The Music of Halo: Eastern European Influences · 11:32pm Mar 11th, 2021
When I first heard the vocals of Halo: CE, I thought it was Hungarian folk music, but I was wrong. It was just Marty making high pitched sounds. However, Hungarian & Bulgarian folk music have played palpable roles in the shaping of Halo.
Here is the piece to which I refer:
Compare that to when they try an actual Bulgarian singing voice for Halo 4:
When the first Halo game was being developed, an insurgence of popularity in favor of the traditional music from both Hungary & Bulgarian was only just beginning to come to a close. The fact that Eastern European music played such a large role in popular “world” music during the late 1990s unsurprisingly played a huge role on the musical aesthetic on the first Halo game, which was meant to tap into “tradition” as much as “the new”, given that the events of Halo: Combat Evolved were at least somewhat based on the Second Persian Invasion of Greece, & were also meant to “test” our concepts of traditional values (particularly for what drives us to war; the game’s events basically answer that some wars are poorly planned & can lead to disaster, but out of need, we must fight to survive & preserve our ways) & why we have them for the players. To create that "ancient" sound, inspiration from more archaic European traditions were assimilated into the soundtrack.
Now, here are the samples that most likely inspired this:
So while no actual singing from either culture made it into Halo: CE, it was likely a major inspiration for the first Halo's soundtrack & used for later Halo games, even to the point of likely being an inspiration for a Halo Reach character:
That is awesome
It's always interesting to learn about he roots of musical inspiration for my favorite things.
Anyway, here's Wonderwall.
You learn something new every day.
And speaking of video games with a noticeable Eastern European influence:
Well, actually, in the case of Rabbids Go Home, it's less of an influence and more "we got a Romanian band to do our music".
I didn't know anything about that; you know caused that "insurgence of popularity" or no?
What led you to that conclusion?
5473054
I'm a little confused by your statement; what do you mean by "here's Wonderwall?"
5473082
Romanian music has never been "normal" by either Western standards or by the standards of the countries surrounding Romania...
Interestingly, it has been an influence of Ultimate Spider-Man's soundtrack, which is a whole other discussion by itself...
5475140
I do actually! When the Iron Curtain fell, traditional music in Warsaw Pact countries was being exposed across Western ones as a curiosity, & then one night, I believe what happened was that a Bulgarian women's choir was featured on PBS. It got to the point in which Bulgarian singing was featured in Brother Bear & other major motion pictures. As a result of this exposure, they ended up winning the Grammy Awards on this program:
It's not at all unlike how Celtic-style music took off during the 21st century's first decade.
The elite warriors of our protagonists are called "SPARTANS" & the Covenant are a multi-ethnic empire that are relentlessly attacking the smaller human civilizations. However, I will concede that this mostly applies to the backstory of Halo: CE & the actual events of the game are better compared to the Peloponnesian War as well as the Assyrian Seige of Jerusalem. In both, plague played a huge role in campaigns that mostly ended miserably for both sides (though not necessarily entirely due to said plagues)...
5475196
Never seen the meme? The first image you posted in the blog is literally that meme. Oasis' Wonderwall is an easy to play song so it got associated with d*ckheads who think they're good at guitar only playing that because it's popular and easy, so they brush aside all other requests and play the only song they know, which sparked, "anyways, here's wonderwall" as a meme.