“As you think, so shall you become.”

Bruce Lee

Let’s talk motion picture music, shall we?

A great movie score is one that fully projects, supports and elevates all of the emotions within its movie. When it works the way it should, it is a rare and special thing.

Now, if that same score can then also have a secondary life, one that’s divorced from the movie’s visuals and dialogue, and exist as its own free-standing emotionally satisfying experience, well, then it’s probably something close to great art.

But for that score to possess a power so compelling that it is then employed to market other films (and television show), well, then that score would have to be composer Randy Edelman’s score for Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.

Created for the 1993 biopic about the martial arts movie legend directed by Rob Cohen, Edelman’s Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story score is as strong-hearted, optimistic and triumphant as Bruce Lee himself.  This is music that tells the story of a man who came from nothing and rose to such heights that he changed the cultural landscape in much the same manner that Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali did before him.

Dragon is a soaring and cascading work. Its bells and cymbals may feel Hong Kong Cinema-inspired, but this is a Great American Story and Edelman employs the cultural influences to support the proud, almost patriotic emotions surging forward on nearly every track. It’s music infused with desire and hope, romance and love, optimism and heroism.

Maybe that’s why producers and editors working on movie trailers and TV promo campaigns have turned time and again to Randy Edelman’s Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story as a tool sell their sagas. Dragon has been used countless times in the mass marketing of entertainment properties like Forest Gump, The Truman Show, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Iron Chef, American Dreams, The Olympics, the World Figure Skating Championships and others.

Want to hear some it? Below is a cue from the soundtrack called “Dragon’s Heartbeat”. It seems to embody all of the primary themes of the soundtrack. Give it a listen and you’ll understand why Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story just might be a masterpiece.