The Power of One

The Power of One

One of the themes of the middle section of this movie is the use of singing by indigenous people as a means of resistance to oppression.

Masala - Tribal Music
Masala is a band from Israel which deliberately blends many musical styles and cultures together.  They describe their new album on their website this way:

The new album is a 3 years process that still goes on. Exploring cultures from all over the planet - Africa, Asia, America, Australia and Europe. 
We have endless beauty in this world - A beauty far behind the eyes, Thru this beauty I discovered the similarity between us - Musical scales reveal it all - We are all smiling to the sound of a Major scale Ambira (Africa) and getting sensitive to the sound of minor scale Duduk (Armenia). 

While I am not certain about the full instrumentation, I am fairly confident that it includes the following instruments:

• vocal
• suspended cymbal
• drum set
• various hand drums 
• diggeridoo
• bass guitar
• pan flutes
• guitar
• brass (not sure if acoustic or electronic facsimile)
• shakers
• flutes
• hand claps

This is a great mix of a lot of different styles from different cultures.  The opening vocals set a tone of either African or South American origin which quickly combines with the diggeridoo to evoke the Australian outback.  Many of the later sections with the driving bass line with flute duets over the top remind me of much of the type of music I heard in southern Africa as a child.  Paul Simon used many South African musicians on his Graceland album and this music is very reminiscent of that.  While it is true that each culture has developed its own styles of music, the ease of travel and new recording technology has enable the fusion of many different streams of music into unique new styles such as this.