Steven Chesne premieres We are the Descendants (in 79 Languages) feat. Fredo Bang

The music video for Steven Chesne’s new track, “We are the Descendants (in 79 Languages) (feat. Fredo Bang)” is premiering today on Music News.



Composer Steven Chesne’s lifelong fascination with commonalities between people and cultures led him to create his new concept album “Descendants (in 79 Languages)”, which was released on July 19, 2024. The words “We are the Descendants” are sung in 79 different languages by vocalists around the world. These are nearly the only lyrics on these 14 eclectic tracks. The album took 4 years to complete and crosses genre lines from World-Beat, New Age, Neo-Classical, and Electronica. The phrases weave in and out through joyous dances, mysterious explorations, and contemplative orchestral pieces.

Mr. Chesne has scored 17 theatrical films and over 300 episodes of prime-time network shows including: Batman: the Animated Series (nominated by the International Film Music Critics Association), Family Man, Family Matters, Getting By, Girls Across the Lake, Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, The Hogan Family, Kirk, Life Happens, Perfect Strangers, Step by Step, Two of a Kind, Valerie, LA Times Critics’ Pick Zen Noir, Determined, The Trip, and No Turning Back.

With Mr. Chesne’s history of combining visual media with music, it is no wonder that he wanted to create a video to highlight the message of his new album. He did this beautifully with “We are the Descendants (in 79 Languages)”.


What inspired the making of this video?
I had been thinking about the fragmenting of civilization. And yet, we are all made of the same material. We have a shared origin, and ultimately, our fate is intertwined.

It led me to find a commonality that spans humanity. What can everybody yell out together? “We are the descendants.” We don’t think of this idea too much, but when we hear it, it sounds familiar. And it lifts us up just a tiny bit. It moves the waves just slightly in that direction.

This music video is really one-of-a-kind. How would you describe the video and the concept behind it?
Most of the action in part one takes place on Earth in the future, after the Earth becomes trashed and uninhabitable. So Fredo bang is walking inside a very large “earth station” that is very clean and antiseptic, and separate from the barren desert outside.

On the walls of this structure are video monitors with faces of all of the vocalists from all over the world. Each one of them sings their phrase as they interweave together, between Fredo Bang’s rapping.

There’s a young boy on the Earth station, who is experimenting with a giant laser that eventually pierces the wall of the structure. This takes us to part two of the video which uses music from the big Finale track at the end of the album. Between the song used in part one, and the Finale used in part two, there is some music score composed, which connects the two songs.

The key concept behind the dramatic ending is that all of us are going to have to struggle together if we’re to survive together. Our fate is intertwined.

The music that accompanies the big dramatic ending, the Finale of the album, involves all of the languages singing simultaneously. This sounds a bit like a gigantic nebula sort of choir. This is eventually overtaken by a symphony orchestra. The choir and the orchestra struggle together, and it’s a really unique, fascinating sound. It’s an extremely full, very complex texture.

You have such a body of work in TV and Film scoring. Did this influence your work here?
That’s actually a really big deal.

I’ve always approached music from an emotional angle, from where the deep feelings are.
This is a preoccupation that film composers have. We think of “what does it feel like when the oboe enters in the second phrase?” We think of “what does it feel like if we tease things out a while before the swell of a crescendo?” It’s all about how it makes us feel. So this is a connection that I’ve kept even when composing and producing records.
But this big music video for “We are the Descendants“ really did marry music with picture. Song number one, the one with Fredo bang, really was intended to work with the video. I completely thought of it that way, even when I was composing it. And when I was composing the finale at the end of the album, I absolutely had imagery in mind just like what we did in the video.

So this is more than just a music video. It’s really a short musical film with two songs in it.

