In the film, in theaters now, Michael B. Jordan plays Smoke and Stack, twin brothers who return to their hometown in the 1930s Mississippi Delta, seeking a fresh start. Miles Caton plays their young cousin Sammie, a sharecropper and the pastor’s son, who has a deep connection to music. He dreams of becoming a blues musician, so the twins recruit him to perform at their new juke joint. There, his preternatural musical ability sets off a chain of supernatural events.
To craft the music for “Sinners,” which became a character of its own within the film, Coogler called on his go-to collaborator, composer Ludwig Göransson. Göransson, who also serves as an executive producer, began sending Coogler songs early on in the development process.
At first, Ludwig Göransson thought he would be on the New Orleans set once a week, but he quickly realized how much music the film contained and how embedded it was in the story. “There were 29 individual music moments that we had to account for, and we didn’t want it to feel like a musical,” Serena Göransson — Ludwig’s wife, who also executive produced the soundtrack and earns her first credit as music supervisor — tells Variety. “We wanted it to feel as lived-in. Just as organic and natural, and a part of everyday life.”
In addition to making the music fit effortlessly into the film, some of the actors needed to be taught how to play their instruments and would need to spend time in the studio learning them. So, Ludwig and Serena Göransson ended up moving to New Orleans for the shoot so they could be on set every day.
The music was a mighty task, so Ludwig Göransson studied the history of the blues, even taking a trip to Memphis to do a research tour with his father, a blues guitar player. Ludwig Göransson says the score is his most personal to date, and a reflection of his own musical journey.
Most of the score is performed on a 1932 Dobro Cyclops resonator—the same guitar that Sammie carries throughout the film. Göransson also gathered the finest musicians — including Brittany Howard, Rod Wave, Raphael Saadiq, James Blake, Cedric Burnside, Rhiannon Giddens, Don Toliver and Lola Kirke — to help craft the music and ensure that the history of the blues was imprinted in the sound.
Here, Ludwig Göransson and Serena Göransson discuss how the music of “Sinners” came together.
The music is a character unto itself. There’s an homage to the blues history and culture. Also, the songs sound familiar, yet we’ve not heard them before. How did you strike that balance?
Ludwig Göransson: Finding the right people to write the songs was the first challenge. I realized pretty early on that the people who were going to write these songs needed to be incredible instrumentalists.
That incredible performance with Pearline (Jayme Lawson) at the juke [singing “Pale, Pale Moon”] was also a conversation that I had with Ryan early on. I read the script, and I saw this climax — how he was building up during this brilliant performance. So, I was like, “What if we have these seven pages [of plot development] during this brilliant performance?”
Serena Göransson: In the script, Pearline takes the stage, and all this other stuff happens. Ludwig had the idea to start the song and as the action escalates, the song builds and builds, and intensifies. You don’t know where it’s headed, and then Smoke (Jordan) walks in, and it’s the third act.
Ludwig Göransson: Jayme Lawson came into the studio every day, and rehearsed our song and pulled out this incredible performance.
Serena Göransson: Of all of the music created for this film, it feels like this has a life of its own. The right people have come in at the right time. We came in in March and had no music. We started shooting in April, and people didn’t realize how much music was on screen. There are 29 individual music moments that we had to account for, and we didn’t want it to feel like a musical. We wanted it to feel as lived-in, just organic and natural, and a part of everyday life. There was a lot of pressure to have it all in a month.
Raphael Saadiq and Ludwig got together to talk about the film, and two hours later, there was a song. He went to Brittany Howard and talked about the film, and there was that song. These musicians have had visceral reactions to the film and to, I don’t know what it is, maybe seeing themselves in the historical context of it. But it’s like these explosions of creativity that have come into it at the right moment.
Tell me more about working with the actors on the musical elements.
Ludwig Göransson: We went to great lengths to get the performances where they are in the film. Miles practiced guitar for three months. He’s not noodling, he’s doing slide guitar solos. I knew he was going to be able to pull it off. We auditioned so many kids, but from the moment we saw Miles and heard his voice. I knew immediately that this was a serious musician.
In the scene where Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) is playing harmonica, we had a blues legend, Bobby Rush [come in]. Serena called him the night before; he’s 94 years old and was touring in Seattle. She was like, “Come to the set, we’re shooting the scene tomorrow,” so he gets on a plane from Seattle to Chicago to New Orleans and gets there in time. Delroy shoots the scene, and he’s holding the harmonica. We have the extras standing in a circle, and Bobby Rush, the 94-year-old blues musician, is sitting on a chair. You can barely see his hair in the footage, but he’s playing the harmonica. Sammie is playing the guitar, and Delroy is watching Bobby play.
