It is almost impossible to think about the vast, sweeping plains of the Ngong Hills without that specific, swelling string melody playing in the back of your head. You know the one. It’s grand. It’s lonely. It’s achingly beautiful. When people talk about music in Out of Africa, they are usually talking about John Barry’s Oscar-winning score, but the sonic landscape of Sydney Pollack's 1985 masterpiece is actually a lot more complicated than just one catchy theme.
John Barry almost didn't write it.
Pollack initially wanted the film to feature indigenous African music and perhaps some period-accurate classical pieces, thinking a traditional "Hollywood" score might feel too manipulative or dated. He was wrong. Thankfully, Barry convinced him that the movie—which is essentially a long, lush poem about loss and colonialism—needed a melodic anchor to represent the "feeling" of Kenya rather than just the literal sounds of it.
The John Barry Magic and Why It Works
If you listen to the main theme, it doesn't sound "African" in any traditional sense. There are no tribal drums or kalimbas. Instead, it’s a very European, very Romantic-period orchestral arrangement. Barry understood something fundamental about Karen Blixen’s story: it’s not really a movie about Africa. It’s a movie about a European woman’s idea of Africa.
The music reflects that longing.
The main theme, often referred to as "I Had a Farm in Africa," uses a slow, rising tempo that mimics the feeling of a plane taking off. This is intentional. The most famous sequence in the film—Denys Finch Hatton taking Karen up in his Gipsy Moth biplane—is where the music and the cinematography become one thing. You’ve got these incredible shots of flamingos rising from Lake Nakuru, and Barry’s score just soars right alongside them.
Barry’s style is famous for being "stately." He uses long, sustained notes. He isn't afraid of silence. In the music in Out of Africa, he uses the flute to create a sense of isolation. Even when the full orchestra kicks in, there’s a persistent sense of melancholy. It’s the sound of something you’re already losing while you’re still holding onto it. Honestly, it’s a miracle the score doesn't become too sappy. It stays just on the edge of sentimentality without falling in, mostly because Barry keeps the harmonies a bit more complex than your standard pop ballad.
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The Mozart Connection
While Barry gets the lion's share of the credit, we have to talk about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Specifically, the Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622.
Pollack used the Adagio movement from this concerto as a recurring motif. It’s the music Denys (played by Robert Redford) plays on his gramophone while they’re out on safari. There is a specific scene where the music drifts across the African night, and a lioness is seen prowling near the camp.
It’s a stark contrast.
You have this peak of European Enlightenment—Mozart’s most refined, delicate woodwind writing—being played in the middle of a literal wilderness. It highlights the "out of place" nature of the characters. Karen and Denys are trying to impose their culture on a landscape that doesn't care about Mozart. The choice of the clarinet concerto was brilliant because the instrument has a vocal quality. It sounds like a human voice singing in the dark.
Beyond the Score: Authentic Soundscapes
People often forget that the film actually does feature a lot of traditional music, it's just not part of the "soundtrack album" experience most people buy.
During the New Year's Eve party or the various scenes in the Kikuyu village, the music in Out of Africa shifts toward the diegetic—meaning music the characters can actually hear. You hear traditional Kenyan chants and rhythms. Pollack was actually quite careful about this. He didn't want the entire film to feel like a British drawing room.
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There's a subtle tension throughout the film between the "official" music (Barry/Mozart) and the "real" music of the land.
- The Kikuyu workers' songs are rhythmic and functional.
- The European music is melodic and decorative.
- The interaction between the two reveals the power dynamics of the era.
When Karen tries to teach the young boys on her farm to read or when she interacts with the local chiefs, the absence of the big orchestral score is notable. The silence of the bush is its own kind of music. You hear the cicadas, the wind in the dry grass, and the distant calls of animals. These are the "tracks" that ground the movie in reality.
Why "Out of Africa" Won the Oscar
It’s easy to look back now and say, "Of course it won Best Original Score." But 1985 was a competitive year. Barry was up against heavy hitters. He won because he did something nobody else was doing at the time: he wrote a score that felt like a character.
Most film music follows the action. If a character runs, the music gets fast. If they cry, the music gets sad. Barry didn't do that. He wrote "mood" music. The music in Out of Africa stays the same regardless of whether Karen is happy or struggling with her coffee harvest. It represents the land itself. The land is eternal, beautiful, and indifferent to her problems.
That’s a very sophisticated way to score a film.
It’s also why the soundtrack became a massive hit outside of the movie theater. People bought the record (and later the CD) to use as relaxation music. It has this hypnotic, meditative quality. If you play "The Flying Machine" while you're just sitting in traffic, you suddenly feel like you're overlooking the Great Rift Valley. It’s transportive.
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The Technical Details of the Recording
Recorded primarily at Abbey Road Studios in London, the score benefited from the natural acoustics of Studio One. Barry favored a specific arrangement of the strings to get that "lush" sound. He often doubled the melody across different sections of the orchestra to give it more weight.
- He used a large section of cellos to provide a warm, "chest-voice" foundation.
- The horns were used sparingly to provide a sense of "royalty" and "vastness."
- The piano parts are often simple, almost like a lullaby, which grounds the epic scale in a personal feeling.
Common Misconceptions About the Soundtrack
A lot of people think the "African" sounding drums in the movie are part of Barry’s score. They aren't. Those are field recordings or recreations of traditional folk music.
Another weird myth is that the score was written in a few days. While Barry was known for working quickly, the thematic development of the Out of Africa motifs took weeks of back-and-forth with Pollack. Pollack was notoriously difficult to please when it came to the "tone" of his films. He kept asking for it to be "less sentimental," but Barry pushed back, arguing that the movie was a romance at its heart and shouldn't apologize for it.
Barry won that argument. And the movie is better for it.
Actionable Takeaways for Music Lovers and Cinephiles
If you want to truly appreciate the music in Out of Africa, don't just listen to the "Best Of" suites on YouTube. You need to hear it in context.
- Listen to the Mozart Clarinet Concerto (K. 622) in full. Specifically, find the Jack Brymer recording, which is often cited as the definitive version that captures the spirit used in the film. It helps you understand the "old world" elegance the characters were trying to cling to.
- Watch the "Flying Sequence" with the sound off. Then watch it with the sound on. You will realize that the visuals, while stunning, lose about 50% of their emotional impact without Barry’s strings. It’s a masterclass in how audio completes a visual.
- Compare it to Barry’s other work. If you listen to his score for Dances with Wolves, you can hear the evolution of this "vast landscape" style. He basically invented a musical language for "wide open spaces."
- Look for the 25th Anniversary Edition. The remastered audio quality reveals a lot of the subtle woodwind work that was buried in original VHS and early DVD releases.
The music in Out of Africa isn't just background noise. It’s a bridge between the historical reality of colonial Kenya and the romanticized memory of it that Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) wrote about in her books. It’s beautiful, problematic, grand, and intimate all at once.
If you are looking for a way to study film scoring, this is the gold standard. It shows that you don't need to be literal to be effective. Sometimes, the best way to represent a place is to ignore what it sounds like and focus entirely on how it feels.
Next Steps for Deep Listening:
Seek out the original soundtrack on vinyl if you can. The analog warmth suits the 1980s orchestral recording style perfectly. Pay close attention to the track "Safari"—it's a perfect example of how to build tension using nothing but a repeating bass line and a slow-building brass section. This is how you tell a story through sound.