Kathryn Bostic: Music Is Conversation | The Art of Film Scoring (Part 2)

🎙️ Episode 16

Kathryn Bostic: Music Is Conversation | The Art of Film Scoring (Part 2)

What does music reveal about a people, a movement, or a moment in history?

In Part 2 of Rita Coburn's conversation with acclaimed composer Kathryn Bostic, the discussion moves beyond film scoring into the deeper emotional and spiritual dimensions of music. Kathryn reflects on the power of spirituals, the role of the human voice as a vehicle for healing and release, and how music carries the memory, resilience, and aspirations of generations.

Drawing from her work scoring W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel with a Cause, Kathryn shares how composers balance inspiration and tension, emotion and restraint, while helping audiences connect with history through sound. The conversation explores Du Bois's relationship to music, the cultural significance of spirituals, the evolution of Black musical traditions, and the artistic choices that shape a documentary's emotional landscape.

Rita and Kathryn also discuss family legacy, the influence of Kathryn's mother and generations of women musicians in her family, and the responsibility artists have to preserve history through storytelling.

At its heart, this episode is a conversation about truth, memory, and the ways music helps us understand who we are.

🔍 What You'll Hear in This Episode

• The emotional and historical significance of Negro spirituals
• Why Kathryn describes spirituals as visceral expressions of hope, faith, and resilience
• Music as healing, release, and emotional cleansing
• Du Bois's relationship to spirituals, classical music, and jazz
• How composers balance tension, triumph, and historical context
• The challenge of scoring pivotal moments in history
• What "stems" are and how they are used in documentary filmmaking
• The collaboration between composer, music editor, and director
• Kathryn's musical upbringing and family legacy
• The influence of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother
• The responsibility of artists to preserve culture and history
• Why storytelling remains essential to understanding ourselves and our communities

🧠 Key Themes

• Kathryn Bostic
• Film scoring
• Documentary filmmaking
• Spirituals
• Black music traditions
• W.E.B. Du Bois
• Music and memory
• Historical storytelling
• Black history
• Cultural preservation
• Family legacy
• Creative process
• Music as healing
• Truth-telling through art

💬 A Defining Idea from This Episode

"Music is conversation."

Music does more than accompany a story—it responds, remembers, questions, comforts, and inspires. Through spirituals, scores, and song, music becomes a conversation across generations, carrying both our struggles and our hopes forward.

🎵 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?
• What family traditions or artistic legacies have been passed down to you?

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

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

SPEAKER_01 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.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Well, you know, one of the things that I find interesting about Du Bois is by being born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1868, where there were field cries and hollers in the South, that was not the music. The music was more classical in the North where he was. He got a very good education. And then he went to Fisk, had wanted to start at Harvard. He eventually ended up there. But he went to Fisk and he heard the spirituals and he immediately called them the sorrow songs. And they touched him. And you compose for that. Maybe this culture sometimes is getting away from the spirituals because we've had so much music since then. But give me your sense of what the spirituals may have meant to him and what they mean to you. They're very visceral.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Spirituals are very visceral in melody, in intention, telling stories about we as African Americans have had to sustain ourselves in times of great hardship and challenge, and at the same time elevate a sense of hope and faith. And even beyond that, elevate a place, a purpose, and what we deserve as a people. Even though those are words I just spoke, it's hard for me to put that feeling into words because the the invoking, the the invocation of what I feel when I hear spirituals and why they are so What do you feel when you hear? I I feel a deep a longing, a longing for a sense of being at peace, for a sense of justice and a comfort. And I also feel a cleansing in terms of, yes, these are these are atrocities that that we're living through, but our spirit and our soul are not going to be taken down by these things, because these are things of man, and we reside in a place of God or in a place of understanding a higher order. And that is such a big part, I think, of keeping our uh our community whole, especially during that time and throughout history and now.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

I think that's really important because what is happening is when you tell me about the spirituals and you sing. So uh a singer, uh, there seems to be a release. Like I see our people in fields, I see our people having had a husband lynched and having to work the next day. I see little kids looking at uh horse. I see women in the big house being raped, and then you can come and you can sing about it. What is the kind of cleansing that happens? You're a singer when you sing. Do you stay, do you go someplace else? What happens to you?

