Lin-Manuel Miranda and Germaine Franco

We're fortunate to have with us today one of the most exciting and accomplished people in show business. If we only mentioned his Broadway triumphs, from in the heights to the cultural phenomenon of Hamilton, it would be amazing. But then there are also his songs for Disney's animated Moana, his role in this year's film version of In the Heights, his songs for the recently released Vivo, and his upcoming film directing debut with Tick Tick Boom. He has three Tonies, three Grammys, two Emmys,

Thank you for having me.

Encanto is the latest animated feature from Disney, the story of a family in Colombia for whom magic is a way of life, except for one of the three daughters, who seems not to have gotten the gift. You have a long history with Disney, not just your songs for Moana, but also your performance in Mary Poppins Returns, and of course Hamilton is airing on Disney Plus. When did Encanto come up for you?

right on the heels of Moana in that Moana went well. And I was really grateful that went well and I was kind of the last guy hired for Moana. They were several years in development. on the story for that and I remember when Ron and John were interviewing composers in New York. I was one of many composers they interviewed and I was lucky enough to get the gig. Hamilton was still on the horizon and then I ended up working on both

So what stage of development was the basic Encanto story?

It was me, Sharice, Jared, and Byron sitting around going, what do we want this movie to be about? And there were a couple of things that we just kept circling as things we had in common, which was we want to tell a story about family and That's a simple word and it's a loaded word, especially an intergenerational Latino family all living under the same roof and and the way we see ourselves versus the way our family sees us and the roles we fall into.

I understand you actually were part of a group that went to Colombia for research, is that right?

about that. Yeah, we were it was 2018. I had the terrible misfortune of contracting shingles two weeks before. So I was uh sort of the injured player on the trip. But my my father came with me and I don't know whether he invited himself or whether Disney invited him, but it was actually really incredible to have him along for the ride, I think, having grown up in in Puerto Rico. He provided a totally different perspective.

That's so fascinating. I mean I think there's a terrible tendency to lump Latin music all in one group, all well it but it's not all the same. There are great differences, aren't they?

Yeah. From Colombia, that I was very familiar with. You know, Carlos Vives is a global figure to us. I grew up with Carlos Vives' music, even though I am not from Colombia. But what was exciting was finding and highlighting those differences then leaning. into them. You know, um in Puerto Rico the the sort of specialized guitar we have is the cuatro and in Colombia I think its equivalent is the triple.

And how long were you there?

We were there for a little over two weeks.

That's great. I mean and probably seeing music musicians every night.

Seeing musicians everywhere. Yeah, and every night. And and not just like performing live, but also just like going to the nightclubs and seeing what everyone was dancing to.

So I'm curious to know about the time frame and if the Colombian trip gave you more not just more i ideas and story for for story and music, but also did that contribute significantly to the development and maybe creation of a final script.

Yeah, absolutely. Well it was very early in our process. I think that was something like 2018. I hadn't written any songs for the movie before at that point. We really let that inform our journey as much as possible. And then the other fun thing that happened, and I don't get to talk about this anywhere else, is we made each other playlists as we were defining these characters. Again, my job is to musically define them and find their rhythm and find their pulse.

Um things that they would listen to.

Yeah, things that they would listen to or music that we felt like would come out of them uh in a in a truthful way. And I see those playlists really reflected, you know, in the journeys that we ended up taking, you know, I for Isabella who sort of comes into her power as the sister who realizes how powerful she is. I went to a very rock in Espanol 90s place. Like I went to Shakira and Paulina Rubio and Roby Rosa.

So there's eight songs by you in the film. I'm guessing you probably wrote more along the way. Yeah.

I wrote um more and they were all for mirabels. They were all preparing for waiting on a miracle. That's always the one I have the most trouble with.

Well, I wanna talk about that because I loved Waiting for a Miracle and there's something about Mirabel being sort of the outsider and and y I think in a way you sort of define her musically, don't you?

