How Ludwig Göransson Helped Orchestrate America's Conversation On Race In 2018
Only in America. Where else could a Swedish composer named after Beethoven help soundtrack a cinematic year of blaxplaining and black magic that held the whole world captive? This irony hit home last week, as I watched Ludwig Göransson ascend to the Grammy stage to accept one of a trio of awards earned for his musical contributions to Childish Gambino's audiovisual gut punch "This is America" and Ryan Coogler's superhero blockbuster Black Panther.
When we'd spoken by phone several weeks earlier, we'd talked a lot about music and his process. But I'd found myself struggling to engage him in a conversation about race, the same conversation this country's been awkwardly attempting and evading for the last half-century or so. I, too, danced around the topic a few times without ever point blank asking him how it felt, as a white guy from foreign soil, to have played such a pivotal role in shaping and reframing the conversation around racial injustice and black empowerment in 2018 through both of those major works.
He spoke of the pressure he felt to get it right, to help bring the art to life without compromising the message. Indeed, there's a long
