While it took nearly 35 years, the soundtrack to Bill Gunn’s 1973 vampire film Ganja & Hess finally saw release for 2018’s Record Store Day. Strange Disc Records devoted the utmost care to Sam Waymon’s music, giving it the best possible treatment for its debut. The music has never been officially available in any format, and for it to have been given such a fantastic package and wonderful-sounding presentation on its first time out is really quite a joy.
As the label describes it, Waymon’s score is an ‘innovative, ahead-of-its-time mixture of soul, tribal chants, gospel and trippy, dissonant experimental cues.’ The film is more than just a vampire film, and to classify it strictly as blaxploitation horror is to do Gunn’s movie a real disservice, with Ganja & Hess ‘a highly stylised and utterly original treatise on sex, religion, and African American identity’ that really has to be seen to be understood.
Waymon’s music is also ‘highly stylised,’ using everything from bent and mysterious invocations of African tribal music, dialogue snippets from the film itself, gospel choirs, and even one proper soul number in You’ve Got to Learn to Let It Go. The soundtrack to Ganja & Hess is less a collection of film songs than an experience in and of itself, and for those familiar with the radical and intriguing soundtrack to Melvin van Peeble’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, released just two years prior, will recognise the attempt to translate a visual property into an aural medium.
Ganja & Hess’ soundtrack is not something for a casual listen. Its music is not conducive to being thrown on and listened to in the background while doing chores or reading a book, as Waymon’s quick twists and turns, and intense use of every aspect of African American musical traditions demand that the listener sit still and pay attention to what’s going on. It takes several listens to process the experience, but for those willing to put in the work, they’ll be rewarded with a deeper understanding of the film after approaching it from this audio perspective.
As bonus tracks, the Strange Disc LP features the complete, original version of Bongili Work Song, from the 1950 Smithsonian Folkways collection Music of Equatorial Africa, along with the theme to Blood Couple, the recut version of the film released by Heritage Enterprises. It also includes an excellent set of liner notes by Nicholas Forster on Waymon’s music, along with a biography of the composer.
GANJA & HESS / COMPOSER: SAM WAYMON / LABEL: STRANGE DISC RECORDS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
