How the Music in Black Panther Tells a Story

oh gee it's it's almost like if your composure and your director have some sort of relationship and are able to talk to each other about what's going on in the film over the course of its development it's it's almost like that's gonna have some kind of positive effect on your score like if you have a director and a composer who met in film school and have already worked on two other films with the same lead actor and then the three of them get together and make another film it's almost like knowing the team that you surround yourself with is gonna give you a heads up in the industry it's almost like having a director and a composer forming some kind of relationship has a positive effect on the filmmaking process it's almost like it's almost like being able to know ahead of time that you're gonna be scoring a superhero film set in Africa and getting enough time to actually go to Africa and research African music and being able to go and meet African musicians and have the opportunity to record them and also pay a visit to the international library of African music it's almost like being able to do all of that is gonna give you the ability to write a really fantastic score to your film it's almost like expecting your composers to write a film score from start to finish in a month really isn't enough time and having the ability to put in a lot of time and resources and hard work it's gonna mean it by the time the director hands you his four-hour cut of the film you already have enough material to score the whole thing but because you've already done so much work and research into everything that you're doing your main characters already have really well established modular themes I don't want to sell goranson short here because he did an absolutely phenomenal job but I strongly feel like a part of the success of the black panther soundtrack is because goranson is BFFs with Kugler and he had the extra time and resources and knew what was going on in with a film ahead of time and had more of an opportunity to polish the score and it shows men this score just oh there's so much to talk about but I'm kind of at an impasse here see normally in these kinds of videos I break down all the themes and light motifs and then I explain how they're used but göransson already did that first part he broke down the theme for Wakanda and by extension two challahs theme in a video he did for the genius YouTube channel and he broke down kill mongers theme along with another piece of music that he uses to bind to chala and kill monger together in an interview he did for song exploder so as much as I'd like to try and explain it from my own perspective you aren't really going to get a better explanation than from the composer himself so with that in mind I'm gonna do my best to break down how and why Goran does what he does in this film but because I'm never gonna be able to say anything that's more accurate than the composer himself I'm just gonna use his explanations okay so - cello really has three aspects to his theme the talking drum an 808 pattern and this big brass [Music] the talking drum is a type of drum where you can tighten the drum head by squeezing on the body in other words you can pitch the drum while you're playing it and the idea is that while you play it you try and mimic the sound of speech thus the name talking drum so in the case of Black Panther goranson had his performers say to chala and then the last final element for the talking drum is touch Ella's name all right now this 808 pattern okay so it's important to know that 808 is shorthand for the roland tr-808 it was a drum machine that came around in 1980 and was only around for three years but it revolutionized the world if you've ever listened to a radio that I can guarantee you've heard 808 but no area of music was hit by the 808 quite as hard as hip-hop being able to program your own drum beats without actually having to have a drummer was invaluable to the world of hip-hop the 808 is to hip-hop what the violin was to Paganini and the piano to list it's just peanut butter and jelly and that brass is supposed to evoke a sense of royalty probably because T'Challa is a king so you might not hear all these components at the same time necessarily like you might just hear the talking drum or you might just hear that royal brass but these are all aspects of what make up two challahs musical character and what's cool is that goranson constructed kill mongers theme in the exact same modular way there's this piano slash string Line that goranson says was inspired by Bach's st. Matthew Passion [Music] I'd listened a lot to Bach lately some of that inspiration of that layer came from Bach especially the Matthew Passion goranson said that this was supposed to reflect kill mongers intellect also kill mugger gets his own set of aid awaits [Music] and then there's a part with a fool flute also known as a tam Minh serene do or Fulani it's a flute used by the Fulani in West Africa and finally there's Killa mongers primary light motif okay so clearly a lot of thought went into how these characters themes were constructed but what's more cool is that you can see a clear relationship between these characters just any instrumentation used in their themes both have some sort of traditional African sound T'Challa has the talking drums literally sang his name and kill longer has that Fulani flute they both use 808s in their theme which might come from Gorn sends extensive hip-hop background or maybe there's some kind of like meta statement being made here like part of this film takes place in Oakland where the Black Panther movement originated and even when the film goes to Korea you still hear that hip-hop influence maybe the 808 SAR intentional maybe it's just going since musical fingerprint I don't really know but the one part of T'Challa and kill monger seems that I don't quite get is that they both have a distinctly European component too Charla has this royal brass after I created this beat me and why I wanted to see how it would sound like if we added some horns on this to make it more royal and if you saw my video on superhero themes then you'll know that that kind of brass sound really goes back to European monarchy having said that there's a chance that that brass makes T'Challa sound more like a superhero [Music] but to confuse the situation even more in the film you hear this [Music] and I'll just let göransson explain this one in this opening scene you can hear him sing about an elephant that had just died elephant being the synonym for the king so in the family kind of have these two musical representations of a king this royal brass from T'Challa but also this vocal line with that elephant symbolism of an African King and when it comes to kill monger well he has that BOC inspired line and to be honest there's nothing more European sounding than Bach but these are the only ways goranson links T'Challa and kill McGirt there's an actual theme that he mentions in that interview with song exploder that comes to represent two challahs father and to the