Interview: Flemming Nordkrog on Crafting the Score for 'Everybody Loves Touda’

Directed by Nabil Ayouch, “Everybody Loves Touda” (2024) is a character-driven drama that follows a young singer named Touda (Nisrin Erradi), who dreams of becoming a Sheikha – a traditional Moroccan folk singer – and moving to Casablanca for greater recognition and a better life for her deaf-mute son.

Danish composer Flemming Nordkrog completed the music for this co-production between Morocco, France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway. In the conversation we had in May 2024, Nordkrog discussed his approach to scoring this culturally rich story and his experience working on a film that celebrates the tradition of Aita singing and the rebellious spirit of Morocco’s female folk performers.

We briefly switched our interviewer/interviewee roles, when the composer became curious to find out what I thought about the film.

FLEMMING NORDKROG

FN: How did you like the film?

SL: I loved the movie and the music – both the songs and the score you wrote. What really hit me was what these women go through. It’s quite an emotional film about Touda, who has a disabled son and faces difficult sacrifices. In the end, she decides to stay true to herself and not compromise her values.

FN: Yeah, it’s a true rebellion story. It’s very beautiful. And even if you’re not a woman, you connect with her. When I saw it the first time I was just totally blown away. She’s really really good. Wow!

SL: I especially loved the last scene with the elevator. There’s complete silence, no dialogue, no music, but you can read the expressions on her face as they change and understand what’s going on in her mind. Wow!

 FN: That was exactly my reaction the first time I saw the film, like, “Wow! What is going on? What an actress!” Because she has a power and a beauty and at the same time she can just be completely, the opposite, just down and intimate and fighting internal fights. Really, she has it all.

It’s always very emotional when we composers get to meet the actors because they don’t know us, but we know them very well after watching the films. But in this case, it was particularly moving because I met her after the screening of the film in Cannes and went to see her just to present myself. And she immediately got up and took me in her arms, and she was like, “Oh, so it’s you!” Actually, when Nabil [Ayouch, the director] told her that he had found a composer for the film, she had Googled me and wanted to listen to my music because she’s so much into the film. Normally, they don’t do that. But she’d been invested in that film for so long. And so, it’s really her film, you know? I was moved that she was so invested, that she really wanted to find out, “Who is he? How does he sound?” It was also the first time she saw the film. So, it was a very moving night.

SL: How did you come to work on this film?

It’s quite an unusual story because in this case, Nabil had already started talking to another composer who also did The Blue Caftan – Kristian Eidnes, who’s a good friend of mine, a Danish composer. He approached him, and Kristian first accepted and did a few short sketches, but realised that he couldn’t finish the project for certain reasons, so he said to Nabil, “I’m sorry, but I cannot finish it, but I will propose that you contact Flemming.”

And so, he checked me out first to hear my music, of course, and then we had a call. It was just two months before the mixing started. For this kind of artistic film, very often the collaboration starts very early, so it was a little bit late. Nabil said at the end of the meeting, “Could you come to Casablanca next week?” And I said, “Of course.” So, I went to Casablanca and I spent 24 hours there and it was really great. We had this very intense first meeting. I had seen the film – it was still in editing, but it was quite a finished film. I watched it before the meeting, and I watched it again going there and then we spent the whole time basically in the editing room together, just watching the film, talking about everything, all the emotions and everything that she goes through, and, of course, the role of the music. Kristian’s sketches were very minimalistic sounds and it was very simple and very intimate, and very nice. I liked it, and Nebil also liked it. He had, of course, things that he wanted to evolve and wanted changes, and he wanted other things, but there was something about it that gave us a good starting point, and I said, “Let’s incorporate that.” So, I used that as a sort of sonic inspiration for my writing.

