Lakeshore Records will release the Journey to Mecca - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on March 18 and on CD April 8, 2016. The album features the film's original score by noted film composer Michael Brook.
"I generally work fairly chronologically in order to get the sense of direction and flavor of what the score should do before getting too far into it," said Brook. "The opening has all this remarkable IMAX footage of people arriving from all over the world to modern Mecca. It felt like this had to both hint at what was to come, and give a sense of the incredible significance that Mecca has to so many people."
To create a unique score for Journey to Mecca, Brook used "many indigenous instruments, such as darbukah, ney, and oud were played by AJ Racy, a wonderful musician and scholar who lives in LA. These were combined with a string section to create a kind of exotic, but familiar result." The director, Bruce Neibaur, was very keen to give a sense of the place and the time for the documentary. Brook continued on to say, "We used traditional instruments and musicians mixed with some contemporary instruments. He [the director] wanted the atmosphere of the past and present, but we stayed away from actually having the compositions attempt to be ethnically or historically accurate in any way."
Journey to Mecca is available on Blu-Ray and DVD.