Photo Credit: Lauren Desberg

Recently, we at bgeekyblog got to sit down with Emmy award winning music composer Kris Bowers as he discusses his work on the Netflix original show Dear White People.  

1.) Can you tell us a little bit about yourself like your musical background and inspirations for your work?

I moved to New York when I was seventeen years old to go to Juilliard to study Jazz piano where I received my Masters. I did touring within and outside the Jazz space with artists Marcus Miller, Jose James, Kanye A, Ludicris, and Aretha Franklin. I’ve always wanted to get into film scoring ever since I was 11 or 12 years old. I told my parents that was a part of my goal for my career. About five years ago is when I kind of started getting more into it and started with a few documentaries and then shortly thereafter with some other projects.

2.) Creating impactful scores for television shows is a lot harder than it looks.  Can you tell us the process of how the music of an episode in Dear White People was created from its inception to its final product? Was there any time constraints or challenges?

There are definitely time constraints.  Every episode I have about five days to turn around the scores for it. One, we created a lot of themes before they even shot anything. Justin Simien (Dear White People Creator), had a specific idea of having specific colors and assigning definition to each of these colors. He wanted me to create a theme for each of those colors. Gold, for example, represented true self, or green represented greed and money and white represented concealment. Every single time we would see a lot of that color on screen we would pull from that theme. Then we would have spotting sessions to talk through the episode and see where the theme would set in. I utilized my tendencies and skills as a jazz accompanist and pianist. That lent itself in scenes that have dancers or singers. It made it easier to be freer in responding to what I am seeing as opposed to setting up metronomes.

Photo Credit: Impact24 PR

3.) You use a plethora of genres of music in this show, and have a clever use of mixing the genres for each episode.  The music helped fans connect with the characters on a deeper lever.  What was your inspiration for crafting some of the themes for the characters?  Was there any character or theme you particularly liked creating the audio narrative for? 

So a lot of the themes for the characters themselves are still here from last season. The first season we spent a lot more time creating specific themes for each character. We didn’t use them as much this season (Season 2). We did every now and then and I’d say, actually, that one of my favorites is the theme for Troy. It’s because of one of the versions I did was of a piano fugue and a Bach style piano fugue. It felt like it might not work because it’s so different and so busy as far as how many notes are happening and a lot of directors don’t really like music that is intricate because a lot of people feel it distracts from what they are watching and little too busy. When I first showed Justin he was like “yeah that’s great!” And that was one of the first times that I realized that he was going to give me the autonomy in writing for the show and kind of let me do whatever I wanted to do. That’s one of my favorites.

4.) Sometimes the strongest statement are those that aren’t said.  In television shows, musical composers have to be very strategic where they put music and what music is used.    How much creative freedom did you have in where you put music in, and, strategically, where it was left it out?  

A lot of that is kinda decided before I get involved because when they’re editing a lot of times they are using music as temp music they’re trying to edit to and this season they were editing a lot to music from last season or a lot of other pieces that Justin might like. Justin has a pretty good idea of where things should come in and should exit.

There are plenty of times where he’ll tell me that if I hear something different that I can make changes. There were times where I said “You know what I think this should come in 5 seconds later or should hang over for a little longer.” Or there are times where we write something and we look at each other and say “I don’t really think anything needs to be here actually. It’s going to be a little bit stronger if there is nothing here.” It’s really collaborative when we decide where things come in or not. Justin gives me a lot of space to do that and there are times where they don’t even have temp music and he is like “I want something here, but I don’t know where. Figure it out.”

Essentially, it changes case to case. There is even an episode this season where there is no music at all except for the very beginning.  There is one piece of music at the very beginning, but then for the rest of the show for thirty minutes there is no music at all.  Every now and then not having music makes things feel a little bit more real and present. Sometimes music can help us and carry with us and take us to an emotion.  Sometimes it’s nice to be with the characters and experience it in a very intimate way.

Photo Credit: Impact24 PR

5.) I love the synergy between the story told by the visuals and the story told through the music, and how they compliment each other.  The music added, at times, a very satirical quality to it and, at times, an emotional quality to the show.  Can you go into your process of how you created that synergy?

So a lot of it was inspired by what the characters were feeling as opposed to what they were doing. A lot of times there are times when the characters are a lot more conflicted or a lot more complicated in whatever it is that they are doing.  Like Sam, for example, obviously her character is this activist, but throughout the entire season, she has these moments of being a bit conflicted or a bit unsure.  This season she’s dealing a lot with her feelings for Gabe.  A lot of it was trying to capture how these people feel.  And I think the other thing, too, is that, once we decided that our palette would be references from the classical world or references for the traditional jazz phase, I think that also just gives it a different feeling as well.  I think it would be easy to write some sort of comedic score to comment on all these things, but it would probably lessen it.  I think writing music that has a bit more weight to it really pulls us into the complexity of what is happening to each of these characters.

6.) This show has some really touching, funny, and very important moments.  It is a show that starts a conversation.  How did this impact your musical composition when writing for this show?

Yeah.  It allows me to write as if I was writing for a drama.  It allows me to write something that these pieces, when you listen to them by themselves, they feel much more serious than the show itself, but I think it’s because the comedy is there.  We don’t need to emphasize the comedy anymore with the music.  I think having the heavier side of the music, it causes us to think even more, and it causes us to notice that these things are topics for discussion, and not just a funny little moment.

7.) What advise would you give for aspiring young musical composers who are just starting out?

Focus on being yourself and being as honest to yourself as possible.  I think that sounds very easy and trite, but I’m finding how difficult that is.  You know as you are tying to progress and trying to get better and better, you see all these people around you succeeding at their thing, and it can be tempting to trying to figure out if you can do something else.  Or maybe you should try to do this because that seems likes its cool or this person getting popular doing that, I should do that.

The more that I honed in what it is that I do and that I like, as scary as it feels because it feels like your limiting yourself doing things that are unfamiliar, but I think that people can just feel and hear the honesty in the music.  I think you should be as honest with what you create and pursuing passions as honestly and unapologetically as possible.

Kris Bowers with Actor Marque Richardson

8.) How does it feel being one of the youngest composers in your field of work? 

I feel very lucky to be honest.  I think that one of the reasons that I am the youngest is that I did not assist anybody or I didn’t come through the ranks. Usually with this industry a lot of people, its hard to get trust from studios and producers if you haven’t come through the ranks and they don’t know that you assisted all these other people, and you’ve worked on all these other projects, and now you’re ready to captain the ship by yourself.  I think that people giving me that trust and that responsibility is pretty special and I felt pretty honored to have that much trust from these big institutions.

9.) How does it feel winning an Emmy?

Pretty special.  It was surprising to be nominated alongside people who have been doing this for a long time and are incredible in what they do.  It was special because there aren’t many people who look like me in this industry, and to be able to get any recognition I get I feel is recognition of the fact that diversity and inclusion are incredibly important.  It shows to somebody else who looks like me who is younger that it is possible because I feel like I didn’t have many people myself to look up to you who looked like me that I could say that “I want a career that looks like that.” There was a handful of them, but I want to try to be another example is awesome.  Any recognition, I hope that it will help and that somebody who is younger will see it and be inspired by that.

We at bgeekyblog want to give a huge thank you to Kris Bowers for doing this interview with us!