How the Music for ‘Frida’ Documentary Gave ‘Inner Voice’ to the Beloved Artist

There are no known recordings of Frida Kahlo’s voice. But the iconic painter, who died in 1954, tells her own story in director Carla Gutiérrez’s documentary “Frida,” which is guided by her words (spoken by actress Fernanda Echevarría) from interviews, essays and diaries.

Acclaimed for its semi-animated visual strategy, the film (available on Amazon Prime) is also a sensory aural experience, propelled by a passionate, rhapsodic score by Victor Hernández Stumpfhauser. The Burbank-based, Mexican-born conductor and songwriter’s credits include features, shorts and three compositions on the “Birdman” soundtrack.

For the documentary, he said, “I thought of the music as Frida’s inner voice, sort of like her spirit. We think of Frida as very strong, loud, rebellious, which is an important part of her, but I wanted the music to also relate to the vulnerable, intimate side of her personality. It’s an aspect of Frida we don’t see as much in pop culture, but I believed the music could help the audience connect with her on that more personal level.”

Hernández Stumpfhauser incorporated plucked guitar strings, violin samples, trumpet and synthesizer, compressing sounds electronically to give the tracks a contemporary pop and folk vibe.

But the soundtrack’s most affecting instrument is the human voice – the score features vocalization of just a few notes, threaded beautifully through the film like a hero anthem. The vocal was chanted and hummed during recording sessions by Alexa Ramirez, a professional singer and cellist, who is also the composer’s wife.  

Ramirez’s wordless coo was essential to the film’s ecstatic finale. “Carla was very clear that Frida’s funeral was not going to be in the movie, and that the end of the movie should not be sad,” Hernández Stumpfhauser said. “I had composed the score for the ending sequence, and she made a specific request to me that it should be even more triumphant. The music says that she’s free and her art has transcended beyond her own time. We wanted to reach that moment of celebration for Frida.”

The 44-year-old composer’s musical influences include classical Bach pieces and the composer Gustavo Santaolalla (an Oscar winner for “Babel” and “Brokeback Mountain”), whose guitar-centric score for “Amores Perros” (2000) was a touchstone for Hernández Stumpfhauser while studying music at universities in Mexico City and Chicago.

His inspirations also hark back to his childhood. “My initials are VHS and that fits because I’m a nostalgic ’80s kid,” he said. “Growing up, I loved “E.T.” and “Back to the Future.” And Danny Elfman’s score for “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” was really important. That great, weird circus music was like nothing I had ever heard and it made me think, ‘Wow, it’s amazing someone made that.’” 

Visually, “Frida” is made entirely from black-and-white archival film or color artwork, with subtle animation used to bring Kahlo’s paintings to life. Hernández Stumpfhauser fashioned his music in sync with the aesthetics.

“I would get to see some of the animated segments before they were finished,” he said. “And when there would be a splash of color in one of the scenes, I would modify my music a bit and tap into that vibe. The creative process was so rewarding – it was sort of like a pyramid and eventually we met together at the top.”

He was also guided by advice from his director and a note which was emblematic of the project as a whole.

“Early on, when I was sending Carla my music tracks to get feedback, she said, ‘It sounds too clean,’” he said. “She didn’t want anything too pristine in the film, because that’s not Frida. Frida was an eclectic combination of things: loud, vibrant, raw, colorful, messy. So I had the freedom to allow a few scratches and imperfections in the music. It makes the film more relatable, we felt, to her persona.”

This story first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

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