Ludwig Göransson Had to Start Over for “Wakanda Forever”

When Ludwig Göransson got the first script for Wakanda Forever, he thought he had a pretty clear path forward. The Swedish composer, who won the Oscar for best original score for 2018’s Black Panther, had created a whole world of sounds and themes for the original, inspired by the instruments from West Africa. “I was thinking, Okay, I’ll develop these and we’ll be great,” he says.

But then, when the film’s lead actor, Chadwick Boseman, died in 2020 and director Ryan Coogler had to rewrite the sequel, Göransson realized he’d have to start from scratch as well. “I had really no idea where to start or where to go about because my main thought was, How are we going to be able to use these instruments and these themes at all if he’s not there? Because as soon as you hear the talking drum in the first movie, you immediately start thinking about that character,” he tells Vanity Fair. 

Göransson decided he would tackle the aspect of the new script that he knew the least about: The new world of Talokan, an ancient underwater civilization inspired by Mayan culture. He made a trip down to Mexico City to meet with music archaeologists who had reimagined what Mayan music would have sounded like. “Even though the music is gone, they found some of the instruments in the graves, some flutes. And you can see in the holes in the flutes, which intervals, which holes were used the most,” he says.

Göransson spent a lot of time learning about instruments that were completely new to him, including one he says is called the flute of truth. “It’s almost like a dog whistle, but for the human ear it’s like a thousand times more uncomfortable,” he says. “I couldn’t even be in the room with the person playing it because it was so ear piercing.”

After working with the music archeologists during the day, Göransson would spend his evenings gathering that material and making beats and songs out of it, along with working with indigenous and contemporary singers and rappers. Coogler and Göransson had decided to change their process in another notable way this time around: They aimed to create “a unique, immersive sound experience where the songs and score are all one format,” says Göransson. So the composer was not only creating the score for Wakanda Forever, but also the soundtrack, and weaving the two together. “Usually it’s two different departments handling that, but the way to make this happen was to do both the score and the songs as one thing,” he says.

The soundtrack, which features two new songs from Rihanna, also includes a cover of “No Woman, No Cry” by the Nigerian singer Tems. Göransson says that song came together as he and Coogler were on the plane to Lagos, Nigeria, to work on the score and soundtrack. Coogler showed him an early cut of the trailer, and said they couldn’t figure out what song to use for it. “He started to brainstorm all these songs from the ’90s, and a lot of them I never heard because I didn’t grow up in America,” says Göransson. Coogler eventually suggested “No Woman No Cry.” The first recording session they planned to have when they landed in Lagos would be with Tems, so they quickly recorded the cover with her. 

Coogler and Göransson spent 10 days in Nigeria, which he describes as a musical hotspot, with more than 350 tribes that have their own instruments and languages. Just like in Mexico City, he recorded both traditional and contemporary artists. “It was nice to be part of that there and to take part of that energy,” he says. “That’s also why this music could never have sounded like this if we would’ve had artists come to LA. We just wanted to make it sound as true as we can make it.” 

Göransson had to eventually turn back to his initial concern: Without T’Challa, where would the music go? He eventually decided he’d have to focus on the new Black Panther, his sister Shuri. The character, played by Letitia Wright, is struggling with her own grief throughout much of the film. For her theme, Göransson relied heavily on the human voice, particularly  Tems. We first hear Shuri’s theme in the scene in which she’s talking to her mother (Angela Bassett) by the riverbed. They’re talking about T’Challa, and when Shuri begins to express the anger she’s holding onto, the music transforms from Tems’s voice to Jorja Smith’s. “She’s holding onto all that darkness inside of her, and so it transforms to this other voice, very cold, and a different melody. It makes you feel what’s going on inside of her head,” says Göransson. For Shuri, he focussed on combining her passion for technology with the spirituality that surrounds the people of Wakanda. When Shuri finally decides to put on the Black Panther suit, “the melody transforms into this other shape of a very distorted, big, aggressive synthesizer.”