Peter Gabriel
Long Walk Home for The Rabbit Proof Fence

LA RECENSIONE

After years since the release of the soundtracks for the films "Birdy" and "The Last Temptation Of Christ", Peter Gabriel is called upon once again for the third time: for the film "The Rabbit Proof Fence" giving birth to "Long Walk Home". This extraordinary task was entrusted to him during the recording of "Up" and in the "long walk home" we can find musical fragments of Up like... Signal to Noise and the splendid Sky Blue. It is an entirely musical and instrumental album, where Gabriel's and the aboriginal choirs' voices are transformed into natural and immense sounds. The film's setting is encapsulated within the Australian continent in all its beauty and culture, where sounds of nature and animal calls are captured, recorded, and transformed for good appreciators of pure oxygen and new age.

It is the true story of three aboriginal children who escape from an indigenous colony after being kidnapped to serve the whites, with the obligation of a reality imposed and coerced upon them, that is to be "colonized" and integrated into a "white civilization" and for this reason forcing them to flee and traverse entire kilometers in the desert to find their natural mothers. The Rabbit Proof Fence constitutes a very long fence extending from north to south in the state of Western Australia, created by white colonies to prevent rabbits from damaging all their crops and to separate the two peoples, which for the three children, following it, will be their salvation to return home. This story, which for us might be indifferent, was a major trauma for them. Forcing them to change and civilize, as it might be said, to become behaviorally white is not coherent but above all is inhumane because in every part of the world you go, you will find diversity, and it must be respected and appreciated because it teaches us how to live.

The entire album is very complex and difficult to understand on first listen, it is very deep and natural, precisely to give value to the story of the film, and once again only an angel like Gabriel could describe nature with great innate sensitivity. He has long made use of extra-European musicians, his own historical and personal charisma. Gabriel is as immense as the musical cultures of the whole globe and for years has contained them within his Real World.