This story about “The Voice of Dust and Ash” composer J. Ralph first appeared in “The Race Begins” issue of awards magazine TheWrap.
For over 20 years, J. Ralph has been making music as a wide-ranging composer, producer and recording artist, but he has also carved out a specific identity for himself in film: he is a documentary composer and composer. He has written scores and songs for a number of nonfiction films ranging from the Oscar-winning “Man on Wire” and “The Cove” to “Hell and Back Again,” “Finding Vivian Maier,” “Virunga,” and three per for which he has been nominated for an Oscar for his songs: “Chasing Ice” in 2012, “Racing Extinction” in 2015 and “Jim: The James Foley Story” in 2016. He was the first composer to be nominated twice for documentaries, and his three nominations exceed both. for Diane Warren, the only other songwriter with multiple doc noms.
“Documentaries are where I’ve focused almost my entire career, whether it’s about the weather or animal rights or journalism or autism or war,” he said. “I always continue to meditate on these powerful questions we have as a society and continue to help amplify people who are taking risks.”
This year, he wrote the song “Dust & Ash” from the movie “The Voice of Dust and Ash,” which at first may seem like a change of pace for Ralph: it’s a documentary about Iranian artist Mohammad Reza Shajarian, a powerful singer of Persian classical musician who died in 2020 at the age of 80. But in Iran, music can make a strong political statement, and Shajarian was banned from performing in public when he criticized the government in 2009. He became not just a majestic singer, but a strong voice for justice and human rights. .
When producer Fuscia Sumner (daughter of Sting, who Ralph has collaborated with in the past) approached him about working on the film, Ralph had never heard of Shajarian. “It’s crazy to think of someone who is such a deep artist, and you have no idea about them,” he said.
“He is a monumental artist in his own right, and it was inspiring to be exposed to his mastery of voice poetry. And also, he impressed me with his humility and his tireless efforts to help his community in the world, to be able to express their freedoms”.
The title “Dust and Ash” comes from a quote by Shajarian, who responded to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling anti-government protesters “dust and ash” by saying: “Then I am the voice of dust and ash.” “Writing this song was about celebrating the empowerment that he represented,” Ralph said. “He was just trying to find something that distilled his story, and it wasn’t until very late that we found out how interesting it could be if we took the scorn, which he inverted as an empowering statement: ‘I am the dust, I am the ashes.’” .
In the film, Shajarian describes himself as one of the ancient voices of Iran, a phrase that fits Ralph. “I’ve always been in love with old voices and foreign voices where you could take all the power and majesty out of the singer without even understanding the lyrics,” he said. He started working on the song while Shajarian was still alive and dreamed of doing some sort of collaboration, but the singer passed away before that could happen.
Still, he found a family connection to Shajarian: After Ralph and Norah Jones have performed most of the song, the singer’s daughter, Mojgan Shajarian, delivers the song’s powerful finale. “Originally, she was going to play an instrument on the song, which I thought was cool,” she said. “And then I said, ‘Could you try singing? Can I hear what that would sound like?
“And as soon as it opened up and sang, I was like, ‘Close the instruments, this is what it is. This is from another world. It was almost as if he was channeling his father, but doing it with his own voice.” Her presence as her vocalist also made a strong statement because under the current regime in Iran, women are prohibited from singing solo.
“We wanted to celebrate her incredible voice,” Ralph said, “but also meditate on bravery and equality, and ultimately pass the song on to her daughter to punctuate the entire piece with the strong female solo that is banned in Iran.”
The song’s placement in the film changed over time: it was originally going to be at the beginning of the film and then over the end credits, before finally becoming what Ralph calls “a beautiful coda”, an animated sequence in which the lyrics are presented on the screen. “The lyrics have this vibratory energy,” he said. “Words have power and words are alive, you know?”
Read more of the Race Begins issue here.
