Composer of “Encanto” could make history at the Oscars

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Germaine Franco's Oscar nomination for the score of “Encanto” is a milestone for Latin music in more ways than one.

Franco, an American of Mexican descent, is the first woman to compose original music for a Disney animated film, a category treasured by the studio that has earned her Academy Awards for films such as “The Little Mermaid” (“The Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast”) and “The Lion King” (“The Lion King”).

Other women have won the category, including Hildur Guðnadóttir for “Joker” (“Joker”), Anne Dudley for “The Full Monty” (“All or Nothing”) and Rachel Portman for “Emma”, but if she succeeded this Sunday, Franco would be the first Latina to win the statuette.

“In any given year, we, the composers in the top 100 top-grossing films, are 2 to 5 percent. That's very low, and we're not even talking about women of color, but about women in general,” Franco said in a recent video call interview from Los Angeles.

In the contest for the Oscar for best original music it is the only one this year. He competes with Nicholas Britell for “Don't Look Up”, Hans Zimmer for “Dune”, Alberto Iglesias for “Parallel Mothers” and Jonny Greenwood for “The Power of the Dog”.

Franco is used to being a pioneer. In 2016, she was the first Latina woman to enter the composer branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Born in El Paso, Texas and a graduate of Rice University, she is the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants from Parral, Chihuahua, and Santiago Papasquiaro, Durango.

“The biggest barrier is to make women really paid instead of doing work for free... I have always advocated that women composers should be paid and that they continue to be educated,” she said. “It's a very long road, super long... A lot of women quit because they don't have the success they want and then they have to take care of their families and that's the other thing: women are doing both jobs, they're working, and many of them are raising families.”

Franco has created music for films such as “Work It” (“Work it: To the rhythm of dreams”), “The Sleepover” (“A crazy night”), “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” (“Dora and the Lost City”) and “Little” (“Little Big Problem”), as well as the theme song of the animated series “The Casagrandes” (“Los Casagrande”). But what led her to compose for “Encanto” was her work on the soundtrack of “Coco”, composed by American Michael Giacchino, for which she was called to perform in Mexico with local musicians and for which she also composed songs such as “Un poco loco” and “Proud Corazón”, as well as producing and arranging for the orchestra.

With that experience, he did not hesitate to accept the challenge of “Encanto”. However, this time the pandemic did not allow him to travel to Colombia.

“For 'Coco' I went to Mexico City, worked with 50 musicians and produced them, it was beautiful. In 'Encanto' it was different, because I couldn't go myself. What I did was order all these instruments to be made for us and I literally hired a luthier to make the marimba of chonta, some drums, cununos (drums). I bought bandolas, four,” said Franco.

The composer studied and practiced various traditional Colombian genres such as cumbia, joropo, vallenato, bullerengue and mapalé. He also worked with Colombian musicians in Los Angeles, some of the Carlos Vives band, who in turn perform the song “Colombia, mi encanto”, as well as a Colombian choir.

“I had great musicians; there are so many Latin musicians in Los Angeles. We had Carlos Vives accordionist Christian Camilo Peña, and his work is beautiful in the cumbias. We also have Pedro Eustache from Venezuela, he plays the beautiful flutes, the bagpipes, all the flutes you hear in the original music, and also Justo Almario, who is an incredible clarinetist and saxophonist (Colombian),” Franco said.

Franco herself played percussion for the soundtrack.

“I started playing drums at a young age and grew up on the border of Ciudad Juarez in El Paso, (where) there was so much music all the time,” he said. “When I traveled to Mexico as a university student, I just sat down with different ensembles and marimba groups and asked 'can I play? ' , and they left me. Then I played the timpani.”

Being part of the “Encanto” orchestra was “the most fun” for him.

“When I've written everything, I can go to the studio and play with the rest of the band and I find that super exciting because I don't want to stop playing, I want to keep doing it,” he said.