Yeah, I think so well the first thing I wrote for the film, and it was really before we even had a second or third act of the film, I knew that no matter what happened, we had a lot of characters with a lot of gifts, and it was gonna be tough for an audience to keep them straight.

So talk a little bit about waiting for a miracle, how that came about, how challenging it was.

I think part of the challenge, and this is just real, is like you know that when you're working for Disney, this song is going on a playlist with part of your world. into the unknown, reflection from Mulan, you know, that's just intimidating, full stop. And then the other thing is the h the challenge of it is you are creating

But again, it's very tricky to define yourself by a negative. You can't do that and really kind of sell. a journey and then I Next song I wrote was called Moment. She didn't want a miracle. She just wanted a moment where the family would clearly see her. And then it just became very clear that that wasn't the story. Um so then I went back and found going into three four times, um again inspired by the beautiful

I'll never forget that experience and you know, w she and I have been friends for a really long time, um, way before. Uh any of us had any success in this business and so we just the texts back and forth of like, Can you believe we I get to write this stuff and and you get to sing it it really was kind of a dream come true.

Did you have a role in casting her?

I didn't. I was not really that involved in the casting process, and when they told me it was her, I was thrilled. You know, I had an incredible experience working with her on In the Heights, of course. And I also just know she has an incredibly musical and expressive voice. It's like this cosmic joke that the world met her as Detective Rosa on Brooklyn 99, where she's pitched two octaves down in like a monotone because she has the bubbliest

So you talked a little bit about the Isabella song. Talk also a little bit about the Luisa song.

Surface pressure. I think I can tell what my pandemic songs were. You know, I worked on another movie called Vivo and there's a song in there called Keep the Beat. That is all about like, what the hell do you do when a crisis happens? I guess you just keep the beat. Surface pressure is definitely its sibling in terms of the timeline of when it was written and the enormous pressure of keeping it together when you feel like the world is coming apart.

And so that one wrote easy because I was thinking of my older sister. There's a little bit of the cure in there. That there's a little love cats in that chorus. You know, fresh like tik-ti-ti. It'll never stop. Um da da da da da da da. There's a little like 80s because my sister is a child of the 80s. And my tastes in music were formed by thinking whatever she thought was cool, I thought was cool.

What's the the the age difference between the eighth of the eight?

She's six years old.

That's interesting. My brother was six years older than me. Yeah. And we had a very complicated

Killing the records is everything. That's right.

Another m amazing moment in the movie that I absolutely loved was we don't talk about Bruno. I mean it not only revisits a turning point for the family in terms of the story, but the song has hip hop elements.

I guess it does, yeah. And that was a surprise. I mean I a and again, the surprise was that it came from Dolores. There does come a moment on any project if you're working with the right collaborators and magic is happening where you stop deciding what your characters should say and they start telling you what they should say. And it's a very mystical sentence I just said, but it's true.

One of my favorite songs is Dos Odo Guitas. Tell us about it, how you conceived it and its role in the film.

I think it Um the best example of how collaboration creates something you could never make alone. I was inspired to write that song by the imagery of the butterflies creating the miracle. that the animators were coming up with. As they were finding the visual language for the miracles of the the Madrigal family, they came up with this candle flame that became this butterfly. And we were talking about this moment and it happens pretty late.

A miracle happens to make a butterfly. Completely different creature transforms to become a butterfly. And so what I pitched was, what if it's a song about

in love with each other and don't want to let go of each other, but they have to let go of each other to And change it their next version. And everyone really liked that pitch. I really wanted it to sound like a song that has always existed.

a kind of Colombian folk song.

Yeah, a folk song. There's a there's a great paranda song in Puerto Rico that goes down. Which give me your hand dubs. Um you know these these beautiful Songs with nature imagery that just feel like they've

movie that a character does not see. from a sort of storytelling place. It plays like a folk song over this very powerful moment in the history. of the family. So I wanted it to feel kind of out of time. And um one, Sebastian Yatra's vocals just take it to a whole other level. And two, It's my wife's favorite song I've ever written and my wife's a tough customer and

And it's special because it's in Spain.

