own direction with it. As Ilyana and I started playing around with some of our ideas, I noticed that she had been singing it in waltz time (3/4) and I loved the direction she was taking it melodically. Instead of playing it on the piano as we were originally doing, I grabbed the acoustic guitar and we found our own version. Stylistically, I wanted to create a mellow like fluidness as if you were sweating your brains out on a hot Sunday afternoon in church. I created a temp track with guitars and drums and we started layering in Ilyana's vocals. We created big harmony stacks (The Girls) that float throughout the song. Ilyana nailed every vocal take on the first try.
As soon as the song was established, I decided to use it to create variations on that theme to wind throughout the documentary. Since no one had heard our version of the song, they wouldn't hear the significance of it until the end of the film when the full musical and lyrical arrangement was introduced
In the track below are three variations of our version of "Lift Every Voice and Sing"
The first is an a capella stack used to open the film. The second is piano and guitar. The third is the full arrangement at the end of the picture.
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