We speak with the composer of the Lily Gladstone-narrated documentary, Bring Them Home, on the buffalo of the Blackfoot Confederacy, Roger Suen.
American expansionism through the decades not only decimated Indigenous populations, but those of wildlife as well, on whom the Indigenous people historically rely upon. The Blackfoot Confederacy in particular, along with the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Pawnee, Kiowa, Mandan, and Comanch, historically rely on the buffalo of the Great Plains for food, hides, and tools, all the while sustainably preserving their populations, and as such developed a sacred relationship with the animal that perseveres to this day. Knowing this deep connection and how decimating it would make their conquest easier, the US army decimated buffalo populations, allowing them to take over the Great Plains.
But Indigenous peoples would continue to speak up for their sovereignty, and return the buffalo to their land. Academy Award nominated actress Lily Gladstone, a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy, narrates the documentary Bring Them Home, which tells the story of the Blackfeet’s reintroduction of the bison to tribal land after 100 years of absence. Composer Roger Suen, who has worked on several big name soundtracks including for Daredevil and DC: League of Super-Pets, composed the soundtrack for Bring Them Home.
We spoke with him on his approach to composing the documentary, the subtle incorporation of Blackfoot sounds into his soundtrack, trends in Hollywood for music composers, and much more.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
NOC: Roger, thank you so much for speaking to The Nerds of Color today. How are you?
Roger Suen: I’m good, I’m super excited to be honest. I checked out your guys’ channel, All I watch are YouTube videos, so I’ll definitely be subscribing and checking out more of your guys’ videos.
Deeply appreciate it, thank you. So, how did you get your start into film composition, and what are some other projects people may recognize your work from?
So, the first project actually was with Daniel Glick, the director of Bring Them Home. We did a documentary called A Place to Stand about prison reform and that kind of stuff. And then from there, I got my start writing for a lot of more veteran composers on Marvel shows, you know, Daredevil, and whatever, and it’s just been a really cool ride, and being able to jump back and forth between big studio films, and indies, and things like that.
What is your educational background in music, and how did you get into composition in the first place?
I grew up playing in bands and orchestras. I mean, I played in a Guns N’ Roses cover band, and then the same night I played in orchestra, so from piano lessons when I was a little kid, that kind of thing, and then I went to UCLA for music slash engineering, and then graduated, went to CSUN for more music, and then studied composition
That’s amazing. So many of our readers, I would imagine, know how the soundtrack process works for narrative film, where often it takes place after the shooting, but how exactly does it work for documentary filmmaking?
I don’t know, because I actually don’t really approach them too differently, like maybe it’s because I’m lazy, or maybe it’s just that I’m trying to find what works. I guess the main difference is obvious, like there’s a lot of talking in documentaries, right, and so a lot of your music is under dialogue, but I honestly view that more as like a technical difference. I don’t write instruments that are going to interfere with this person’s voice range, that kind of stuff, but I still just view it as like I’m supporting what’s happening on the screen, and/or I’m supporting the subtext. I really just approach it the same way, and with Bring Them Home, it has such a cinematic view, and shots, and these beautiful aerials, and it just felt very natural to approach it that way, especially for this one.
Totally. Speaking of natural, just out of curiosity, have you made it out to the Great Plains yourself to see where there was a filming or where the Blackfoot Confederacy is, and such?
I haven’t, unfortunately. I have when I was younger, not for this project or anything, but I spend a lot of time outdoors, and so I draw from that experience, and so hopefully it carries over a little bit.
So what’s it like to compose for these large beautiful landscapes trying to evoke the nature that’s inherent within that, as well as this is an indigenous story. So, what’s like your sort of approach musically in your philosophy of it?
Yeah, I mean, I think for every project, and especially one that is so centered around, like, a certain community, my approach is always you want to be well aware of what their musical traditions are, and what represents them well, but at the same time do a version that is authentic to me, because at the end of the day, I’m not Blackfoot, and I will never be as authentic as an actual Blackfoot musician who’s done it their whole life. So, it’s more like nods to it. It’s more like I appreciate the tradition, and this is kind of my interpretation of it. And I think to try to do it the way they do it would just be an insult, and quite frankly, they’re always going to do it better, so and so, that’s how I approach it.
And for this one, it was really cool, like I love the research part. It was really cool being able to explore some of the more traditional music idioms, and then also see what, like, what they’re doing nowadays. What the kids are doing, and there’s, there’s where I found is there’s quite a bit of hip hop, yeah, and it’s just so cool. There’s hip hop, there’s jazz, there’s vocal, like choir singing, and so I try to incorporate that into, into our score. And then beyond that, I think there are certain similarities with all the scores that, that make it vast, that make it epic, that make it emotional, and those are just I think of just good old-fashioned musical ingredients, a good melody good, a good set of harmony that gives you the vibe that you’re looking for, and I think blending the two kind of like a wedding, like something old, something new, sort of a thing, and I think that’s kind of what makes each score its own thing.