notion of like royalty or becoming king like we literally hear it whenever T'Challa is talking about or to his father [Music] so goranson uses these themes as a means of reflecting what's going on in the story like when were first introduced to kill monger we get that buck inspired line and some 808 because it's better to leave the crime scene more spread-out makes us look like amateurs then we get the rest of his theme with that Fulani flute and his main motif but that's exactly how goranson scores the scene where kill monger reveals himself to the court you get that little box inspired line to billion people all over the world it looks like us but their lives are a lot harder then summate awaits your attic Stephens an American black operative a message than the rest of his theme Oh Indian : to Dhaka Indiana cotton dopey huh so even though you don't consciously realize that because these two scenes are scored in the exact same way it musically reflects how taking the throne room was just as meticulously planned as stealing an artifact from a museum but where goranson really starts to flex is when he starts switching what instruments are playing with light motifs as a means of demonstrating the shifting circumstances of the story check out what happens in this scene where two chala beats in baku at first we hear two challahs brassy figure when he starts winning immediately followed by that fatherly motif because he's fighting for the throne and two challahs brass continues with the crowd joining in [Music] you can even hear that father theme in brass again when T'Challa is crowned king of Wakanda King dijanna big Pantha it's his father's theme the Kings theme being played in two challahs royal brass as opposed to hearing this theme in strings which you hear in other situations now compare that to what you hear when kill mongers shows claw that he's actually from Wakanda you hear that father motif but in the Fulani flute demonstrating kill mongers different perspective on his family line and if you really want to see how this musical system unfolds then check out the scene where kill monger challenges to chili to fight for the throne you can hear some of his flute when he's getting undressed just get you killed in America you get some of T'Challa steam when he starts doing well but then kill mongers flute starts getting mixed in with the combat as soon as kill monger starts making a stand by the instrumentation is literally moving with the flow of what's happening on screen when Zuri dies we get this altered dramatic version of T'Challa steam because Zuri is an extension of what to chala is fighting to defend James as T'Challa loses we get more of that dramatic rendition of his motif who's about to lead you into the future if anything they can be thing it all ends with kill monger being crowned king with kill mongers bah Klein and his motif in low brass as a means of demonstrating his menacing royalty but you can see something similar for T'Challa when he comes back from the dead and faces off against kill monger the scene opens with kill mongers theme but as soon as T'Challa shows up we get his father's theme in voices which then quickly transitions into T'Challa theme where the voices double the brass [Music] as far as I could tell this was the only time where there were voices with two challahs theme and when you bring up the fact that göransson included a song about an elephant representing an African King you kind of get the feeling that this is where göransson really believes that T'Challa has earned the mantle of king of Wakanda it's also the coolest part of the movie aside from the scene where a coy way throws a spear through a car speaking of which the Dora actually get their own light motif it's this vocal line which Kugler himself brought up in a scene breakdown he did for Vanity Fair and this is where you hear the door cue there's a group of women in Senegal doing a u2 and speaking of little details in the opening when we hear the kid talking to his dad we hear a Cora which is a plucked string instrument kind of like a guitar with a really big bridge a meteorite made of vibranium the strongest substance in the universe at first I thought this was kill monger and his father but the only other time I was able to hear Cora was when T'Challa was thinking of his father right before he goes to the ancestral plane [Music] that might just be mean that's just the only place I heard it speaking of listening way too hard to small details I'd like you to all put on your aluminum foil hats because this is where sideways wants to convince you that his hallucinations are real when T'Challa wins the fight against in Baku we hear a slightly altered version of that father motif this is the regular father motif and this is the one that plays at the end of the challenge it has a slightly different ending [Music] big Panther to me kind of sounds like a happy ending or a victory fanfare but that might just be me but I was only able to hear this slightly different version of the father motif in two other places first during kill mongers visit to the ancestral plane but I fear you still may not be welcome why and then again when kill monger dies and it almost feels like the different cadence on this motif is supposed to convey a sense of finality like T'Challa is the king this is where he's supposed to be here's our closure this scene serves as closure for kill mongers father finally being able to be honest with his son so there's his closure and then finally when kill monger dies and like technically wins because he manages to change two challahs mind and reveal Wakanda to the world that's kind of like mission accomplished that's kill mongers closure and I know I'm already pushing it with YouTube with all the clips that I'm using but this film almost constantly has light motifs playing it's fantastic I don't think there's a single moment where there's music playing in this film that doesn't convey some aspect of how the story is unfolding or what kind of message the director and composer we're trying to send I really can't get enough of it and I strongly encourage you to check out gore instance breakdown for yourself instead of just listening to a neckbeard geek out about a film score I'll leave the links in the description below thanks for watching I'd like to thank my patrons for making these videos possible with a very special thank you to Anna Burch if and Matt Megan Hearn shirt Ethan Rooney Hayden Elza and Donovan Hodges if you liked what you saw here be sure to check out my other videos follow me on Twitter and twitch to have your musical questions answered live and if you really like what I'm doing consider supporting the channel on patreon but that's all I got for now thanks for watching

Channel: Sideways

Views: 378,677

Keywords: Black Panther, Black, Panther, African Music, How the Music in Black Panther Tells a Story, Wakanda, Fula, Fulani, Flute, Brass, Royal, Talking Drum, Marvel, Superhero, Theme, Motif, Leitmotif, Music Theory, Killmonger, T'Challa

Id: gVVS7gsm9N0

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Wed May 30 2018