EVERYBODY LOVES TOUDA (C) NABIL AYOUCH

I wrote very quickly the theme that is following her all through the film, mainly on piano, and I integrated the bass clarinet, which became like her breathing almost. But there were still these influences and inspirations from Kristian that went through. That’s why he’s also credited on the film as a collaborative composer. We didn’t collaborate further. He’s a very good friend and we’ve been talking for years that one day we should do something together. And well, this was not exactly what we had thought about doing together, but it was cool.

So, it was quite a late start because very often in most of my work, I start working even before the shooting, and then of course, sometimes you have projects that come along like that and you just jump in. It can be the famous, “Oh, we have one month. Can you make one hour of music?” [laughs] But, it happens rarely for me. Even on TV series, I tend to write before the shooting starts.

Do you find it easier to write to picture directly, or are you comfortable working just from the script?

I’m very comfortable from script. This is a good thing about my job as a film composer. It’s never the same, and I love that. I love that sometimes you just get a film and everything is there and you jump in immediately and you have to be very quick – that can be cool also. But I think if I have to make a preference, I would still prefer to have a lot of time on each project and start early. And then, of course, it means that you will leave the project for a moment – because I will not write for a whole year on a feature film, but I will write some things, I will have another project coming up, I will go back and forth between projects. But I like that. I think it gives another perspective when you come back to it and, most importantly, the first discussions with the director when it’s all in imaginary world when we start talking. We only have the script, and we have to see the film in our own head, and I think that that’s very enriching. And with some directors, I’m actually reading the script with them sitting down. We talk about what’s going on. We also talk about, of course, music, eventually. Sometimes, we could talk about, “Oh, this scene is very emotional, it’s very important and should have music.” And sometimes the director will say, “No, I don’t think so. I think silence will be better.”

But then he or she might change something in the way they directed or they will change something in the script, or we think this music could develop the story, it could go behind the character, it could tell something. Then we need time. So, the scene will be longer. And I think it’s a very good way of working, and some directors I worked with really insist on knowing the musical theme before they shoot. And I think that’s very rewarding. And then once the film is there, you can find out sometimes that you’re completely wrong about the scenes where you want to have music or you didn’,t but that’s okay. It was just to nurture the inspiration and to get started. I love working like that.

In the case of Touda, I came on much later. So, I didn’t read the script. I was just watching the film so here the inspiration for this film is the inner life of Touda and that’s what both Nabil and I wanted to bring out. We had the same sort of reading of what the music should do when we met up in Casablanca. We completely agreed about what the role of the music was.

EVERYBODY LOVES TOUDA (C) NABIL AYOUCH

How did Nabil explain his vision for the music to you?

He really wanted the score to make her inner life live. It’s very intimate and we could say she’s on this journey of trying to become a real Sheikha and to get out of the cabaret and all that where she’s badly treated. She’s on that journey, and at the same time, she’s also on an inner journey, and I think that’s basically it – he wanted that intimacy to be reflected in the score, and it sort of permits us to live that with her. That was kind of a feeling we both had, that was also his direction he gave me.

But what was nice when we had those 24 hours together is that we started out from this very minimalistic point of view. We talked about small sounds and breathing. We talked very much about her breathing, and immediately, I responded by saying, “Yes, I think we could use bass clarinet for this.” I love bass clarinet. I have a lot of scores with bass clarinet. But it’s because it has that possibility to go really intimate, and it has a breathing to it, and you can control it. The clarinets I think, are the woodwinds that can play the softest. I really love that, and I told him about that, and I played some examples for him, and he responded to that in a positive way.

At first, it was like, “Okay, it will not be a big theme, a big melody. It’s more like intimate, smaller stuff. But I still would like some kind of motif that you could recognise.” Not something that you’re singing necessarily, but you could recognise it. And then, as the day went on, we spent the evening, had dinner and kept talking. And at one point, he says, “But actually, you really do want a theme. You really want a melody.” So, when I came back, I was like, “Okay, I have to write a real melody for her.” Because we felt that it was a sort of journey that we went on during those 24 hours to sort of distinguish that.

