As the Swedish composer's third collaboration with director
Ryan Coogler
and actor
Michael B. Jordan
,
Ludwig Goeransson
's original score for Marvel's
Black Panther
was also his most adventurous and cross-cultural to date. Pushed by
Coogler
to utilize as much traditional African music as possible,
Goeransson
traveled to the International Library of African Music in Grahamstown, South Africa, where he collected hundreds of sounds that would find their way into the score (such as the tambin flute that was central to Killmonger's recurring theme).
also recruited Senagalese singer
Baaba Maal
, whose haunting vocals appear throughout the album, most prominently on the grand anthem "Wakanda" and the moving "A King's Sunset." Throughout, tribal chants, a crew of percussionists, and a 40-person Xhosa choir collided with American hip-hop trap beats and Western string orchestration, supporting the multicultural sound of the fictional kingdom of Wakanda, especially on standout moments like "Killmonger's Challenge" and "United Nations/End Titles." Motifs from the triumphant score also found their way onto the
Kendrick Lamar
-curated soundtrack, like on the
Jay Rock
single, "King's Dead," which shared vocal samples with the exhilarating "Casino Brawl." In the same week that the soundtrack topped the charts, the score also landed in the Top 100. ~ Neil Z. Yeung