lionel Cohen · dna-productions · 2020

Bloody
Earth

A Cinematic African Score

It is said the African soil is red because of the blood spilled over its rich and sorrowful history — a continent whose wounds are written into the earth itself.

The Album

Bloody Earth album cover — Lionel Cohen, 2020 cinematic African score
40tracks

Bloody Earth

by lionel Cohen

Bloody Earth is a haunting cinematic journey through the African landscape — ancestral drums pulse beneath vast savannah skies, kora strings weep with ancient grief, choral voices rise from cracked earth, and modern orchestral weight carries the resilience of a continent.

Every track title is drawn from a genuine African proverb, binding the music to oral tradition and communal wisdom that has endured for millennia. Together, the 40 tracks form a sweeping score for history's deepest wounds — and its unyielding spirit.

Released
January 30, 2020
Label
dna-productions
Tracks · Runtime
40 tracks · 1 hr 27 min
Genre
Cinematic · African · World
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Why This Album Matters

Oral Tradition Preserved

Each of the 40 tracks takes its name from an authentic African proverb — from Swahili East Africa to Akan West Africa — turning the album into a living archive of the continent's philosophical heritage.

Ancestral Instrumentation

The score weaves together kora, talking drums, mbira, and balafon alongside full cinematic strings and choir — bridging ancient sonic tradition with contemporary orchestral storytelling.

History Told Through Sound

From the weight of colonialism to the enduring communal spirit of Ubuntu, the music moves through Africa's complex history without a single word of narration — pure emotional cartography.

A Score for the Screen

Composed and produced by Lionel Cohen — who holds over 500 IMDb credits — Bloody Earth is purpose-built for documentary, film, and television, placing African narrative at the centre of the cinematic frame.

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Complete Tracklist

Every title is an African proverb — from the pragmatic to the poetic — forming a 40-chapter meditation on community, resilience, loss, love, and the hard-earned wisdom of a continent.

01 Greed Loses What it Has Gained 1:51
02 A Single Bracelet Does Not Jingle 2:08
03 Even the Most Beautiful Fig May Contain a Worm 1:34
04 Many Hands Make Light Work 2:34
05 Peace is Costly But it is Worth the Expense 2:37
06 A Close Friend Can Become a Close Enemy 1:37
07 You Do Not Teach the Paths of the Forest to An Old Gorilla 2:52
08 Where There Are Many Nothing Goes Wrong 1:39
09 He Who Refuses to Obey Cannot Command 2:16
10 By Crawling A Child Learns to Stand 1:29
11 Wisdom is Wealth 2:02
12 Sticks in a Bundle Are Unbreakable 2:07
13 Go Alone to Go Quickly, Go Together to Go Far 2:09
14 A Beautiful Thing is Never Perfect 2:13
15 However Long the Night, the Dawn Will Break 1:53
16 An Army of Sheep Led by a Lion Can Defeat An Army of Lions Led by a Sheep 2:13
17 Where a Woman Rules, Streams Run Uphill 1:52
18 A Fight Between Grasshoppers is a Joy to the Crow 1:54
19 At the Bottom of Patience One Finds Heaven 2:09
20 You Must Act as if it is Impossible to Fail 2:08
21 It Takes a Village to Raise a Child 1:55
22 Much Wealth Brings Many Enemies 1:47
23 Where There is Love There is No Darkness 3:41
24 There Can Be No Peace Without Understanding 2:26
25 War Has No Eyes 2:37
26 By Labor Comes Wealth 1:21
27 What You Give You Get Ten Times Over 2:20
28 Unity is Strength, Division is Weakness 2:52
29 Speak Softly But Carry a Big Stick 1:56
30 Patience is the Key Which Solves All Problems 2:13
31 When Two Elephants Fight it is the Grass that Gets Trampled 2:04
32 To Get Lost is to Learn the Way 1:56
33 Poverty is Slavery 2:30
34 The Friends of Our Friends Are Our Friends 2:06
35 There is No Beauty But the Beauty of Action 2:16
36 What You Learn is What You Die With 2:32
37 To Be Without a Friend is to Be Poor 2:09
38 You Always Learn a Lot More When You Lose Than When You Win 2:13
39 Children Are the Reward of Life 2:34
40 Hold a True Friend With Both Hands 2:27

Total runtime: 1 hour 27 minutes

40 Proverbs · 40 Pieces

Each title is sourced from the living oral tradition of African cultures spanning the continent — Swahili, Akan, Zulu, Hausa, Amharic, and more. Together they form a philosophy of community, patience, justice, and love that has guided generations long before they were set to music.

The Artist

Lionel Cohen

Lionel Cohen is a Los Angeles-based, French-born composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist with roots in Morocco and Canada. Over a career spanning more than thirty years, he has accumulated over 500 IMDb credits scoring independent films, documentary series, and television for networks including MTV, ABC, NBC, Discovery, National Geographic, and Canal+.

His commercial work spans Sony, Cadillac, BMW, Mercedes, Louis Vuitton, Adidas, and Verizon — but it is his long-form album compositions, released through his own dna-productions label, that reveal the full depth of his vision. Cohen has released over 300 albums across genres from dark folk and rock to ambient and world.

Bloody Earth represents one of his most focused and personal statements: a single-composer, full-orchestral score in which African oral tradition and cinematic music-making converge. Every element — instrumentation, harmony, structure — was written, performed, and produced solely by Cohen, making it a singular achievement in contemporary world-cinematic scoring.

Album Credits

All compositions
Lionel Cohen

Performed & Produced by
Lionel Cohen

Label
dna-productions

© & ℗
2020 dna-productions

Genre
Cinematic African · World · Orchestral

ISRC Label
dna-productions

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