Then I came back and started writing. It took me a week to sort of get it where it ended. And I’m just talking about the actual writing. It’s very simple, but I waved it around. I started because I knew this would be it. I had just not completely fixed it, but I knew it would be like this, this kind of tonality. So, I started working also on the arrangement, even if the melody was not ready yet, which is a bit rare for me because I usually fix my melodies first. I was kind of responding back and forth like this. After something like a week, I think I had it, and at the same time, I had worked on some places in the film more precisely, and I called in my bass clarinettist [Carol Robinson], with whom I worked on several scores, and we did some recordings. And what was really nice is she is very experimental also, and she’s a composer herself, and she is very much into contemporary music and so I can really work with her very freely.

“I felt that he respected my voice. He respected the way I expressed my inspiration from the film. But I also have a lot of respect for him. I have a lot of respect for how he wants to tell stuff and I think he’s a very clever director. […] he knows what he wants. But he’s also letting your voice shine through and it’s very inspiring. It also makes you give even more because you feel that you can do it.”

And so, I had written these parts for her. She’s playing two parts, and I wanted it to be breathy and have what we call subtones – when the reed will not really go into vibration, it’s very soft and there’s a lot of air coming. We were recording, and I was like, “How can I get even more air out of this?” And she said, “No, it’s not possible like this. But what we could do,” and it was a brilliant idea, “is that I can double my parts. I can play the exact same thing, just letting air through the instrument and still fingering it.” It still has that kind of pitch if you really listen to it, but it’s basically just air. So, I just had these two parallel tracks, and I could blend them as I wanted. In some places I would let in more breath, and in some places more tone, and in some places I would only use the breathing. Nabil wanted me to integrate the breathing of Touda, as he’d done a session with her where she was just breathing.

Breathing is very important when you’re a singer, and it’s very important for her in her journey. We see how she’s breathing and trying rhythmic stuff, and she’s singing very intimately. He said, “Let’s integrate that into the score.” But he was afraid that it would become too obvious also sometimes, too much. So again, I thought, “Okay, let’s use the bass clarinet for that.” So, I had my base clarinettist listen to Touda’s breathing and breathe in beat with her. She was breathing with her so I could sort of mask up some of that direct breathing from Touda, I could blend it with the bass clarinet, and it became more poetic energy, and deeper. Also, it became more from the inside. So that was a great experience.

For the main theme for Touda, did you write that on an instrument or on paper?

It’s written on piano. I use paper a lot, but I’m not that kind of composer who’s just sitting at a desk with my pen and paper and never goes to a piano. I cannot do that. I’m not trained to do that either. I can, to some extent, do that, but I need an instrument as well to check out stuff. I think Kristian had done some simple piano thing that I also developed from one of the scenes. The piano can be very intimate, and it can work in this case, and it’s a very universal instrument, and it completely takes us out of the Arab world. That was one of the things that we didn’t want. We didn’t want my music to in any way try to become Arab. We fled from all that – there are no drums. I only use a little bit of percussion in the beginning.

And the first real scene in the film is when we’re in the mountains, and it’s really like a small party they’re having. They’re singing loudly, and there’s a lot of percussion, and it’s very lively and beautiful. And so, we’re coming from this more like “under Earth”; buried sounds. And Nabil said he really wanted to have something that was slowly beating. I didn’t want to use a real percussion instrument for it because I was afraid that it would sound like some kind of Moroccan drum or something. He kept talking to me about it that it had to sound like Earth, but it still had to resonate. I ended up using a big rubber beater on my cello. I’m not a cellist, but I do have a cello and I use it sometimes for percussion to produce different kinds of sounds. But it kind of resonates, so I hit the tail piece very, very subtly, and it created that [imitates low pounding pulse] kind of sound. I played that by hand to try to at one point, reach the tempo of the Arab songs. And otherwise, there’s more like bells, but there’s no other attempt to play real percussion because there’s so much percussion in the film.

