“We’re recreating the devil’s music”: composer Ludwig Göransson on Sinners

If we could award cool points to composers, Ludwig Göransson would have scored plenty. Leaving aside his extensive work producing Childish Gambino – Donald Glover’s rap alter ego – and credits on tunes by Stormzy, Adele and Lykke Li, Göransson already has two Oscars. The Swedish musician bagged his first best original score statue for frequent collaborator Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther (2018) and the other for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023).

Göransson, currently working on a new score for Nolan’s next film, The Odyssey, is in London to discuss his work on Sinners. Coogler’s latest film is an energetic and stylish period drama-cum-horror piece set in 1932 and starring Michael B. Jordan as twin Chicago gangsters who return to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi to run a juke joint. Driven by stomping blues music and Göransson’s fiery score, the fierce, soulful and bloody feature is the most entertaining studio film of the year so far.

You’ve known Ryan since film school. How did he brief you when you first spoke about the film?

He was talking to me about the music from that era, the ‘20s and the ’30s, and how the only thing that we’ve got from that time is the recordings and how bad they are. They sound like dog shit. They’re slightly pitched up. There’s a hiss in the background. The audio’s fucked up. The funny thing is that when people today think about the music from that time, they think that it sounds like that, which is very far from reality. The artists were young; they were dangerous; it’s edgy. The music was considered the devil’s music. So, wouldn’t it be interesting to give the audience a glimpse of how it could have actually been?

How would you say your collaboration has developed over the years?

It has – from being students and living in a dorm to working on a movie like Sinners, together with our partners and having our kids with us. We each have two kids, four or five years old. We’ve been through a lot together, growing together. It’s so special to do that with your friends and to be working together. We definitely have a shorthand, so I know what he’s going to react to and what he’s going to expect. But fortunately – or unfortunately – he’s not trying to make easy movies.

It’s a really ambitious score. How did you begin to piece it together and work out what you wanted to do?

I would say it’s my most personal score, because I wrote everything on that guitar that you see in the film. I grew up with a dad who is a blues aficionado. He’s a blues guitar player, so he was my guitar teacher. And he bought his first blues album in 1965 – John Lee Hooker.

When I was about eight-years-old I heard Metallica for the first time and that’s when my musical interest really, really started growing. And for me, Metallica became my personal style. It became the music that I could identify myself with. And blues was my dad’s. To me it wasn’t clear, I wasn’t thinking about how heavy metal comes straight from blues as well [but] you can clearly see the lineage from heavy metal [back] to blues. I think that became the story of the score.

Were there any particular artists at the time that you looked to?

Son House was a big inspiration. He also had kind of a similar background to Sammie and was a preacher at times. And the way that he played guitar was incredible, so I listened to a lot of Son House.

Legendary bluesman Buddy Guy’s in the film as well.

How cool is it to have a legend like that in the film? And also, he’s performing and playing the guitar that Sammie had. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him or heard him play acoustic, either. Just the fact that you see him playing that guitar at the end, I think, is extremely moving. 

There’s an incredible sequence, right in the middle of the film. Sammie’s playing his guitar, and the scene goes into past African music and into the future to 90s hip-hop, the music changes as people change. How did you create that? 

It took a lot of time to make that happen. First, we needed to find the right song. And that’s when I called up Raphael Saadiq. Great producer, great songwriter. Always wanted to work with him. He was the right person to write the song, and Miles recorded it. Then, how are we going to put this scene together? Because when I read it on the script, I thought it was just so magical. I got goosebumps reading it, because I never even thought about anything like that. Just the idea of a musician connecting with the ancestors and the past and the present and the future. 

Serena [McKinney, also Göransson’s wife], my producing partner – we moved down to New Orleans for three months and lived there while they were shooting the film. This scene could only come about if we worked with every single department, casting, the choreographer, the camera department. We all got together and for several weeks mapped out how the camera’s going to move. We had rehearsals with extras running the music and the camera through oceans of people to just see how far we could get and where the guitars would pop out, where the DJ would pop out. I had my rig with me, so I could also time it up. So, it was almost like I was doing a live performance and DJing at the stage. It was so exciting. And then, when it became time to shoot, we were all really prepared for it.

Michael B. Jordan said “I haven’t been on any other sets where we filmed to the actual music that was going to be in the movie.” Is writing and creating the score this early in the filmmaking process something that you’ve done before? 

I’ve done it on a very, very small scale before but never [had it] been performed live in the film when the actual actor is singing it. We had an incredible cast – they’re all also musicians. Jayme Lawson is a great singer, Lola Kirke, Peter Dreimanis, everyone is not just an actor but also a singer. Jack O’Connell. And obviously, Miles Caton, who has one of the most unique special voices I’ve ever heard.

He learned to play slide guitar in three months. He took guitar lessons before starting to shoot this film. So, for Miles to play that song for Stack in the car, that’s done live. And so, Michael B. Jordan’s reaction is actually a genuine real reaction to that. And when you see that as an audience, it transcends on to you as well.

You won the best original score Oscar for Black Panther, you won another one for your work on Oppenheimer. You’ve just been working with Christopher Nolan again on The Odyssey. How does your process differ between the two filmmakers? 

They obviously work very differently, but I think what’s very similar, I would say, is that neither of these filmmakers use temp music in their films. Ninety-nine per cent of all filmmakers use temporary music while they’re cutting the film together, taking music from other movies and putting it together. And that’s something that I’ve never done with Ryan, and I don’t think Chris Nolan’s ever done that either. I think that is what makes both of their filmmaking styles and movies feel so unique and different, because the sound world, the music world, is custom-created for their films.

Sinners is in UK cinemas from 18 April. Buy tickets for BFI IMAX screenings.