SPOILER WARNING: This essay contains major spoilers for Sinners. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
I’m a musician. A Black musician. A Black woman musician. One who happily bounces between genres, sometimes within the same song or within the same phrase. So, when I watched Ryan Coogler’s Sinners this week, it didn’t just hit me. It burrowed deep, setting up camp in my brain and heart. (If you haven’t seen the film yet, for the love of all that’s cinematic, GO WATCH IT NOW!)
It’s a film I haven’t stopped thinking about since that first watch, a masterful blend of horror, historical fiction, Southern Gothic, and music that, frankly, left me a little undone. Its hooks are in deep, and I feel compelled to share why I believe this isn’t just an important contribution to American cinema, but a vital chapter in the ongoing story of Black Americans, especially its creatives.
Sinners is, as Coogler himself describes it, his “opportunity to make some cinematic gumbo,” raging against the very concept of genre. It’s a historical drama set in 1930s Mississippi, a romance, a story about twins and duality, and yes, a vampire movie. But more than anything, Sinners is about music. It’s the pulsating heart of the film, beating through every frame. Composer Ludwig Göransson’s score, which has rightly topped charts and is garnering Oscar buzz, isn’t just background noise; it’s a character in itself, deeply rooted in the musical traditions of the Mississippi Delta. As James Gutierrez, an assistant teaching professor of music at Northeastern University, put it, Göransson “builds the sound off of archetypes that have been handed down for generations.”
For me, this film’s power lies in its fearless embrace and re-contextualization of Black American musical history, echoing themes I’ve explored in my own work. Coogler and Göransson don’t just use music; they demonstrate its profound, almost supernatural, power—a power that can bridge time, connect generations, and, yes, even attract things that go bump in the night.
The Juke Joint: A Genesis and a Rebirth, and Sound as Time Travel and Cultural Technology
One of the film’s most visceral highlights is that early juke joint scene. As Sammy “Preacher Boy” Moore (Miles Caton) begins to play, we witness the astonishing power of his music. What starts as a faithful Delta blues number gradually, wonderfully, defies space and time. The dance floor is suddenly shared by performers from past and future, blending traditional African drummers with hip-hop DJs. Blues, jazz, rock, hip-hop, R&B, soul, funk—a cornucopia of music pioneered by Black Americans and which has inspired the world—are seamlessly interwoven. It’s not just a show-off moment; it’s a profound visual statement on the interconnectedness and resilience of Black musical forms.
This scene resonated with me on a deeply personal level because it’s precisely the kind of genre-defying, historical reclamation I strive for in my own music. It’s impossible to overstate the way Sinners does more than just tell a story—it crafts a kind of sonic time machine. The collapse of eras and genres in that juke joint scene isn’t just cinematic flair; it’s a deep truth for anyone who’s ever made music out of scraps and echoes. I’ve lived that. Starting out on cassette decks, Commodore 64s, toy instruments—these weren’t just tools, they were portals. Music isn’t metaphorically about time travel; it’s actual time travel. A form of resistance, a way to reach back through history and reclaim what’s been taken. What Coogler’s vampires represent is exactly that: a violent theft of lineage and memory. But music reclaims it, reanimates it, and holds it in the present. As I see it, that juke joint sequence didn’t just collapse genre, it collapsed time—something every Black musician does when they touch an instrument or sampler. It’s not nostalgia; it’s recall. Spiritual. Technical. Revolutionary.
Take, for instance, “Don’t Sass Your Mama” from my solo band Sister Transistor’s Garagio album. Through the lens of a put-upon mother speaking to her son, the song pays homage to some of the earliest, often uncredited, pioneers and collaborators in popular music, particularly rock: women, and primarily Black women.
