For director Marc Forster's film adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner, Spanish score composer
Alberto Iglesias (an Academy Award nominee for
The Constant Gardener who has written music for many of
Pedro Almodovar's films) was taken out of his comfort zone in having to come up with music to accompany the story of the lives of two boys growing up against the backdrop of the recent history of Afghanistan, including the Soviet invasion and the rise of the Taliban, a story that runs up to the early 21st century in San Francisco, to which one of the now grown boys has immigrated.
Iglesias employs a full orchestra, the Hollywood Studio Symphony, but for much of the soundtrack, it serves largely as a backdrop to music with distinct Middle Eastern and Indian flavors, using a variety of ethnic instruments including the tabla as a major element in the percussion section. Nylon-stringed guitars played by Javier Crespo,
Heitor Pereira (aka
Heitor T.P.), and
Ramon Stagnaro also lead the arrangements frequently. Here and there, source music is used in the form of period tracks by Afghan singers
Ahmad Zahir and
Ehsan Aman. The best mixture of symphonic and ethnic percussion is found in the lively "Kite Tournament." The last couple of cues, "Fly a Kite" and "Reading the Letter," are the only ones really dominated by the string orchestra, and they have a new age feel that may seem odd to the listener after all the Middle Eastern accents, even if they are appropriate to following the story in the film itself.
Iglesias succeeds in a challenging assignment here. ~ William Ruhlmann