What to Listen to While Making Mac and Cheese: The Music of Malcolm and Marie

JD and Zen Making Mac and Cheese Photo Courtesy of Netflix

Without reservation, the film Malcolm & Marie starring Zendaya and John David Washington was no doubt visually stunning.  The movie, which chronicles the couple’s highs and lows of a brutal all-night argument about . . . damn, I don’t know, was shot on black and white film rather than in a digital format.  It was artful.  It was special. It was instantly classic in its aesthetic.  Moreover, it was abundantly clear that the movie Malcolm & Marie intended the soundtrack to be something special as well.

From the opening scene where Malcolm jubilantly prances around their rented home then cues up James Brown’s “Down and Out in New York City,” a tune intimately tied to the film Black Caesar (1973), an astute audience was privy to the fact the music, diegetically (both the character and the audience can hear it), will narrate the nonverbal sentiments of the characters.  The music was brilliantly cast and was more than ample to sonically narrate a scene.  Admittedly, writer, director, Sam Levinson, and film editor Julio Perez, IV were deliberate in their attempt to support dialogue and set the mood of a scene with music.  Malcolm’s choice of Brown’s funk jam first fills the scene with sound then enlightens the audience of the bold overcoming power of a Black man, which is gan yẹ* to the character’s attitude at the moment.  Likewise, only moments later Marie’s unspoken tensions are revealed through Little Simz’s song “Selfish” featuring the amazing vocals of Cleo Sol.  Marie sentiments as heard through “Selfish’s” chorus, “I don’t want to fight” set the scene and reveal her desire to be left alone to brood for the remainder of the evening . . . or not.

Little Simz Photo: Linda Nylind

As the film progresses, the music continues to be a sonic masterpiece as it enters and exits the various scenes.  Saxophonist Zoot Sims’ Betaminus syncopated beat and flighty saxophone runs clearly disrupts the couple and escalates their tensions in a scene where Marie makes Mac and Cheese for Malcolm.  Fatback Band’s jam “Yum Yum” speaks loud and clear for Marie as she states her discontent about the evening.  Stax singer, songwriter William Bell’s “I Forgot to Be Your Lover,” which is awesomely orchestrated, by the way, drops in at the perfect time to allow an all too brief respite for the sparing couple, a mood of forgiveness for not making love a priority.

Coltrane and Ellington making magic

The film moves through its paces with a myriad of songs and rounds out with the ever lovely “In a Sentimental Mood” by Duke Ellington.  This song is undefeated in ushering in feelings of intimacy and sex appeal.  With the light key touches by Ellington on the piano and the seemingly far and away melody of John Coltrane on saxophone “In a Sentimental Mood” does it again.  In the end, literally in the last scene, Outkast’s song “Liberation” enters the expansive and resolute morning, to sum up the events of the previous evening.  The chorus belted out by CeeLo Green, and Erykah Badu states, “And there’s a fine line between love and hate you see, Can’t wait too late but baby I’m on it.”  As the couple Malcolm and Marie stand in the sunrise it reinforces the couple’s love-hate relationship in the most melodic of ways.

Outkast: Big Boy and Andre 3000. Ready to eat their Mac and Cheese!

Music in film is meant to aid in storytelling by driving and supporting scenes.  It is also used to set the mood and emotion of the characters.  In Malcolm & Marie, music is used to narrate the unspoken words of an emotionally caustic couple.  The music effectively created a subtext for the audience to follow.  We should all be so lucky to have a soundtrack like this to help back our most difficult moments in an argument.

(*means very appropriate in the Yoruba language)

Mama What’s a Cosmopolitan?: If You Got Funk You Got Style!

Imagine you and your significant other getting dressed in your finest evening wear.  Watch, necklace, bracelet, and earrings adorned.  You’re going out tonight!  You head to your car, drive downtown, and enter the premier concert hall of the city.  Everyone is excited and dressed to the nines! This must be the philharmonic’s opening night!  This is a highbrow event!  Together you find your seats just before the lights dim.  In anticipation, you hold your breath.  Your wait is brief.  Suddenly the stage lights shine to reveal the assemblage of . . . wait for it . . .wait for it  . . . Parliament/Funkadelic and a rambunctious funk mob on stage.  They begin to tear shit up (musically speaking of course). You look at your significant other and gleefully discover you are both sporting the same quintessential funk face.  You throw your hand up forming the righteous universal funk symbol and rock out.  Imagine that!

Goin out tonight!
By Joshua Aaron Photography

The night was seemingly set up for a sophisticated event.  Your attire and the venue location suggested as much.  The atmosphere was ripe to embrace a stiff collar crowd.  This was not classical music.  With P-Funk on stage were you truly going to engage in a so-called “highbrow” event?  Of course, you were!  Funk music is everything classical music is and more.

Classical music has certainly achieved, in over three hundred years, a position in our society of reverence and honor.  Its widely known composers Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven are pedestalistic gods and known as such in and out of the genre.  Most often intellectuals and the cultured are drawn to classical music.  Statistics reveal the college-educated and affluent are largely attracted to the genre.  They—“the sophisticated”—not only enjoy and indulge in the accouterments of classical music but it also defines them.  The richly appointed hallowed concert halls, tailored suits, designer cocktail gowns, and opening nights cater to their refined and even snobbish worldly taste.  Classical music is indeed a highbrow phenomenon.  However, it has a younger sibling that mirrors its every move and defines its very own high brow flare.

Sly And The Family Stone. Cosmopolitan at its finest!

Funk music has certainly achieved, in over fifty years, a position in our society of reverence and honor.  It’s widely known progenitors Brown, Clinton, and Stone are pedestalistic gods and known as such in and out of the genre.  While the ‘sophisticated’ who chiefly consume only classical music and little of anything else the rooted funk music consumer is attracted to classical and beyond.  Jazz, r&b, blues, gospel, soul, swing, rock, and metal are often devoured by the funk listener.  Funk music, like classical music, also holds the attention of intellectuals, the cultured, educated, and affluent.  Moreover, it also draws to it the enlightened, the academic, literate, and articulate.  In this way the funk music listener is beyond sophisticated, rather they are ‘Cosmopolitan’—the sharing of all things wrapped in the ONE!  Funk music can be heard in the richly appointed hallowed concert halls as well as in stadiums, arenas, street festivals, parks, backlots, and garages.

Conversely, funk music is defined by the listener.  Unlike classical, which is static in terms of its response to current affairs and its inability to create a space for active audience response during a performance, funk music is qualified by its attention to current affairs and welcomes the immediate response of the audience (call and response).

Clinton in a suit!
By: Marcy Guiragossin

In the end, you can go to a funk music concert in your tailored suit and designer evening gown.  You can listen to EWF at the Chandler, (Sup, L.A.). You can funk out and follow along with intellectuals like Brown and Vincent in the front row as they raise their hand with the righteous universal funk symbol and chant:

If you got funk, you got style

You’re funkin’ and you’re styling all the while

When you got funk, you got class

You’re out on the floor movin’ your ass . . .

Yeah, funk music is everything classical music is and more. Take a listen.