The song kicks off as a rockabilly number, complete with a Johnny Cash-style vocal opening and riff. But before long, it gives way to a breakdown that mirrors what Coogler and Göransson achieve in Sinners—a seamless, almost dizzying, journey through the DNA of Black music:
Alright, little fella Mama’s gonna show you Where you came from Here’s a little Rock’n’roll call Just a few Mothers of Invention You forgot to mention When you were Runnin’ off at the mouth LaVern Baker, Ruth Brown, Janis Martin, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mamie Smith, Cordell Jackson, Billie Holiday, The Harlem Playgirls, Bessie Smith, “Big Mama” Thornton, Cleo Gibson, Charline Arthur, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Patsy Cline, Big Maybelle, Wanda Jackson, Sarah Vaughn, Ida Cox, Rose Maddox, Memphis Minnie, Sippie Wallace, Ma Rainie, Trixie Smith
The lyrical call-out of these incredible women flows into an instrumental section that is the very embodiment of genre fusion—a mother’s heartbeat leading to African polyrhythms, then into jazz, blues, and early rock ‘n’ roll, all played through the lens of Black artists. It shows that the distinct patterns and creative ingenuity have always been present, the DNA of Black artists remaining, just as the artistry of African ancestors survived centuries of attempts to destroy and rewrite it. This music, born from resilience and survival, still echoes in all the world’s influential music, from house to R&B, funk to hip-hop. This isn’t just clever; it’s documentation, like an audio version of Zora Neale Hurston’s ethnographic interviews. Sinners and “Don’t Sass Your Mama” are doing the same thing from different sides of the camera.
My solo project Poperratic also embodies this genre fluidity and Black origin, adding new branches to the musical family tree. Similarly, with Thrillharmonik’s A Story Foreword, I took listeners on a literal journey through the African American experience from the 1500s to the present. Conceived as part cinematic hip-hop album, dance opera, and multimedia project, it was released in remembrance of the 400th anniversary of the uninterrupted history of African Americans starting with the first documented arrival at Point Comfort, Virginia, in 1619. A Story Foreword remembers the sacrifices but also celebrates the resilience, creativity, innovation, and global influence of a people in the face of centuries of injustice and inequity. The project’s companion digital book, born from over a decade of my own research, offers historical context for each track and resources to learn more—acting as its own vital archive.
Blues, Christianity, and the Language of Lament
Sinners brilliantly explores the complex relationship between Christianity and the blues in Southern Black communities. Christianity was often imposed upon enslaved people and sharecroppers, offering a form of solace and community, but also serving as a tool of control. The blues, however, emerged as a raw, authentic language of emotion, created by Black people, for Black people. It was, as Billy Eckstine sang with a knowing wink, “Blues, the Mother of Sin,” a down-to-earth reply to the gospel, recognizing pleasure and pain as inescapable tenets of the human experience.
My second viewing of Sinners really drove home Delta Slim’s nuanced perspective on this duality. We see the most authentic versions of Slim and Sammy when they are singing the blues—Sammy’s raw delivery of “I Lied to You” and Slim’s spontaneous blues after discussing a lynching. The film emphasizes the blues’ vital importance to Black people, particularly through characters like Smoke urging Sammy to play for his own people in the Delta rather than chasing fame in Chicago. Coogler wants us to make that same visceral connection with Remmick, the film’s vampiric antagonist.
The subtle connection between Sammy’s blues and Remmick’s Irish folk music is a stroke of genius. The long, horn-like scream note at the end of “I Lied to You” mirrors a similar sound in the background of “Rocky Road to Dublin,” forming a literal bridge between their modes of expression—two distinct ways to lament profound suffering. The film acknowledges that both Christianity (for the enslaved) and Irish folk traditions (for the Irish) were, to some extent, imposed, resulting in the blues for Black people and haunting folk for the Irish. “Rocky Road to Dublin” feels like Remmick’s own “I Lied to You.”