Serena Göransson: Delroy and Bobby shared some intimate stories. They have twin souls. Somehow, they were connected in an hour. In that scene, they’re looking at each other playing: Delroy is feeling out what Bobby is doing, Bobby’s looking at what Delroy is doing, and they created this thing together.
Ludwig Göransson: Everything is happening live…
Serena Göransson: Without rehearsal! I didn’t call Bobby out of the blue. I had been talking to him for months. We ran into him at the Grammy Awards and went up to him. Actually, it was Ludwig’s dad who spotted him. Then we were in London for the BAFTAs, and I saw that he was playing, so I went to see him and told him we were working on this project and that I’d be reaching out. There were a lot of musicians who we wanted to include in the film, so we were tracking their tour schedules. But with the timing of everything, it was impossible to book anything or to bring anyone in officially, because everything was changing constantly. We weren’t shooting the railroad station scene, [but] the night before, I got this call saying we were going.
New Orleans is a city full of extraordinary musicians, but we didn’t want to have jazz musicians who also play blues. We wanted blues musicians. We wanted people who were devoting their lives to this. A lot of the blues musicians are descendants of generations. Some of the musicians drove all night to do that scene, and some of them Ryan and Ludwig met on the first trip to Memphis. They’re real people who are living in the Delta and are blues musicians; as they’re walking through the train station, you see Alvin Youngblood Hart, Sharde Thomas Mallory and James “Super Chikan” Johnson. They felt seen, and it was important to them, the fact that Bobby showed up that day.
We also spent a lot of time examining what the blues is, and trying to understand what it means to different people. You might not find Brittany Howard in the blues section, but she’s someone, like the other musicians, involved in the project. They’re true to themselves as artists and they’re singing about all the traditional themes that artists have always sung about. It’s having more of a focus on the psychological framework that you’re experiencing these things through, and showing the way that this music has evolved and is still living today. It’s still relevant.
Miles Caton is a discovery, but what was it like working with Jack O’Connell, who plays Remmick?
Ludwig Göransson: One of the first conversations we had was about the songs he was going to play. I remember reading “Rocky Road to Dublin,” which was in the script, and we were toying between some different Irish songs to play. Then Jack had this idea for this song called “Will Ye Go Lassie Go,” which was one of his favorite songs.
Serena Göransson: It’s derived from an old traditional Scottish song. It’s very much about being together forever — one big happy family living together with no pain — and it was the perfect song for Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) to walk out to and hear them singing.
Ludwig Göransson: Jack was just a very charismatic person, and he had lots of thoughts about what he wanted his performance to be. It was important to him that he represented in the right way with his accent and dancing. “Rocky Road to Dublin” was a difficult song.
Serena Göransson: It’s so hard to sing. You have no time to take a breath. He came in and practiced and we recorded him and gave him the recording. He went back, listened to it, and we recorded it again. We just kept working on it.
Ludwig Göransson: We also put our twist on it to make this different and unique.
Serena Göransson: The style of singing is centuries old, and it’s usually sung in Gaelic. It has this slow introduction and these very intimate, personal vocalizations that you’re singing to yourself. I called this gorgeous singer, Iarla Ó Lionáird, and he was really interested; he sent us back this beautiful recording that Jack listened to and practiced.
Ludwig Göransson: The way Jack’s voice goes up and down in that intro. He practiced it, and he made it into his own, [plus] doing that while dancing and being outside.
Shooting that scene was one of the most magical moments of our lives. There was a month of night shoots, and we were trying to figure out when can we do “Rocky Road to Dublin,” because we needed 200 extras for that circle to go around. We were just waiting to shoot that scene, and we didn’t have much time.
Serena Göransson: It was thrilling and terrifying. Every time we shot a music scene, it was like, “We’re not gonna get this everything.”
Ludwig Göransson: We would work in the studio for days on something, and then we’re gonna go out to set, and it was like, “You’re going to have to get this done in an hour and 30 minutes.”
Serena Göransson: We didn’t have a lot of wiggle room for reshoots. The schedule was just very tight. With “Rocky Road,” you find out at the end of the movie that Remmick is doing what was done to him. He’s trying to connect with his past. We wanted “Rocky Road” to not just be this party scene, but for it to be emotional. We wanted to have a moment where it felt like he was reaching back for a memory. And Jack was fully committed every day.
What is the one thing that you want audiences to take away from the music of the film?
Ludwig Göransson: I want the kids to go home and want to play guitar. Seeing someone like Miles, this 19-year-old guy playing guitar, is something that they can identify with. I think a lot of kids are going to be inspired by this.
Serena Göransson: I want people to recognize that blues is the biggest cultural contribution to America, and to the world. It’s touched every genre of American popular music. I want people to care about the music, and not just listen to rap and hip-hop, but to care about the people who made it, and the people who lived through this moment in history, and who are still creating this music. I want people to care not just about the cultural contribution, but about the influence that they had.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
