Thereafter the score follows Raya on her journey to find the last dragon, fix the orb, and reunite the various warring tribes to stand against the threat of the druuns. These bold orchestral strokes are often accompanied by bubbling electronic textures and choral outbursts the electronic textures may ‘ruin’ the music for some people as they do take the focus away from the orchestral line, but I personally think they give the score a fascinating texture that is appropriate for the alien sonic world Howard is creating. Howard’s action music here is powerful and emphatic, and very much in the classic 1990s style of scores like Waterworld, The Postman, and his other aforementioned Disney action efforts. This cue leads into the first main action cue, “Betrayed,” for the scene where Raya’s tribal enemies attempt to steal the orb of protection, but break it in the process – the catalyst for the quest. The loveliest statement here comes at the 1:00 mark – strings backed with magical chimes – but the cue is easily adaptable to different emotional settings, as the rest of the score shows. Raya’s Theme is optimistic, perhaps a little naïve, but imbued with warmth and heart as befits her status as the protagonist and hero of the story. There’s a tribal choir too, phrased with open voices which make it sound a little like James Horner’s choir from Avatar, as well as a rowdy set of orchestral action rhythms which foreshadow the action later in the score.ĭespite being introduced subtly in the opening cue, the first real performance of Raya’s Theme comes in “Young Raya and Namaari,” which underscores the scene where young Raya befriends the daughter of a different tribal leader, unaware that her choice of companions will have devastating consequences.
It’s all sort of non-specific and generically ‘exotic,’ which is a good thing on this occasion as it doesn’t place Raya’s world in any one musical location as we know it. Many of the textures Howard uses to capture the sound of Raya’s world are unexpectedly electronic, and feature a number of layered synth lines, unusual-processed samples, dance-like rhythms, and ‘foreign-sounding’ jangling percussion ideas which may be East Asian, but also may have simply been chosen for their timbre there might be a ram’s horn, there might be a Jew’s harp, there might be some type of koto zither. Raya and the Last Dragon is a score very much in the mold of those it’s an expansive, action-packed, emotion-filled adventure score which blends a traditional symphonic palette with an unusually large amount of electronica, but succeeds admirably in creating an appropriate tone and feel for this mysterious, magical world.Īfter a fairly generic and horrifically auto-tuned pop song in “Lead the Way,” written and performed by Jhené Aiko, the score begins with the “Prologue,” the sound of which will likely come as a surprise to many. Howard has only scored one animated film since then – Gnomeo and Juliet in 2011 – but has been very successful with his scores for several Disney-adjacent live-action remakes and spinoffs, including Snow White and Huntsman and Maleficent.
The film was directed by Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada, and features a voice cast of almost entirely East Asian and Southeast Asian actors, including Kelly Marie Tran, Awkwafina, Gemma Chan, Daniel Dae Kim, Benedict Wong, and Sandra Oh.įor a while in the late 1990s and early 2000s James Newton Howard was the go-to composer for Disney animated action adventures, him having written scores such as Dinosaur, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Treasure Planet. Wanting to make amends and save her people, Raya sets off on a quest to locate Sisu, the mythical last dragon, and the only one which did not turn to stone, in the hope that it can help create a new orb. The resulting fight leads to the orb being almost destroyed, and the threat of the druuns returning. Raya is the daughter of Benja, the powerful tribal chief who guards the orb, but during a feast celebration Raya is tricked into revealing the location of the orb to the daughter of a different tribal leader, who is jealous of Benja’s power. In this universe, humans have been hunted by creatures called druuns for generations, but are now protected by a magical orb created by dragons – with the caveat being that the dragons all turned to stone once they created the orb. The first of Disney’s two animated films scheduled to be released in 2021, Raya and the Last Dragon is a fantasy adventure set in an alternate-reality version of Southeast Asia.
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