I wrote the score for a new documentary that’s premiering at The Tribeca Film Festival tonight. The film, called Pray The Devil Back to Hell, is about the Liberian Women’s peace movement. It’s directed by Gini Reticker and produced by Abby Disney.

This is the second documentary in the last year on an African subject that I have scored (the other was Shadow Work by Nigel Walker). One particular challenge is to create music which has an appropriate African sensibility but is not just ersatz African music, or African kitsch. I always encourage filmmakers to use actual African music if that’s what’s called for — and both of these films do have wonderful uses of authentic music from the places they are set.

Anyway, Pray The Devil Back to Hell needed a real film score to support the intense and moving story of a group of Liberian women who rise up and take on Charles Taylor, ultimately becoming a key factor in bringing a fragile peace to their country. We ended up with a dramatic and quite dark score that uses some African elements but is primarily bass, trumpet, strings and percussion, with some wonderful contributions from the great Beninese singer Angelique Kidjo. It was a great honor to work with Ms. Kidjo, and her extraordinary voice brings a transcendent, human, female element to the music which I could never have created without her.

The track I’m posting here is the song from the end credit sequence. I wrote the music first and gave an instrumental sketch to Angelique, and she wrote the lyrics (in Yoruba) and sang the vocal parts. I also was blessed with a beautiful solo from master Kora player Yacouba Sissouk (who happens to be the cousin of Toumani Diabate). I mixed the track, along with the rest of the score, in my studio.

All of the screenings of Pray The Devil Back to Hell at Tribeca are sold out, but you can get more info about screenings at the official site for the film. You can also see the trailer at that site, which features some other excerpts from the score. And the film has a Myspace here.