EVERYBODY LOVES TOUDA (C) NABIL AYOUCH

But what Nabil also asked me was to interact with the Arab music; he wanted the two [music styles] to meet, and that’s a good example of that, the opening of the film. But there’s also what we call the Mawwâl, which are the songs that you hear a few times when she’s travelling. There’s a scene in which she’s travelling by bus in the mountains, watching the landscape, and you have this female voice singing really really loudly. It’s extremely powerful. For me, it represents her inner strength. Her desire to break free. And we have that twice or three times in the film […]. But I worked on doing my intimate music around that. I had to do that in harmony with it, which was a bit difficult because it’s not the same tonalities. Their singing has more microtones, and I tried to correspond to that, but then it became too weird, and I had to find my way through it. But I think it added something very beautiful because it has a strength. For me, it symbolises her struggle and her fight and her power to do that. But still we wanted to connect with her and feel it from the inside, and I think that the fact that we are using score at the same time helps to create that connection, and I think that was what Nabil was after.

We have several places where we interact as well. There’s a moment where she’s sitting on her bed, she sings very intimately, trying things. And we come from score, and we keep the score, which sort of just deconstructs little by little, and at the end of the score in that scene, we hear a prayer voice blending in, and she starts reacting to that correspondingly. I think that’s a very beautiful way of having these different worlds connecting in one little intimate scene. So, I sort of deconstructed the score just little by little, and we end up just with the breathing of bass clarinets, and then it disappears, and it becomes the call for prayer.

The movie was already quite musical, so how did you guys decide where to add underscore and where to leave the music out entirely?

In this case, the editing was quite advanced already. Nabil already had kind of a good idea about where he wanted the score to tell the story. So, when we met up, we talked about these points. And, when I saw the film a second time before meeting him, I was also watching it with [this question] in mind: “Where could I interact?” There were a few places where I said we could have scored. So, we had a discussion about that when we were going through the film, and we pretty much agreed on most of the things in this film. There’s a scene where they come to the countryside to visit the grandparents of the child. It’s a very playful moment, and they play along. This is actually where we first place the main theme on the piano. I made two versions, and I said, “Okay. This one is my favourite.” [But Nabil said], “Well, I prefer the other one.” We have to disagree sometimes. [laughs] It was not a big thing. I mean, we didn’t disagree a lot, and I felt that he respected my voice. He respected the way I expressed my inspiration from the film. But I also have a lot of respect for him. I have a lot of respect for how he wants to tell stuff, and I think he’s a very clever director. He also uses the creative input that he gets from the creative people. This may sound like something obvious, but it’s not all directors; some directors want the ideas to come from them. And in this case, he’s definitely in control, no doubt about it; he knows what he wants. But he’s also letting your voice shine through, and it’s very inspiring. It also makes you give even more because you feel that you can do it.

There was a place, just before they arrive in the countryside. They take the small bus to go there. And I was thinking, “Okay, this is an important moment because this is the first step of her journey, to go from her little village to Casablanca – this is the first step, it’s very important, and music has to accompany that. And when I worked on that scene, mind you, this was in the first week, I was still writing my theme, and this was actually the place where the theme suddenly fell in place. Like, “Now I have it.” And it was for that particular moment on the bus. And I sent that off, and I was happy about it, and Nabil said, “No, I don’t want music in that scene.” So, we tried that music in the next place, when she plays together with her son, which is like a very joyful moment. That theme has that kind of thing going, it’s like music that goes on and on, it has almost like a spiral, it continues going up, but still, it has some melancholy to it. So, it works in that kind of scene also, where we are in a good mood. And then there were just changes to make it work better with the images and stuff. But this bus scene is left without music. So that’s an example of a place where I thought that music would be very important and finally…no. [laughs] I think actually that Nabil was right because if we’d played music there, the next scene would not be as strong.

