Wailing woman

The wailing woman is a musical motif and solo vocal effect that features "an exotic-sounding, ululating female singer" traditionally heard in the soundtracks of epic films and historical dramas.

[1] The mournful wail, typically sung in alto, may often deal with a tragic subject matter or a foreign locale, where it heightens the emotional moments in the scenes while expressing a dramatic mood.

[7][8] The motif was notably used throughout the 2000s and was heard in movies such as, Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), Black Hawk Down (2001), The Scorpion King (2002), The Four Feathers (2002), The Gospel of John (2003), Tears of the Sun (2003), Troy (2004), The Passion of the Christ (2004), Duma (2005), Munich (2005), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) and The Stoning of Soraya M.

[11] The wailing woman vocals made its way into video games in the 2000s, where it was predominantly featured in the Prince of Persia franchise and World of Warcraft, with some moderate usage in Metal Gear, Resident Evil, Halo, and The Legend of Zelda.

Furthermore, Adams concluded that John Williams using the moaning woman motif for Munich (2005) was comparable to "your grandpa buying a cellphone...You know everybody else has already done this..."[3] The wailing phenomenon is also an expression of world events at the turn of the millennium where conflict and resulting interest in the Middle East escalated, thereby influencing American filmmakers to focus on West Asia and its affiliated subjects.