This past week, Marvel Studios released its latest series, “Echo”, on Disney+ around the world. The new series spotlights Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) as she is pursued by Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) criminal empire. When the journey brings her home, she must confront her own family and legacy.

The music on the show was composed by Dave Porter, who has previously worked on “Breaking Bad”, “Better Call Saul”, “And Preacher” and recently, he concluded a decade-long stint as the composer for the James Spader crime-thriller series, “The Blacklist.”

Recently, I got to speak with Dave and discuss how he created the music for the new Marvel series, including how he incorporated an Indigenous chant from the Choctaw Nation and much more.

How did you get involved in creating music for TV and movies?

It’s always been a passion of mine since I was quite young. I started music education as a young boy, and my parents were both very musical, although not professionally.

And I think coming into my educational years of learning about music, I was always fascinated by the power of music particularly film and tv, but also dance and theater and just the combination of those arts together for me has always been a powerful union that sort of transcends one or the other.

And I’ve just always been fascinated by it, and I’ve been really fortunate to have been able to find a pathway to be able to make a career out of it.

How did you come up with the sound of Marvel’s “Echo”?

We spent a lot of time talking about our musical approach for this, and obviously, when you’re working, this is a very new experience for me. This is my first Marvel collaboration and a new working with how they work.  How they operate and with all of the amazing team that they have there.

But obviously, they have standards, and they have expectations, and the fans have expectations, and there’s a world in which a musical identity has been established, right, for what we expect to hear on a show like this.

So our conversations really talked about how do we take that and breathe some fresh life into it? What can we do that isn’t going to be so different and that it’s alienating, but is also going to have a uniqueness in its voice that will allow the series to stand on its own legs, a little bit creatively and musically.

And there are a number of ways that we did that. Part of that was, I think the show itself has considerable stakes. It has a depth of character to her, Maya Echo’s character, that I think is a little elevated, maybe from some other Marvel stories. And so we really wanted to lean into that and the real consequences of her choices and how those are going to impact her and those around her.

And then, of course, finally, there are two very large pieces of her which are integral to her story. One is her background as a Native American, and we certainly wanted to touch upon that and include that. And then of course, she’s also deaf.

And so there’s moments where we really wanted to make sure our audience had an opportunity to get in her shoes and view what she’s seeing from her vantage point. And so music and sound design were important, and in being able to portray that as well.

Did you go back and research the music from the previous series involving Kingpin, like “Daredevil”?

I actually didn’t, with the exception of course, going back and checking in on Echo’s introduction in the previous series (Hawkeye) for which she’s first appears, just to have some context there.

But I really didn’t want to get too bogged down in what may or may not have been done before and was encouraged by our team to really think about this as a standalone story that wouldn’t require a lot of knowledge necessarily from other MCU properties in order to understand it and to take a fresh spin on it.

You attended the “Echo” premiere earlier this week, what was that like?

Oh, it was exciting. Again, my first Marvel experience to do that and the scope of it and for me, the integration that they do so well with the fans. So to be able to walk there on the red carpet and be surrounded by all the folks dressed up and just clearly in love and excited, brought a whole new level of excitement to evenings that, let’s be honest, sometimes can be a little standard fare when you’ve done them a few times.

So that was really neat. It just brought a whole new level of excitement and sort of intrigue for me because it brought a fresh sense of what that event could be like to me. And I had a great time. Really did.

 

What was your biggest highlight working on “Echo”?

Wow. I think for me, and this sound a little funny because I wasn’t directly involved in it, but one of the things that we wanted to do when we were talking about including some historical music from Choctaw Nation was originally we had talked about including some recordings or using some recordings of some very traditional Choctaw chants. And so one of the things I did was work in a studio in Dallas with a team of great folks from the Choctaw Nation who knew way more about this stuff than I did, of course.

And we started by recording some of their very traditional chants dating back hundreds and hundreds of years. But the more we were doing that, the more I realized, and by talking with them, just how important and culturally sacred those are, and it got me into a position where I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we could create something that has the roots of all of that and the power of all of that, but tells the story of Echo herself and is unique not only to the show, but unique from anything that is culturally very, very important so that we can put it in this modern context and be able to have it invoke that power in the show, and particularly in all of the flashback scenes that you’ll see in the series without appropriating something culturally that we wouldn’t maybe want to do. 

And so with very little help for me, just some guidance was able to work in the studio with this team of Chanters and come up with something new, that tells her story a little bit and talks about the strength and the power of the roles of women in the Choctaw Nation and the importance of history and ancestry.

And this is something that became the backbone that we grew the whole school around in many places, and very excited for when the soundtrack comes out to share that with everybody, because even though I was mostly a spectator, it became such an integral part and I think a touchstone for us about how to move forward in a way that honored the Choctaw heritage that is so important to the story without it being static, making it modern and new and relevant and perfectly aligned with our show.

What was the biggest challenge composing the music for “Echo”? 

I think the biggest challenge was being able to marry those two worlds, the very traditional and the very modern, which I think everyone expects and wants out of a story that’s very current and is very modern day. There was just a lot of dichotomies that way that had to be navigated.

So an example is the flashback, very old times to very modern. You’ve got the dichotomy of New York versus Oklahoma and the different sensibilities of that. You’ve got Maya’s two families, right? You’ve got her family of kingpin, and then you’ve got her real family in Oklahoma and how those things blend together to create her. And so at different points of the show, we talked an awful lot about that balance in every moment, and it’s always shifting and it’s always evolving.

There’s thematic statements, for example, that appear in certain scenes, played on a traditional Choctaw flute that may evolve even halfway through a scene into being played by a modern western flute.

And the reasons for that are obvious, but knowing how and having the sense to feel when to make those shifts and how to properly align those things, I think, was the biggest challenge, and we spent a lot of time talking about and discussing and working on.

“Echo” is out now on Disney+ and Hulu. Plus, the soundtrack is also available to download on digital platforms, including Spotify, Apple, Amazon and YouTube.

Have you checked out “Echo” yet? Let us know on social media!

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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