What about the final long elevator scene? The night begins with her all dressed up, hopeful, perhaps thinking, “This is my big shot,” as she goes up to the venue. She’s very energetic and positive, and then things happen during the performance, and she decides to leave. We have silence that allows us to really observe her, and then suddenly the theme comes in. What was the thought process behind scoring that scene?

Well, it’s not scored at all. I think a lot of directors would have chosen to start early in that elevator scene because it’s very long as she goes down. But this actress is so amazing in that scene; she goes through all these emotions. You just think she goes through the whole film actually, in her facial expression – it’s so strong. And I think we really needed to leave that alone, to leave it just in silence, just wait for the moment. When would be a good moment? At first, she’s upset, and then she’s almost laughing. Maybe she thinks, “What was I thinking?”. And then she starts crying. […] But the true story about placing the music there is that it’s Nabil who placed it where he wanted it to start. And I then worked from there, but I completely agreed, I didn’t even try other stuff. I think it was the right spot for doing it.

EVERYBODY LOVES TOUDA (C) NABIL AYOUCH

He actually paid a lot of attention to the end credits. I think he wanted the score to stay with her and to continue her story because it’s a very open ending, we don’t really know what will go on now. So, I wrote the end music. It’s the theme, but I made the bass clarinet come in and play the theme in a more developed way and make it more emotional. Nabil was very happy about it. And he said, “But, you know, I think it could be bigger. Shouldn’t we put strings here? We have no strings in the film.” And we talked a little bit about it, and I said, “I think that maybe just a solo violin.” Because we have a violinist in the film who becomes a very important person for her. He’s the one who teaches her a bit about what she needs to go further as a singer, so he’s like a mentor. And, very often in Arab music, the singing and the accompanying instrument will play in unison. Which is also the case here. We have several times where she sings and he plays the same thing on the violin. So, I was thinking, “Let’s do that then.” So, I added a solo violinist who came and played really the same thing as the bass clarinettist, but a little bit off; they’re not following completely. And at one point, it becomes a bit different; they each have their own voice. I did a more composing job in that sense. But I like that idea that he comes back in and he sings along with her at the end credits. So that’s the idea behind the strings. But it was Nabil’s idea, and luckily for that, I think that it turned out really well.

Having seen the movie now, is there anything you’d have done differently?

No. I’m very happy with the result, I’m very happy with the music, I’m happy with the film, with how the music is used in the film. I don’t have any major regrets. I really love the film, and I loved working on it. It’s that kind of film that you really take to your heart immediately. And yeah, a very emotional process.

Do you have any exciting projects coming out?

Right now, I have just started a new TV series in France with my longtime collaborator Arnaud Malherbe. We’re doing our fifth collaboration now. We have done three TV series and one feature film. Ogre was the feature film that we did a few years ago, and we did the Moloch TV series last year, and now we’re doing this new one called Mémoire Vive, a French TV series he’s shooting right now. I have just written the main theme and a few variations of it, and soon they will start editing.

And I also have a documentary I’m finishing off now. It seems like that’s another TV series probably coming along now also. And a feature film next year, maybe at the end of the year. I’m not sure yet. But yeah, I like that every that there’s a lot of variation. I like that I’m not always doing the same, I’m not always approached for the same kind of music or the same orchestration, or the same kind of style. I’m not approached in the same kind of genre of film. I really love doing these really emotional and intimate films. I love arthouse small films, but I could not do that alone. I also really like that you can sometimes just go ahead and do something wild and some new kind of writing that you’ve not done before, and that’s a good thing about film music. You can explore, and you can blend stuff. Most directors are very open-minded and often more than us as composers, I think. So, you have to think out of the box sometimes and say, “What happens if I combine this instrument with this and with this?”. You can do some pretty wild and strange stuff sometimes. If it serves the purpose of the film and it serves the vision of the director, then everything is allowed. Most of the time.

So, I’m very happy about what my work situation looks like for the next projects; very varied and not at all the same. It’s not repetition. Although I will do a bass clarinet on the documentary that comes up. [laughs]