“Wake Up!” with Narrative Film Music: Optimizing Narrative Power Through Spike Lee’s Compilation Soundtracks of Popular Music

Abstract

Filmmaker and director Spike Lee famously features popular music in his films, often incorporating compilation soundtracks that function as sonic narrative devices, sometimes alongside original scores. Through analysis of three of Lee’s films based on true stories—Malcolm X (1992), Crooklyn (1994), and BlacKkKlansman (2018)—and their soundtracks, it is evident that Lee’s use of popular music in his historical films not only situates the works in their respective time periods, but also emphasizes the relevance of each film narrative in American history, both past and present.