SPEAKER_01 3:24

You know, I again, for me it's um it's very emotional. And when I say a cleansing, I mean it's i you're you're talking about that voice, the human voice, my voice, uh, whether it's in this case we're talking about singing, so for me it is a cleansing because I'm able to release and give myself relief from that bottled up rage and tension and and sometimes it's not bottled up, it's just primal. And so singing enables me to to have a way to be a vehicle to to to convey that those feelings.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

I I have to clarify that I think um Du Bois was so serious that he had studied the music around him, and uh a lot of it was spirituals and classical. And at that time, spirituals were classically arranged in order for the masses to gravitate toward the Jubilee singers. That may have been sung from a very guttural and visceral place inside of uh of the fields, but when they took it to England and when they took it places, it was classically arranged so that people could listen that didn't have that background. What I think also was the the jazz problem that uh Du Bois had being a very intellectual person. He was like, right now, we need to have very serious music because I'm not so sure we have time for you to improvise. Wow. Uh that was kind of where he was coming from. And then, of course, there's the story that his daughter Yalan uh was in love with Jimmy Lungsford, and they were an item at Fist some years later, and he was the typical father, a musician. What are you doing? And Jimmy Lungsford uh became one of the most famous musicians. When we moved to, say, the 1930s, the Harlem Renaissance is well underway. And um at that point, jazz is there, and Du Bois writes a book that takes us all the way back to the terrible times of Reconstruction, the end of Reconstruction. And at that point in the film, for the broadcast version, uh, we have uh some music from um from John Legend in Common. Um, and we also have uh music that you have done that wraps around that. Um how did you feel about that? Pulling um uh one day when the glory comes and uh it'll be ours, and then pulling music around that and kind of like braiding it through the film.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

For me, again, it's conversation. Music is conversation, so it is responding to not just that lyric and that intention, but it's responding to your direction about wanting to reflect that tension. Even though there is this incredible moment of of inspiration and not just survival, but victory. I wanted to elevate that, but I also wanted to have textures that reflected the tension of the time. So I mean it it's a real balance when you're when you're scoring something because often the music music is always going to telegraph something. That's just a given. It's always going to create an emotional response, and it's a question of knowing how extensive that needs to be or how sparse that needs to be.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

You know this, but I think you nailed it. I think at every point we had to work. Here's somebody that lives 95 years and you have two hours to tell their story. So you start from this point of failure. So you gotta use everything you can. We use art, we use music. You did that.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Well, I did that per your direction, you know. And the thing that I also try to do is give you enough wiggle room where you can thin things out or enhance as needed. So I'll create the body of the work and then I'll give you what what we call it the the stems, the stems of certain sounds and textures, and you can then have your way of determining what works best.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

So I have to say then that Barry, Lerone, uh, and also Tessa, uh, who worked with us, Tessa as your music editor, did a wonderful job in uh massaging those. You gave them the stems. I when I first got in this business, I know what a stem was. Okay. You know, a lot of people are gonna say it's that science, technology, and you know what I'm saying. But you took these stems and we could we could write them if we needed to in different ways. The music embraces the documentary, but for Du Bois as a whole, what do you want audiences to take away when they hear the music?

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Honesty. I want them to respond from an honest place, not just because of the music in and of itself, but because of the depth and the the range of information and sensibility and truth speak that this important film about this important comic W.E.B. Du Bois, I mean, I want them to really walk away feeling, wow, I I I knew but I didn't know. And and we are all the better for this. And the music, if it can just be a small aspect of that type of awareness, then I'm happy.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Let me just say to you that um I've really always enjoyed working with you. Um, I've enjoyed for people who went to see the movie Clemency, and that was Alfrey Woodard in there, right? And and I remember the starkness of that film, and the music was moving you uh through the piece. So uh outside of Du Bois, uh just a little bit more about your feeling about music and and and maybe even a little bit about your mother, your growing up in a household where there was music there.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Well, I think I was really fortunate because, you know, she said my mother was a musician, her mother was a musician, her mother's mother, they all played piano, and they all my mother was the one who really focused on it as a career choice. She really that was her thing. She she loved playing piano. Uh, she studied piano, classical piano at Eastman, and she was also a wonderful composer and singer, even though she didn't portray that much, that side of herself as much as I wished that she had. But I will say that music, it was a wide range in our household. My brother would come home, he was the one who really introduced me to recordings of jazz musicians. He would bring home recordings of Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, Miles Davis, uh, Nina Simone, et cetera, et cetera. And I mean, I grew up listening to everything, and I was really grateful to have that type of instinctuality. Um, and and you know, when you're a kid, you're so open. You're like a sponge. So you're picking up all these different types of uh aspects of creativity. Sonic for me, because it's music, and um it's universal because I think it is it's so evocative. It it's something that just the tone of something can can make a person feel a certain way. So it's about choice. It's about choice of how you're presenting that music, and it's a choice of how you're hearing that music.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

