My kids are obsessed with a short film included with “Moana” called “Inner Workings.” An important part of the movie is a song called “California Loco.” It’s one of those songs you can’t get out of your head, no matter how hard you try.
Looking into its background, the composer, Ludwig Göransson, is someone you may not know by name, but you’ve certainly heard his music.
I’d first heard of Göransson through his collaboration with Childish Gambino/Donald Glover. Genius has a great breakdown of their recording process of “Redbone,” which started with Donald playing drums and Ludwig layering many, many instruments to build the sounds they wanted.
Not a Gambino fan? Well he also scored Black Panther and Ryan Coogler’s other films, “Fruitvale Station” and “Creed.” Similar to his work with Gambino, much of the music was built by layering contributions from others, in the case of “Black Panther,” Senegalese artist Baaba Maal.
He also scores “New Girl,” contributed to music to “Community,” and many other films and TV shows.
Lastly, I love this and I’m tossing it in for the heck of it (song starts around 1:16)…
Stephen Quirk 