![]() A few months later, she called me and she said ‘King Records wants you to do the final version for the game.’ And I said ok, not even really thinking about it and went to do the final version. ‘Snake Eater,’ it was something different. She was like, ‘Cyn, can you come sing this demo for me?’ And I’m like, ‘OK, it’s fine.’ I think I went and sang it, and I knew it was something special about it. Several years later, in 2004, Muranaka once again asked her friend to sing for her, this time on Konami’s newest entry in the Metal Gear Solid series, Snake Eater. The next thing I knew, we were doing it as a final project.” there were certain things she knew that my voice would fit with. “She would tell me ‘I’m doing this game or whatever, and I would brush her off because I really wasn’t into hearing any of the gaming songs. And just kept going and going and going and working and working and working with my aunts and my mother.” “I think at that time I wanted to go to Saint Xavier and I was working while my friends were in school and it was like, ‘Wait a minute, I’m 18. She had college aspirations and desired studying law, but the success of her singing career - and its time demands - diminished college’s appeal. Her grandfather was a minister, she said, and most of her family in some form or another ended up in the entertainment industry. Like most Black performers, Harrell grew up singing in church. Harell’s own memories of her career and video games go much further back than that.Ĭynthia Harrell started her professional career singing jingles for McDonald’s commercials at 10 years old. ![]() With her though, that ladder scene becomes one of video games’ most memorable moments, all because of her voice. Without Harrell, that scene is just Snake climbing a ladder in silence, which wouldn’t be too out of place because Metal Gear games get weird like that. The memory many of us have of Harrell’s work is this: “You have brought back all kinds of memories. “What have you done?” She asked me jovially. But she dismissed my worries with the soft, warm tenor of an older (but not old) Black auntie that instantly put me at ease. Nervous that she would find my sudden air-drop into her life intrusive. When we first started our phone conversation, what struck me was that Harrell sounded like one of my aunts. It took a week or so of stops and starts, buried under work and life, but I finally managed to speak to her. Since this profile did not allow direct messages, I took a very public shot in the dark and her. I found several hits for a Cynthia Harrell but only one with the picture of a Black woman who looked approximately like the woman on the cover of the Castlevania “I Am The Wind” single. This woman was white, and what little I did know about Cynthia Harrell is that she is a Black woman.įrustrated by the dead ends, I made one last attempt that I realise now I should have started with: I searched Twitter. But then I realised this couldn’t be who I was looking for. My heart sank as I scrolled through the timeline of a person lamenting their lost mother. I searched Facebook for surviving relatives mentioned in obituaries for Cynthias Harrell, cross referencing the locations of the many matching names I found against the location mentioned in the obits. In fact, one of the other top results from a “Cynthia Harrell” web search returns an r/videogamemysteries Reddit thread whose author posits she might be dead.Ĭoncerned that this woman might be lost to me beyond the veil of death, I did my own research. I didn’t know if she had gone on to do other video game work or not. Google her name and the top results are her wiki pages for Metal Gear Solid 3 and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (wherein she’s credited for performing that game’s closing song, “I Am The Wind”). I wanted to hear from her, hear about her, and ask her if she knew what her song meant to people.īut I couldn’t find out anything about her. ![]() Her powerful vocals suffuse “Snake Eater with such gravitas, elevating it from a simple song on a video game soundtrack to something that sees regular rotation in travelling video game orchestra performances and in people’s weddings. Tucked into the final paragraph, I made an entreaty to the song’s performer, Cynthia Harrell, to get in contact with me. In it, I gush about the song and how it is as responsible for the prestige of the game as anything else. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog about “Snake Eater,” the titular song in the 2004 video game masterpiece, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |