Bali High

Description

From the 1950s until the early 1980s, most surf film soundtracks were ripped straight from the director’s record collection, with little concern for copyrights. Director Stephen Spaulding’s soundtrack included hits from The Rolling Stones, Bob Marley, and Santana, but as the surf subculture grew, Spaulding had to figure out how to legally sell the film without paying royalties for the songs. For the re-release of his film, originally released in 1981, which chased waves from Indonesia to Kauai in Hawaii, Spaulding enlisted producer and musician Mike Sena. The 26 resulting tracks give the film its signature and cover an impressive variety of genres, with moments of folk, dubby rock, synthesized disco, tropicalia, and jazz fusion. The collaboration between Spaulding and Sena leaves us with a stratified time capsule in the history of surfing.