Grammy-Winning Composer Laura Karpman talks Undergound and Music as American History

At Paste we’ve always been concerned with—and excited by—the relationship between music and television. We’ve celebrated the use of soundtrack and score in shows like Mad Men, The Sopranos and many others. But I can safely say that nothing has quite prepared us for the musical trip that WGN’s Underground will be taking us on, as it premieres tonight.
To say that Grammy Award-winning composer Laura Karpman had a difficult task in composing for the series, alongside Raphael Saadiq, would be an understatement. But to say that she accomplished a great feat would be an even bigger one. In a series that promises to offer endless twists, turns, complications and nuances, the music must somehow speak to the motivations of its characters, the 19th century setting, and—perhaps most importantly—the contemporary relevance of a slave narrative. Karpman and Saadiq worked together as co-composers to provide the musical backdrop, one of the most important elements and—according to creators Misha Green and Joe Pokaski—characters on the series. Paste caught up with Karpman to talk about her collaborative history with Saadiq, the cinematic stylings of the series, and how she believes Underground will change the way we talk about race in America today. (We strongly believe that too).
Light spoilers follow.
Paste: I got to screen the first four episodes of the show, and one of the hardest things has been sitting around, and not being able to talk about it.
Karpman: Well, for me the show really begins in episode four, in a way. So wait till you see where it goes.
Paste: I can’t wait. Can you tell me a little about how you first got involved with the project, and what the beginning stages were like for you?
Karpman: It’s kind of an amazing story, because you never know what’s going to take you from one place to another place. I wrote this piece called Ask your Mama, which was the setting of an epic Langston Hughes poem and we got two Grammy Awards for it. Through a series of convoluted, wonderful things coming together, it lead to me scoring with Raphael Saadiq on Kasi Lemmons’ Black Nativity. And Raphael and I just really loved working together. I come from a very classical background, playing jazz and classical music. And Raphael comes from growing up in Oakland, playing in the church, and playing gospel and R&B music. So coming together was this great thing. I knew I wanted to continue to do stuff with him, so I basically pitched us to Sony. We met with the executive producers on the show, and then John Legend came aboard and that’s how the whole thing came together.
Paste: Once John got involved and you found yourself working with him, along with [creators] Misha Green and Joe Pokaski, what was the process like?
Karpman: The hardest part was finding the language for the show. There are lots of songs on the show, and there’s lots of score, but then there’s this middle ground of song-y/score pieces. That’s the thing we really hashed out with John, Misha and Joe—where we’d be using song, where we’d score, and where we’d be in this kind of intermediary world. Then it was a matter of just doing the work, and continuing to find that voice.
Paste: In the same way that the plot of the series is completely unpredictable, so is the music and the score. Because of the contemporary sound, I’m so curious to see how people will react. Was that something that you all talked about a lot?
Karpman: All of the time. But what you’ll notice if you go back and watch the episodes again is that there’s both—there’s actually a lot of classical scoring, which is really important. It’s not just about claiming space for everything, it’s a way of saying, “This is cinema.” One of the things about the show that’s so amazing, is that this is a story about black people and white people—and those in-between—and it’s also a thriller, and it’s a historical piece that resonates today. And musically we have to show all of that. So sometimes you feel that you’re very much in a period piece, and sometimes you feel like you’re relating to it with the contemporary music. But you’re also in a place where the two are really combined.