Sinners
Sinners Take Two: let’s talk about music as culture.
This film has a full heap of musical sequences that are, without a doubt, some of the most beautifully crafted sequences ever put to film. Sinners is inseparable as a movie from its soundtrack, both diegetic and non-diegetic. One quick note I’d like to point out is that when we first witness Remmick turning someone into a vampire, the Irish phrase ‘Sé Abú’ is heard over the soundtrack, which can be roughly translated to ‘he is forever’. This is just one small example of how Sinners uses music to provide cultural context for its scenes and characters.
Another important example of cultural music used by the film’s vampires is ‘will ye go, lassie go?’, a song of Scottish origin that was adapted and popularised by an Irishman. Scottish and Irish culture have often existed hand in hand, we share a Celtic kinship and have both had our cultures and languages forced into the shadows by the English. The inclusion of this song highlights everything the vampires represent: an ability to retain one’s own culture, but only in the dark and shadows, hiding your true and authentic self from the daylight, and society as a whole.
When Sammie is playing the blues with Slim, Slim notes that while the religion Sammie’s father preaches was forced upon black Americans, music was something they brought with them. Sammie is more in touch with his ancestors through creating music than he ever would be preaching the religion of his colonisers. This is, of course, why the Lord’s Prayer does nothing to harm the vampires as they attack him. This is also why Sammie chooses to pursue a life of creating music rather than relenting to his father’s wishes - when he was within the clutches of Remmick’s hold, he was met with the futility of a religion that was not truly his own.
When Sammie sings the film’s pivotal song ‘I Lied To You’ he is able to assemble spirits of past and future cultural significance, tying together the idea that music is an art form that holds significance in each and every culture that colonisation attempted to stamp out. Languages were buried, religions were fringed, but music remained.