Karl Jenkins - "One World"

 Karl Jenkins - One World

Jenkins' signature sound prioritizes a false sense of approachability, while in actuality it poorly attempts to rip off famous film, popular and traditional music.

One World is Sir Karl Jenkins's latest additional to his large religious works for soloists, choir and orchestra. It is also more proof that the Welsh composer has not developed his compositional style nor technique since the early 90's. One World overuses already overused musical clichés and is so densely orchestrated that the sound becomes a wall of grey mush. Jenkins' signature sound prioritizes a false sense of approachability, while in actuality it poorly attempts to rip off famous film, popular and traditional music.

The album-length work, commissioned by the World Choir for Peace and World Orchestra for Peace, uses a wide array of religious and secular texts, allowing for Jenkins to simultaneously insult multiple religions and activism groups. The text setting is static and monotonous, resulting in unintelligible words and awkward phrasing. Not to mention, Jenkins' poor sense of orchestration requires the use of heavy amplification and large amounts of post production editing to make any of the text comprehensible. The wild changes in balance, EQ, washing reverb, and other effects make One World a piece which is meant to fail if attempted live.

In addition to simply being boring, One World has serious appropriation issues in terms of text and music. The choral 'rap' in the second movement, "Let's Go (Tower of Babel)", is blaringly insulting to both classical and rap musical genres. It is almost impossible to not burst out laughing when listening to how Jenkins attempts to compose a rap and how poorly it is performed by the ensemble. Several later movements also seem to mock traditionally black music. Most jarringly is in "Bury Me in a Free Land", where the South-African drumming tradition is unsuccessfully appropriated and carelessly cast upon a single djembe player, with a marking of "improvise 'groove'". Jenkins uses these whitewashed African musical stereotypes while the choir sings 'slave' in multiple African languages, with Black Lives Matter and other activism slogans casually thrown in between words. It is uncomfortable and wildly inappropriate to set such heavy texts in such a light and musically typecast manner.


purchase the full album through Decca Records here, or listen on all major streaming services

© 2023 Brutal New Music Reviews

originally written and published 25 July 2023

please send any and all questions/comments/complaints/suggestions to:

brutalnewmusicreviews@gmail.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fatrin Krajka - "The Space In Between" album review

Image
 Fatrin Krajka - The Space In Between   album review Krajka focuses on approachability in his simple and tonal music, relying on harmonic cliches to evoke a melancholic emotional response. Albanian-American composer and pianist, Fatrin Krajka , is known for his film scores and continued approach to classically inspired minimalism. His latest album release, The Space In Between , intimately connects individual perspectives with a sense of communal emotion. The Space In Between is a full-length album for piano and strings divided up into 4-5 minute long tracks. Within his exploration of the short-form piece, Krajka solidly focuses on approachability in his simple and tonal music, relying on harmonic cliches to evoke a melancholic emotional response from the listener. There is a negligible difference in his approach to scoring for film and this album of more traditional classical music. While I would have appreciated some experimentation and variation within Krajka's minimal...
Read more

Constellation Men's Ensemble - "Man Up / Man Down" album review

Image
 Constellation Men's Ensemble - Man Up / Man Down Constellation's impeccable blend and intonation brings out a resonant beauty for the duration of the album. After ten years, Constellation Men's Ensemble  has released their debut album, Man Up / Man Down  on the Sono Luminus label. The album's longer and intense titular work is bookended by two shorter bursts of peaceful reflection, Home and manifesto . Constellation's impeccable blend and intonation brings out a resonant beauty for the duration of the album, and are becoming a prominent force within the new music vocal community. Jeffrey Derus ' Home , setting text by Carl Sandburg, opens the album with beauty and tonal simplicity. Derus' music is drawn from his personal experience with choirs, resulting in Constellation creating a beautiful resonance with stellar intonation. Home is in a traditional three-part form, with the middle section in a pulsating quintuple meter. Derus' repetitive text setting...
Read more

Pathos Trio - "Polarity" album review

Image
 Pathos Trio - Polarity album review Polarity  is such a highly polished example of how rewarding it can be to merge contemporary classical music with electronica. Released September 15th on the Imaginary Animals label, Polarity wedges itself in a specific niche between contemporary classical music and electronica. The collaborative album combines the performance capabilities of  Pathos Trio with six composers, all of whom have written pieces specifically for the trio, and Four/Ten Media , which is creating accompanying music videos for each track. With the only unifying feature being the implementation of electronics, it is quite impressive how the six new works form such a cohesive collection. Pathos Trio, made up of two percussionists and a pianist, completely reimagines the idiom of the chamber ensemble, embracing the possibilities of electronic integration within live performance. For many non-classical audiences, these instruments and setup may already be com...
Read more