Kathryn Bostic: Music Is Conversation | The Art of Film Scoring (Part 1)

🎙️ Episode 15

Kathryn Bostic: Music Is Conversation | The Art of Film Scoring (Part 1)

What does music say beyond words?

Kathryn Bostic is an acclaimed composer, performer, and musical storyteller whose work includes Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir, Clemency, and many other award-winning projects. In Part 1 of Rita Coburn's conversation with Kathryn, we explore the creative process behind film scoring and the power of music to deepen storytelling. Kathryn shares the philosophy that guides her work: "Music is conversation."

Together, Rita and Kathryn discuss how composers translate emotion into sound, create musical themes that shape a narrative, and bring historical figures to life through music. Kathryn also reflects on her work scoring W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel with a Cause, revealing how she approached the challenge of capturing the intellectual, cultural, and emotional complexity of one of America's most influential thinkers.

From spirituals and classical traditions to jazz and the Harlem Renaissance, this conversation offers a fascinating look at how music helps tell the stories that history leaves behind.

🔍 What You'll Hear in This Episode

• Why Kathryn Bostic believes that "music is conversation"
• How composers create themes that become the emotional spine of a film
• Kathryn's approach to scoring documentaries and historical subjects
• The creative collaboration between composer and director
• Behind the music of W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel with a Cause
• How Du Bois's life journey influenced the film's musical language
• The role of spirituals, classical music, and jazz in shaping Black history
• How music can reveal character, place, and emotion
• The challenges of scoring real historical figures
• Why sound is essential to storytelling

🧠 Key Themes

• Film scoring
• Documentary filmmaking
• Music and storytelling
• Kathryn Bostic
• W.E.B. Du Bois
• Black history
• American Masters
• Creative collaboration
• Black cultural traditions
• The Harlem Renaissance
• Documentary music composition
• Historical storytelling

💬 A Defining Idea from This Episode

"Music is conversation."

For Kathryn Bostic, music is more than accompaniment. It is a living dialogue with the audience, the characters, and the story itself. Through melody, rhythm, and theme, music helps us hear what history feels like.

🎵 Join the Conversation

After listening to this episode and watching W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel with a Cause, we'd love to hear from you.

How did Kathryn Bostic's music shape your experience of the film? Were there moments when the score helped you better understand Du Bois, the emotions of a scene, or the history being told?

Share your thoughts in the comments on YouTube or on social media using #OurTHS.

Tell us:

• What scene's music stayed with you the longest?
• How does music help you connect with history?
• Do you agree that "music is conversation"?
• What role does music play in documentary storytelling?

Your insights help us continue the conversation about history, culture, and the power of storytelling.

📣 Resources / Links

Watch W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel with a Cause on American Masters
 https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/w-e-b-du-bois-documentary/34807/

Watch the W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel with a Cause trailer
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kMsik6rDQM

Learn more about Kathryn Bostic
 https://www.kathrynbostic.com

Watch Our Truth, Our History, Our Story on YouTube
 https://www.youtube.com/@ritacoburn9240

Listen to the podcast
 https://www.buzzsprout.com/2598323/episodes

Watch the podcast

 https://youtu.be/HqdadnIQKMM 

Transcript available here
 https://www.buzzsprout.com/2598323

Stay connected with Rita Coburn
 https://linktr.ee/ritacoburnmedia

Upcoming events and screenings
 https://www.ritacoburn.com/upcoming-events

Download event photos
 https://www.ritacoburn.com/event-photos

Social Media Toolkit
 https://www.ritacoburn.com/social-media-tool-kit

🎬 About the Series

Our Truth, Our History, Our Story (Our THS) explores the people, ideas, and cultural forces shaping Black history and storytelling today. Through conversations with artists, scholars, filmmakers, historians, and changemakers, the series uncovers the stories that inspire, challenge, and connect us.

Hosted by award-winning filmmaker Rita Coburn, Our THS creates space for meaningful conversations about history, culture, creativity, and the stories that define who we are. Each episode invites listeners to engage with the people preserving our collective memory and shaping our future.

👥 Production Credits

Host: Rita Coburn

Executive Producer: Andrew T. Carr

Producers: Christine Coburn Whack, H. Lee Whack

Produced by RCW Media Productions, Inc.