It's kind of amazing to me that you had generations of women playing piano and even, I don't know, the the years of your mother, but for her to go to Eastman at whatever time she did was probably a very big accomplishment.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Yes. Yeah, it was a big accomplishment. And and I think that's one of the things that I also admired about her her choices because she she was so passionate about music in and of itself, she she didn't linger on how unique and rare it was for her as a as a as a black woman to be at Eastman at that time. She she really reveled in the fact that she had made this choice and she had fulfilled it. And she wanted to pursue it actively uh as a concert pianist and as a composer. And she would just spend hours playing, and then as she started writing more, she would do that. And uh, I'm grateful that I guess I received that in the gene pool from her and my grandmother and my great-grandmother.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

I love it. I love us knowing that that is your story of coming from three generations of women playing music to one who decided to take off, go to Eastman against odds, and then help to produce this wonderful composer that I'm looking at today is what tells me that my story, your story, our history, our truth is that important that people need to know that this is where we come from. We're four generations strong on that piano. You know what I'm saying? That's those ivory keys have nothing on us. So I just love that we're doing this, and I thank you for spending time with me. If there's anything else you want to say, please do.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Um I want to thank you for first of all inviting me to your podcast and inviting me to be the score composer on your wonderful work. You have such a sense of not just vision, but a sense of activism and the importance of telling our stories, telling our our our history, our history, our, you know, not to sound cliched, but telling and truth speaking. Yeah. Because often we just get little snapshots here and there, and and you've done such incredible work in the deeper diving that you do to tell the truth about these iconic. I I mean, that that word isn't even enough.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

He was fabulous. And and what happens when I do the documentary, I live with these people for three or four years. And I I wake up with them, they're on my mind, and my goal is to tell our people this is how black, how strong, how good, with all your good and all your bad, these people were human. And you find that in the documentary. They did not do everything right. That's not the point. But they gave a certain part of your life because anytime you become an icon, you have transcended the zeitgeist of the time. And for Du Bois, to me, that was you are in a racist, hanging Jim Crow country, but you are going to Berlin, you are going to France, you are going to Africa, you are bringing it back to the people here. And you're living that all these alternate realities. And you decided that you're going to dedicate your life to fight for us. So I'm going to fight to get people to know that this is where they come from. Because I sincerely believe if we realize, my Angela, when I worked with her, she used to say some people were still falling for the okie doe. And uh that's not one of her famous sayings. You don't imagine her sitting around the dinner table saying that. But what she meant was it is not the government, it is not the school that is supposed to teach us our history. We have to do it. And we can't say that they won't put it here or put it there if we won't listen to it. In other words, you can have a wide span. But if you are more curious about Diddy than you are about Du Bois, you need to think about that's a choice you're making. Uh, it's okay that you want to see that, but you want to see Du Bois because you want to see what it looks like when somebody dedicates their life for you. And then I have to say, as a storyteller, I am going to dedicate a part of my life to being that griot that sat by the door and said 57 reigns, this is what happened. Because I'm not going to rely on the government or the educational system to tell you. And we are going to know who we are. Oh, beautiful. And we are that strong. That's beautiful. And I'm not sure. And you are my sister. Thank you. Oh, my pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Are you kidding me? I wouldn't miss this for the world. Thank you. Catherine Boston.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Catherine Boston.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

You heard it here. Rita Coburn. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Thank you so much. 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.