Yeah. And it's the first time I've ever really written a song beginning to end in Spanish. The closest I did in Heights was a song called Siempre, where again I was trying to write a song that feels like it always existed. It exists. in the record player in the Rosario's house. I was trying to write an old bolero, but I only wrote a verse and a chorus, just enough for it to thread its way through the rest of the score.

And then there's uh Colombia Mi encanto, which is also sung in Spanish, by a different article.

Yes, by the great Carlos Vives, and it's very much the snake eating its tail because I was listening to Carlos Vives. to get the Vagenato sound, to make sure I got that right. And this is a funny story you'll appreciate. D23 does their little teasers way before we're done with And the only image they showed was the beautiful that they all live in and then you just heard Colombia! And that was it. That was it. And I I

And said, you know, we've been inspired and enriched by this Colombian music and Colombian culture. We never actually say the words Colombia in And we don't have a song that does that. So can I write one? And so I wrote that song inspired by Carlos Vivas' work in celebration of his culture. And then we got Carlos Vivas to sing the song, and him and his musicians brought on a whole other level of authenticity.

Was it done over a long period of time, or did everything get hammered out fairly quickly?

Yeah, um it was done over a very long period of time and the first person um we hired to work with me was the great Mike Elizondo. Again, I knew the diversity of different kinds of styles I wanted to write for this and I wanted to find a producer who was Fluent in

If you take Encanto, the film version of your In the Heights, and your contributions to Vivo, you've been able to shed light on three different arenas of Latin music in a single year. Can you talk about what that's been like?

Um I'm pretty sleepy all the time. Well, again, in the heights is is is sort of the grandparent to all of these, and in the heights. 13 years to get to the screen, and it's 21 years old as a as a project inside my brain. And when it first began. I was nineteen years old and it was my dare to myself, can I write Latin music? I was as awed by its rhythmic complexity as the next person, but I just thought

Did you have any interaction with Jermaine Franco, who wrote the dramatic score?

Yeah, I was really thrilled to to work with Jermaine. I really admired her work on co- And it was really important to me that we have a Latino music team for this movie. That was top to bottom a Latino music team. And so our first meeting uh went really well and she just spoke so powerfully about um

It's interesting to me that although you've worked with other studios, you've returned to Disney several times in different capacities, writing, performing, composing. What is it? Is it the big pocketbook? Is it a certain creative freedom? Is it friends you like to collaborate with?

I mean to steal a line from Isabella, I had such a good time working on Moana, what else can I do? Um and the Little Mermaid exploded my brain when I was nine years old. It's the reason we're Talking. I couldn't believe a contemporary Calypso number was breaking out in the middle of this Disney movie because not to take anything away from those earlier Disney films, they all had this quote unquote classical style. Lush orchestrations, it's when you wish upon a star.

Well, we're so grateful to you and we thank you so much for being with us today. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, Lynn.

Disney's Four Scores is brought to you by the Four Scores playlist. Featuring music and interview clips from each composer featured in the podcast series, including Lynn Manuel Miranda's songs and Jermaine Franco's score for Walt Disney Animation Studios and Canto. The Fourscores playlist is available on all major music streaming services. Experience the magic behind the music you love whenever you like.

Also with us today is the composer of the score for MCAN. Jermaine Franco was the first Latina to be invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences music brand. And the first to receive the Annie Award for her musical contributions to Coco, the Disney Pixar film set in Mexico, for which she co-wrote and produced five of its original songs. She's here today to talk about her role in the music of Encanto. Welcome back to the podcast, Jermaine Franco.

Hello, John. Thank you for having me.

You know, with a musical, people might tend to think that the songs are everything. But in fact there's an entire score to be written and recorded, and the songs themselves have to be produced. So tell us what you did on Encanto.

Well, I worked with uh the team to w create a score that weaves in and out of the the songs and It tells the story of Mirabel and her emotions and my work is storytelling through the instrumental and the orchestra and then the traditional music of Colombia. How could I work? with the drama and the storytelling to move that plot forward without getting in the way. And so the goal was what is the sound of magical realism?

