Oscar-Nominated ‘Encanto’ Composer Germaine Franco Has Already Made Film-Music History
variety.comJon Burlingame editorComposer Germaine Franco’s Oscar nomination for “Encanto” is a landmark moment in film music:– She is the first Latina to be nominated in that category;– She is only the sixth woman ever to be nominated for an original score;– And she is the first woman to score a Disney film.But ask any of her colleagues in the profession and they’ll tell you something else: that it’s a triumph for a musically talented, genuinely kind person who has worked hard her entire life, dating back decades to her childhood in El Paso, Texas, just across the border from where her grandparents were born in Chihuahua and Durango, Mexico.Franco landed the “Encanto” assignment in part because she had firmly established the Mexican backdrop of Disney’s 2017 film “Coco” via her orchestrations and original songs.
Says Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is also nominated as songwriter for “Encanto”: “I admired her work on ‘Coco’ and it was really important to me that we have a Latino music team.
Our first meeting went really well and she spoke so powerfully about the themes and the instrumentation.” For Franco, “Encanto” is the culmination of a lifetime of dedication to music.
She started taking percussion and piano lessons at age 10, although, as she says, “my mom says I started sooner because I was always banging on pots and playing around on the family piano before I started formal lessons.” By age 16 she was studying classical music at Rice University in Houston while also starting her own Latin jazz band.“I just wanted to play music,” she says. “I didn’t think about all the barriers and the roadblocks.
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