The music, cue by cue.
Twenty original cues, one original song, and six licensed selections — every one of them out of Watts. Tap any cue to play that stretch of the film, and to read who made it.
Fifty years of Watts musical history, in one film.
“I was born in Watts. I set one rule: every piece of music in this film would be made by Watts, for Watts. Not as a gesture of representation, but as an act of authorship.”
Every cue ties back to something Watts already made. When Meryland Gonzalez walks back through the projects she grew up in, the music reaches not for sentiment but for lineage — jazz, a tribute to the Watts-born Charles Mingus. Watts is more than its hardship; it is a wellspring of genius.
For the closing sequence we rebuilt U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” in the voices of Watts — children from rival housing developments who had never sung together, singing as one. The choir isn’t a metaphor for unity. It is unity, on tape.
This music doesn’t accompany a story about Watts. It is Watts.
Every block is a cue. Tap one and the film plays from its timecode in the frame below — the music and the scene it was written for, together.
Tap a cue and the film plays from that cue’s timecode — you hear the music against the scene it was written for.