© 2026 RCW Media Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Transcript

0:00

For me, music is conversation. So these themes become central or if you will, the spine of the narrative that I'm doing sonically. Welcome to Our Truth, Our History, Our Story. Today we're honored to welcome composer and artist Catherine Bostik, a prolific Emmy nominated composer, songwriter, pianist, and vocalist, whose work spans film, television, theater, and symphonic music. Her scores include The Supremes at Earl's All You Can Eat, Clemency, Amy Tan, Unintended Memoir, and Tony Morrison's The Pieces That I Am. Catherine also composed for my film Marian Anderson, The Whole World in Her Hands, and among many projects that she has going right now, Catherine is scoring our current documentary, W.E.B. Du Bois Rebel with the Cause. She's a trailblazer in her field and the first African American woman score composer admitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Catherine's work embodies the power of story, history, and truth through her intricate command of sound. So this is Catherine Bostick. Thank you for being with me. Thank you for inviting me. With your work spanning film, television, Sasonic, all of this, uh, what is your approach to a project? Where does the story begin for you? You know, I that's a great question because for me, music is conversation. It's conversation that has a presence, like you're present for it, and then there's talking points symphonically or theatrically or in film. There's certain themes that you develop that correlate to a particular topic or intention of what you want to define, whether it's the character, whether it's the scene. So these themes become central in being sort of the tent poles, or if you will, the spine of the narrative that I'm doing sonically. I understand that. And one reason I wanted to work with you was to hear your music. And I met you at a party where you were singing on it with a band. And that was in the Soros backyard years or so. Film Independent, I believe. That's right. And so it was really a wonderful time. And I said, I need to talk to her. And and we connected. And then uh you did Marian Anderson. So when I got ready to do Du Bois, it was a no-brainer. Where is Catherine? Can Catherine do this? Will Catherine have the time? Will she say yes? And what I knew was important with Marian Anderson, your mother did uh classical piano. So you understood her as a classical vocalist. But with Du Bois, here's somebody born in 1868, and not even born in the Deep South, but born in Massachusetts, where he did not have the same racist tenets of this country. But he lived from 1868 to 1963. So he spanned musical terms, especially for us as African American people. So how did you approach Du Bois? Thankfully, in talking with you, I got a really good glimpse of different aspects of not just his storyline, but the kind of personality and the kind of cultural, uh the cultural inquiry he had, you know, uh, whether it was the spirituals, whether it was some of the folk music and the classical piano music. Um and that was very helpful for me to sort of develop as a launching a launching place to develop these themes. And, you know, he was such and continues to be such a force, a huge change that that it is still in effect now. So I wanted to create something that was also unique in honoring that. So now Du Bois goes from the spirituals at Fisk, and he said, now he went to Harvard, but he said, I never considered myself a Harvard man the way I considered myself a Fist man. And so he takes all of that, that New England, Aerodite, I got my education, and I became the valedictorian of the class, so uh, and the only black in there. So I did this. He takes that, he goes to Fist, and all the people there are highly educated black people. Some are the sons of white men, some are brought up in chauffeur limousines, and he hears the spirituals, and we know that the Jubilee singers come from Fist and they raise money with their voices all over the world in order to keep FIS funded as well. And now he gets the opportunity to go to Berlin. So Du Bois goes to Berlin to study because quiet as is kept. Harvard was not the big deal in the World Academy, it was Germany. He goes to Berlin and it's 18, maybe the late 1880s. And what kind of music is he hearing then? He's got spirituals, he's got Great Barrington, and now, what's happening there? Well, there were songs that were traditional to the German culture. Uh a lot of uh just patriotism, nationalistic songs about Germany, and um the piano, the solo piano, he really seemed to appreciate as well. So what I loved about what you're saying is this range, this range of music that he experienced. He was uh quite, he had his opinions about the music. So he comes back from uh Berlin and uh we move into uh the 1900s, the early, you know, the 1910s, and uh and things are happening. Uh I believe it was in 1906 or 08 when there were riots in Atlanta, and um it was a terrible, terrible time. And he's seeing this from the point of view of someone who lived in a space where he didn't know about the lynchings and all the rest of that up close. And he he has that experience. And now, as he's moving through time with us, he moves into the Harlem Renaissance. And the Harlem Renaissance, I I think we're so comfortable with jazz now that we don't really realize it was birthed then, and we own jazz as a people, as a country. That you can't give to somebody else. We have that. Um, so it's really interesting to me that he really didn't like jazz. And I don't know. Um, we put some jazz in the piece. Talk about how did you craft the jazz for the piece? You know, I tried to be respectful of what you just talked about. He he didn't seem to find it a genre that was appealing, but I wanted to have some flavors that reflected that time period. And that reflected Harlem, you know, the Harlem Renaissance and the swagger of the Harlem Renaissance. So I think when you're scoring a film, there's so many different ways in which you can look at the music. You can look at it from a standpoint of what's the region, what is the environment, what is that language like, and then in terms of the character, what is that particular music like? What is the biography, the sonic biography of that character? Then you can look at it, what is the scene itself, what is the emotional arc that we want to have in the scene. So you have a nice ability to create not so much even a pastige, but just a just a way of having the music be these different flavors, these different characters that are that are looking in, they're they're onlookers, they're they're seeing what they're they're responding, the music is responding to what's being said and what's being expressed in the background as well. But I felt like, you know, I I I I took your lead. I took your lead as a director to determine how much of all of these ingredients in our in our sonic menu, how much to to put here and there. I am Rita Coburn, the writer, producer, and director of W.E.B. Du Bois, Rebel with a Cause. Thank you for the wonderful reception of Rebel with a Cause. Your viewership, your social media posts and comments all point to a successful launch. We have together platformed and elevated the nation's knowledge of W.E.B. Du Bois, and I am grateful to our team and to you, our new partners, in staying inspired and learning our history. We will continue airing the documentary on the American Masters YouTube channel through June 16th.