How the ‘Ms. Marvel’ theme changed composer Laura Karpman’s life
Every superhero needs a super catchy theme, and Laura Karpman was excited to give Kamala Khan — a.k.a. Ms. Marvel — her own musical identity. Even if the first try didn’t take.
Karpman wrote a theme for the Disney+ series early last year, but executive producer Sana Amanat felt “Ms. Marvel” was lacking a sense of lift, which Amanat explained by gesturing upward with her hand.
“A lot of the DNA of the actual power of the superhero is often embedded in the theme itself,” Karpman says. “I think that her making that gesture — and she is Ms. Marvel, I mean, the character is based on her life — so actually having the superhero sitting with me in my studio and saying, ‘I think it should be this,’ that was really helpful.”
The resulting theme, which lifts off with a series of rising phrases belted by French horns and accompanied by beats both electronic and Pakistani, fit the character like a cape and was consequently nominated for an Emmy.
It was vital for Karpman to gather several South Asian musicians who could add authentic cultural texture to the classic heroic blockbuster sound, so she enlisted a frequent collaborator and Hindustani singer, Ganavya Doraiswamy, as well as violinist Raaginder. The score became a blend of East and West, ancient and modern — befitting the story of a teen girl who lives with her Pakistani American family in modern New Jersey.
Despite her character’s giant size and green skin, the actor relates to her. “Anytime I felt like an outsider ... I was like, that’s She-Hulk.”
“Honestly,” Karpman says, “the biggest challenge was making sure that all three of those aspects of her personality really worked together so that you could have a sound that had hip-hop elements in it, that had South Asian elements, and that also could break out into straight-out, traditional Marvel superhero.”
She recorded the music for all six episodes with a 70-piece orchestra in Vienna, as well as with a group of soloists in Pakistan and India. For the fifth episode, “Time and Again,” Karpman also worked with an eight-person choir in Los Angeles from Pakistani and Indian traditions in what she calls a “life-changing recording session.”
She had only five days to compose the score for this 40-minute chapter, which condensed the epic love story of Kamala’s great-grandmother, Aisha, set against South Asia’s fraught Partition of 1947 that led to horrific violence and millions of refugees.
“So you had to have a new love theme,” the composer says, “you had to have all of the incredible drama of the Partition, you had to have the seminal moment of not only Kamala’s life but her entire family — and, in fact, her entire people. Plus she had to save the day! So it was a lot.”
Karpman rose to the challenge, writing a dreamy, romantic Indian-style raga for a young Aisha and her revolutionary husband in an all-too-brief idyll that produces a child and is just as quickly interrupted by conflict. Pounding war drums and chanting choir give way to a tense, emotional set piece when Aisha dies and her infant daughter becomes lost in a crowded train platform, which Karpman accompanies with a mounting collage of voices, native instruments and urgent trumpet figures. Kamala uses her enchanted bangle to save her own grandmother, and the choir takes up the Ms. Marvel theme in a round — singing “Taqdeer,” which means “fate” in Urdu.
Too often, the scores for Marvel films and shows have been disappointingly generic, but Karpman found a way to serve the Disney-owned heroics while still giving the show a distinctive and decidedly human identity, rooted in a specific, rich cultural tradition. Her Emmy-nominated score for this episode is the apex of her achievement.
Everything you need to know about ‘Ms. Marvel’s’ Muslim and Pakistani American heroine, with help from star Iman Vellani and head writer Bisha K. Ali.
“It’s really an incredible honor to be able to help tell these stories that have not been told and are so urgently needed to be told,” she says, “that it feels like a calling rather than a gig. The whole show did.”
And she gets to continue the narrative in an even bigger way with her score for Marvel’s next feature, “The Marvels,” in which Kamala Khan is a major character. The music has already been recorded for the film, which is scheduled for November release — and all Karpman can say about it is that “there are obviously going to be connections and references to what went on in the series.”
The music will undoubtedly be something to talk about.
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