You use the term magical realism and you think, well, how do you translate that into music? What is that?

Well, lots of experimentation. I wrote a lot of music, not to picture, and just came up with sweets. themes and ideas so that I could put them in front of the filmmakers and they could react before I actually got pictured.

What about the music of Colombia? Were you familiar with it? Did you go down and visit? Do you have a a sense of how different that is? than the music that perhaps you might have written for Coco or for Dora and the Lost City of Gold, which are also set in Latin American countries, but not in Colombia.

Everyone knows a a cumbia. That was the main way in. The cumbia is from Colombia and almost every Latin country has their own version of it and it's very different when played by different countries. But it originates in Colombia. I found new rhythms that I did not know which were, for example, Afro Colombiano,

Oh, that's interesting. Tell me about that.

For instance, Mirabel, who's the protagonist, she is very tenacious. And she doesn't stop. She is always driven. And so I tried different rhythms, and the one that they loved the most for her was the cumbia, which is a t sh. So that is a pattern that you'll hear when she's trying to find

So that's her rhythm. And then also the Afro-Columbian rhythms, there's one character named Antonio, who's very sweet and very, very, very lovely. Yes. I I applied Afro-Columbian two rhythms to this one moment in the film. I wanna say that I had a Colombian marimba made for me in Colombia while during COVID. It came here. And it it comes from the Pacific coast. You know, there is a huge tradition of marimbas there, but they're made. uh plant they're called marimba de chontas.

And it's so much fun from start to finish. And talk about the about the specific instruments that might be unusual for a film like this.

Okay, well one of the main instruments is called the tiple and that is played in the Andean region of Colombia. It's a descendant obviously of a Spanish guitar. For each no there's three And so it's got a twangy sound. And so that it's a really fun sound. So what um I did was I, of course, sampled. And made uh lots of instruments that I could play just for my ideas and then later re-recorded them with actual players. And I have this beautiful harp, which is called a arpa yanet.

Which are these incredible flutes that sound like You'll hear a guita in Carlos V. And I'm using tamboras, which are the African Bombos and I mixed some other guitars from Latin America like Charango.

Did you utilize specialized instrumentalists? Maybe some of whom might have come from Colombia?

Yes, well one that I worked with is Justo Almario. He is an amazing saxophone player and clarinetist. And there's a style of clarinet playing that's Colombian. that he's a master of and he's on the score as well in a few comedic moments and then also there's some jazzy dance bits where he's playing and and jamming on sacks. And then also I worked with Colombian vocalists in Colombia. and we did a session

But you were here and then we're not going to be able to

Uh yeah, it was it took a lot of patience. Well what happened it's um It's because I went to see Carlos Vivas and I was dancing the whole time at the Hollywood Bowl and I said, I think we have to have Colombian women singing on this because They have this tradition, especially in the Afro-Columbian areas, where the women all play percussion, marimba, and they chant and sing. And I wanted that sound. So, um

It's as authentic as you can get.

You know, I sometimes wonder if Disney's long history with great songs and great scores, going all the way back to the nineteen thirties, is somehow ingrained in the company's culture.

Yeah. foundation of the storytelling. Almost as if the music um and the storytelling are a huge, you know fabric that just works together and for the musicians and the you know composers and songwriters it's such a joy because you get to be who you are. And Disney pushes you as an artist to develop and hone the talents and dig deeper because it's not done over two months.

Yeah, and I think it's so apparent here in Encanto. I always love anything that you do, but I felt this was different. This seemed special to me, and it may have been the mi the mix of the visuals with what I was listening to, but it all worked and the magic of the movie, you know, is so beautifully complemented by what you did. Thank you, Germaine, for being with us today.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to Four Scores. Please subscribe and make sure to share this episode with your music-loving friends. It would also be great if you can rate it because that really helps others find the series. Check out Walt Disney Animation Studios Encanto in theaters and on Disney and listen to the soundtrack wherever music is enjoyed.