What is the album “Descendants (in 79 languages)”? How would you describe this unusual work?
The short answer is that it’s a collection of songs unified by a single phrase translated into 79 languages. Vocalists from all over the world sing this one phrase — “We are the descendants” — in their native tongues, and their 79 tracks are intertwined throughout the songs, creating some really unique textures. The only English on the album are the lines in “We are the Descendants” that American rapper, Platinum recording artist, Fredo Bang performed so beautifully. He brought such a powerful sound and personality to the production.

But a deeper answer is that this album is an affirmation of our common origin. It’s as if the whole world is singing that we are all made of the same material, that we all descend from the same source.

What was the hardest part of the process?
There were so many hardest parts. Finding native translators who could make recordings for me, and critique my efforts, took close to a year. Finding vocalists took even longer.

Living in Los Angeles, we were able to have about a dozen of them come to our home to record. But the majority of the vocalists were recording in distant countries from Madagascar to Albania. Finding them in the first place was difficult but coordinating these recordings took another year.

The whole process really took place over about four years. Parts of it were incredibly complex sonically.

How did you find all of these vocalists?
I began with many thousands of connections on Facebook. I could tell by some people’s last names or country of origin, what languages they might be fluent in. I started asking around about vocalists they might know of, and so on. I tried cultural centers in Los Angeles, I found some language and linguistics pages online and contacted translators there.

The album that this video is from, is such an eclectic collection. How would you describe the styles included on the whole album? Are they like what’s in the video?
Song number one was composed first, as it was intended to be combined with the big video. It includes all of the phrases. Gathering these 79 tracks from all over the world was a long and painstaking process, but what I had collected felt like a real treasure. So I started experimenting with what else could be created with these gorgeously recorded tracks.

My experiments led me through various styles and genres. Outside of the joyous first song, it’s primarily a global/world flavored collection, and there’s a lot of EDM Downtempo styles, there are adventures into New Age styles, and neoclassic styles. There is even one song in a post-Sondheim Broadway-musical style.

And it’s fun to hear the very same phrases, but in different musical contexts. Floating on a cloud, or in a thumping EDM dance - the same vocal phrase. I love that.

What other songs on the album stand out to you in retrospect?
“Pyramid of Descendants” came out really interesting with the glitch affected vocals and the interplay between them. It has a really unique sounding middle section where one voice is looped while other voices are added one-by-one, accumulating with each repetition.

“Train of Descendants” was really a blast to work on. Verse 1 has one set of international voices, verse two has another set. But it gets really fun in verse 3, because set 1 and set 2 are overlaid on top of each other. It creates some really fun ping-ponging counterpoint.

But in order to balance out all these multi-language songs, I added a few solo numbers that are based on the lyrics, “who are the descendants?” The Swahili song is a gorgeous lullaby-type ballad that is beautifully performed by African artist, Kaymo.

There’s some really deep, exploratory, New Age atmospheric pieces created around these vocals. Another of the solo songs is “Seeds of the Descendants”, which involved three of the languages, Swedish, Japanese, and Irish, doing extended solos on the main phrase. I was really proud of how this came out. The Swedish vocalist is the amazing Christine Hals, who sang several parts in Disney’s “Frozen 1 and 2”.

Is this combining of cultures a new preoccupation? Or a long time interest?
Well, there’s two things going on. One is musical and the other is conceptual.

I remember as a kid hearing the song “I’ve got a Feeling” by The Beatles. I just couldn’t get enough of hearing Paul sing one melody while John sang something completely different. I loved how the two different phrases, with completely different rhythms and feelings, would interplay. Then, when I was older, I started studying Bach’s fugues and canons.

The other side of this is the concept of commonalities between peoples. As a young kid, I read the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Koran, along with the Bible and the Tao te Ching. I was always looking for that common thread. My last album “Sapient”, really deals directly with invocations for peace and oneness among different spiritual disciplines.

But with “Descendants”, my goal was creating a more joyous approach to this interweaving of peoples. There are heavy moments on the album, for sure, but the overall vibe is optimistic and forward moving.

Website I Instagram I Facebook