Yeah, definitely on those specific vibes, on this specific story, it’s obviously an extremely heavy subject matter, on that narrative aspect. How did you approach that in your composition, and you’re making something beautiful, but at the same time you want to be as respectful to what the narrative is. So, in telling the Blackfoot people’s story and the buffalo, so how do you approach your composition from that angle?
Yeah, so this particular film, I see a rough cut, and so, as opposed to a film where I start with, like, a script before they even shoot, there are some projects that are like that. This one I really tried to just be an audience member, and I just tried to think about if I were watching this, what, what do I want to feel, what would be the most, the best emotional response for the story that we’re trying to convey, whatever that I don’t have personal experience in, obviously, like being Blackfeet, being in that community, I try to draw on my own experiences, so as a Chinese-American, I try to draw on being someone of color, someone that might be viewed as other, and try to, I guess you would call it empathy, right? It’s like you have a conversation with anyone off the street, that’s what you essentially do, you try to draw on your own experiences and try to see if we can connect, and so I try to take that approach in the music to inform any particular scene. This is what the vibe should be, right? Hopefully it’s close.
Yeah, it’s a beautiful soundtrack, and I really did get all of those vibes. What was one of your favorite pieces to compose for the documentary?
Can I say a couple?
Yes, please go for it!
Yeah, I love the emotional stuff, but I love action, like I’m just your typical dude, right? A good, like, action scene, and there’s just a lot of those in this documentary, which is just not a thing that you often get to do, so like, there’s a, there’s a track on the album called “Working with the Buffalo,” and it’s just these guys getting the buffaloes in and out of the pen, and it’s just super exciting. I know it’s just a Tuesday for them, but watching it, it just had my blood pumping, and I really wanted to just try to do my version of it, and the other one, obviously, is the Buffalo Drive, and these guys are on ATVs and horseback, and you just have like a bazillion buffalo charging and trying to corral them. You can, you can like kind of feel that dirt getting kicked up, and and it’s just a lot of fun. That’s that’s probably the most fun I had.
That’s awesome. You touched upon it earlier, your own composition, but you’ll have, like, some of these inclusions of certain instrumentation, like, how did you go about having, like, those accents, I suppose, of Blackfoot music and instrumentation?
Yeah, so early on, Daniel Glick, our director, we were talking about, how do we reference or incorporate musical traditions of Native Americans, and specifically Blackfoot faith, and we said we definitely want to add the elements that people would be familiar with percussion and some some amount of vocals, and so I was lucky enough to just have conversations with Blackfeet musicians and just talk to them and just kind of get a sense of all the different stuff, and so again, like the research part, and then, like I said, just doing my own version. So there’s some percussion, there’s a lot of vocal stuff, but I just didn’t want it to be too on the nose. I didn’t want to see bearing, but it’s that fine balance. You, you also don’t want it to fade in the background, where it’s just total wallpaper either. So, it’s definitely there, and I’m sure if you like, take a listen now, after a conversation, you’ll be able to hear it, and there’s there’s flutes that sound like vocals, and there’s vocals that sound like horns, and, and hopefully it just kind of subconsciously creates the right tone and nods to the musical tradition.
Yeah, I would definitely say it did. Okay, I have one last question for you. More like general in your place in the music industry, but the film industry, Hollywood, has been going through a lot of upheaval recently. You know, some good, although maybe we can agree most of it, like maybe not for the best. We’ll see how it pans out. But how is the music scene from your perspective in the American film industry changed from say what it was like a decade ago or so?
Yeah, I mean it’s like when I came on the scene the older guys were saying the budgets just weren’t what they were, and now I guess has kind of started to become one of the old guys. I would say the same thing, but the scary thing is like, at what point are we getting to zero at what a composer paying to do a job, that kind of thing. So the budgets are getting smaller, and you know, obviously, this threat of the AI, and on the music side, you know, we all know that there’s these incredibly powerful programs that can recreate music, and you know, snap a finger. Unfortunately, as, as a musician, I’m not really sure to what extent it’s being used by production, and so all I know is that work is slow, and you know, I’m trying not to be too conspiracy theory about it, but it’s really hard to say. I think we’re all in a bit of a holding pattern.
Well, I can definitely tell you, like most audiences I know, most virtual audiences I see are like we want human-made art, because that is actually art, and your art is incredible. The film is incredible. And thank you so much, Roger, for talking with The Nerds of Color today. This was so great.
Thanks, Swara. It’s really nice speaking with you.
Bring Them Home is now streaming on PBS.
