“When I get depressed, or anything, I go ‘think of all the music I haven’t even heard yet!’ So, it’s the one thing. Imagine the world without music. Man, just hand me a gun, will you?”
– Jim Jarmusch
Although the visual aspect in Jarmusch’s films is extremely important we can not forget the sound, as he stated at the Q&A he did at Lisbon and Estoril Film Festival, sound is fifty percent of a film experience. Jarmusch takes a massive importance into having the most natural sound possible, trusting the job on the same sound recordist, Robert Hein and sound mixer, Drew Kunin, since the 80’s. They are concerned about being extremely accurate, for example if the film is set during spring you will hear in the background only birds that you would listen during spring and they are also aware of how many trees there are around and so how much of the the birds singing density you will hear. Additionally, while shooting the films, some crew members carry around zoom recorders in case they hear something interesting that they could add to the sound of the film.
It was said at the beginning of this dissertation that Jarmusch is a massive fan of music and that it always had a very big impact on his life from early age, though Akron was far from having any music revolution, not far away in Cleveland there was a music scene happening thanks to radio DJ’s, which its influence is visible in his films. After moving to New York he had one band in the early 80’s called The Del-Byzanteens, lately, he has made a series of collaboration with Jozef van Wissem and he has currently a band, Sqürl with Carter Logan, who produced Paterson (2016), Gimme Danger (2016) and Only Lovers Left Alive. He scored Paterson with Sqürl and soundtracked Only Lovers Left Alive with a collaboration between Sqürl and van Wissem.
The soundtracks in his films are so important that many times it almost works as a character too, like for example on Mystery Train halfway through every segment we hear Blue Moon by Elvis on the radio every time and it is a way for us to know that all the sequences we are seeing are happening at the same time. In addition, given that the film is set in Memphis it also helps give more emphasis to the location.
But the most important part is the actual score. Besides asking other musicians to make exclusive soundtracks for the films he also has a great input in it. For Dead Man, Jarmusch asked Neil Young to write the music for the film, Young’s initial idea was to get the remaining member of Nirvana to help him compose the soundtrack but Jarmusch persuaded Young to do it alone in the same tone that Eric Clapton scored for the film The Hit (1984). The score also has moments from the film, like for example when Nobody quotes William Blake or just bits of conversations between the characters. In Ghost Dog, RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan also scored, soundtracked the film and acted in it for a few seconds. The soundtrack falls into the same style as Dead Man with quotations from the film accompanying the songs. Tom Waits and John Lurie, besides acting, have also been involved in the soundtrack making. In Down by Law there is two Waits’ songs and John Lurie scored Mystery Train and composed in Permanent Vacation. These are all great examples of the quality of the artists he invites to work with him, never discriminating between musical genres.