{"id":8593,"date":"2017-12-11T15:47:33","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T23:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=8593"},"modified":"2017-12-11T15:47:33","modified_gmt":"2017-12-11T23:47:33","slug":"disneypixars-coco-has-guitar-at-its-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/disneypixars-coco-has-guitar-at-its-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney\/Pixar\u2019s \u2018Coco\u2019 Has Guitar at its Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"
From the Winter 2017 issue of Classical Guitar<\/em> | BY BLAIR JACKSON<\/h6>\n

Never underestimate the power of a film soundtrack. When composer Marvin Hamlisch adapted Scott Joplin\u2019s 1902 piano rag \u201cThe Entertainer\u201d for the 1973 film The Sting<\/em>, it launched a rebirth of ragtime that has barely subsided since. The soundtrack for Woody Allen\u2019s 2008 Vicky Cristina Barcelona<\/em> brought flamenco music into the mainstream for a while. In 2011, The Descendants<\/em> suddenly made traditional Hawaiian folk music fashionable.<\/p>\n

The new Disney\/Pixar animated kids\u2019 film Coco<\/em> actually \u201chas music in its DNA,\u201d says director Lee Unkrich\u2014it\u2019s the story of a Mexican boy named Miguel, who desperately wants to play guitar to emulate his idol, a long-deceased mariachi star named Ernesto de la Cruz, but members of the lad\u2019s family, especially his grandmother, are virulently opposed to him playing or even enjoying music. Many adventures ensue, including a remarkable journey through the Land of the Dead\u2014a playful and quite beautiful extrapolation from Dia de los Muertos (\u201cDay of the Dead\u201d) iconography\u2014and along the way lessons are learned, a fractured family comes together, and of course, Miguel gets to follow his dream of playing guitar.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the fanciful nylon-string guitar once sported by de la Cruz is practically a character in itself, and there is delectable nylon-string guitar music stitched into Michael Giacchino\u2019s score for Coco<\/em>, which combines a traditional \u201cHollywood\u201d approach with a rich infusion of Mexican and Latin flavors: mariachi, cumbia, son jarocho and many of the same sort of traditional folk inspirations that seeped into the work of Manuel Maria Ponce (who famously wrote pieces for Segovia) and other Mexican classical composers. Soundtrack recording sessions in Mexico and Los Angeles used a broad range of Mexican folk instruments, and the animators even took great pains to try to match the fingerings on the guitar depicted onscreen to the music on the soundtrack. (Additionally, there are a few original songs and some source music.)<\/p>\n

No doubt the guitar-centric story and music will inspire some young people to follow Miguel\u2019s lead and take up the guitar, and this fall, California-based C\u00f3rdoba Guitars, a leading maker of Spanish-style nylon-string classicals, introduced a line of authorized Coco<\/em>-inspired guitars playing off the same sort of Day of the Dead designs found in the film. The collection features two inexpensive short-scale Minis (under $200), a 7\/8-scale model (under $250), plus the extremely limited (just 20 made) Coco x C\u00f3rdoba Replica (like the de la Cruz guitar) with a skull-shaped headstock, abalone inlays, 24k gold detailing, and skull tuners. Perhaps a future great guitarist will get his or her start with this film.<\/p>\n

And speaking of Manuel Ponce, here’s the excellent classical guitarist Tavi Jinariu playing part of of Ponce’s <\/em>Tres canciones populares Mexicanas on one of the\u00a0C\u00f3rdoba Coco Minis:<\/em>
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