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
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