Django Unchained Soundtrack

The D is silent. This listening experience won't be.

This was the first Tarantino film that I watched, and I love it. The clear distinction between the hero and the villain was so uplifting that I went around for days afterwards quoting Django and tweeting Jamie Foxx 24/7 with "AAAAH I LOVE DJANGO, MARRY ME?!" Needless to say, I got no response, but it was worth trying.

Anyway, this soundtrack completely embodies the spirit of the film. All of the tracks have something to say; Jim Croce's I Got A Name is pretty self-explanatory, and its message is particularly poignant in the context of the film. The whole concept of slavery was about de-humanising black people and taking their identity and freedom away from them, so this song epitomises what Django, as a character, is all about.

The choice of songs is also interesting, and at first listen, slightly random. After the second time around, though, they all fall into place and the soundtrack starts to make sense. You've got gritty rap, like Rick Ross' 100 Black Coffins, next to gentle, spaghetti Western-type songs like Nicaragua and I Giorni Dell'Ira. And yet they all work very, very well together. They all weave in together to represent the essential spirit of the film, which is the good vs. evil moral complex. They are much like Tarantino's film making style, which is to spin together different styles (or characters) which seem to be polar opposites, but in fact are much more similar than they first seem. It's also punctuated with recordings from the films itself, which help even further to fit the songs into the wider context of the film. It also means I can listen to Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz again and again without being creepy.

The man. The myth. The (chinny) legend.

In fact, this soundtrack has one silent thing that holds it all together: Tarantino's influences and vision. The film itself has undoubtedly been heavily impacted by the spaghetti Western style of film making, and yet it's added to by Tarantino's unique sense of what works. He couples a fantastic storyline and screenplay (Oscar-winning, don't you know) with horrendous violence and gore, and yet it all works. All of this has been influenced by the music he listens to, such as the rap and the folk. This compilation of music that Tarantino clearly listens to on a daily basis (he leaves a note at the beginning of the leaflet in the CD saying that he wants our listening experience to be exactly like his) is what makes it so personal and so incredibly addictive.

Buy it now. And then pre-order the DVD.

Recommended tracks:
Freedom
Who Did That To You?
Django