However, Coogler masterfully distinguishes between connection and parallel. While Irish history is indeed laden with suffering, the film doesn’t shy away from Remmick’s white privilege. He’s Irish as hell, but the Klan members still trust him, and he plays into their prejudices. This nuanced portrayal allows us to feel for Remmick’s oppression while simultaneously recognizing his complicity and privilege within the racial hierarchy of the Jim Crow South. As James H. Cone, the theologian, noted, the blues doesn’t necessarily reject God, but “ignores God by embracing the joys and sorrows of life.” The juke joint in Sinners becomes a space for exactly that—a lively, liberatory haven where joys and sorrows can spill out, however briefly, from the harsh realities of the outside world.
Blues and Horror: Shared Languages of the Marginalized
Sinners is a horror film, yes, but it’s a horror film deeply rooted in the Black experience. It reminds me of the film May, sitting in that rare pocket where horror becomes a profound lens for interiority, whether feminine or racial. The blues itself is already a horror genre—death-haunted, grief-soaked, cyclical. And as someone who’s scored literal horror films with musical languages that echo this same sentiment, I can tell you this: horror and blues share a language. Both say what polite society won’t. And they both linger.
As someone who’s scored both screams and lullabies, I’ve found a poignant irony in the reactions of some I’ve met through my horror soundtrack contributions. Many seem perfectly fine with songs exploring themes of outsiders, marginalization, or isolation, until—and this is the crucial part—they learn the subject is overtly about Blackness, a Black person experiencing it. I’ve encountered people who lionize figures like Jeffrey Dahmer (who murdered and consumed primarily Black gay men) and yet expect me to find themes of horror and darkness “cute” just because my music has accompanied scary films. They want a gothic aesthetic or the allure of darkness, but not the real lived experience behind it.
It’s not about belonging to a club of “dark” or “different” fans who like black clothes or spooky stories. It’s about navigating a society where you’re often expected to work harder for less, to accept marginalization quietly, to downplay your intelligence or natural beauty, to have your humanity questioned every day. Everything you do is politicized or dismissed as showing off when you’re just trying to survive with dignity and freedom. Horror music is not fantasy; it’s an emotional map of that reality.
Cultural Appropriation: The Vampires Among Us
In Sinners, the music remembers what history books (and certainly record companies) conveniently forget. The vampires exploit by extracting value and burying lineage. This isn’t just fiction; it’s the publishing deals that fleece artists, the masters shelved away, the session credits minimized or erased. My own cassette tapes, early self-releases, and imprint Go Little Records, even the limited vinyl releases with AJ Lambert—these are, in their very essence, anti-vampiric acts. They are personal archiving as cultural preservation.
Black artists have long been the custodians of memory, often forced to self-archive because the industry rarely does it for us. As James Gutierrez notes, “The first decades of ‘race records’ were rife with predatory deals that saw pioneering musicians like Mamie Smith, Lead Belly, and Charley Patton and others scarcely compensated compared with the industry standard.” He adds, “These deals, in essence, siphoned profits generated by vulnerable musicians of marginalized groups — their creative lifeblood — into the pockets (and presumably mouths) of an ancient and alluring force: insatiable, vampiric greed.” Coogler’s vampires weren’t just monsters—they were labels with better lawyers, the music industry’s exploiters, the gatekeepers who hoard royalties and silence creators.
The Indelible Mark of Creative Resilience
The post-credits scene, featuring an older Sammie (now played by the legendary Buddy Guy) still performing in Chicago, his face bearing Remmick’s scar, reinforces the idea of music as an urtext for Black American memoir. It must carry on, come hell or high water. The presence of Stack and Mary, now vampires but free from the racial restrictions of Jim Crow, adds a complex layer, perhaps suggesting that even in transformation, a form of liberation can be found.
While I’m a bit conflicted about the reunion’s narrative implications, in another sense, this flash-forward is crucial to Sammie’s story. His unwavering commitment to the blues, despite the horrors it brought, is a testament to the music’s role in maintaining a historic memory across time—an homage to the sins of the past, yes, but also a celebration of an enduring spirit.
There is a vital distinction between channeling culture and stealing it. Black musicians have long understood this because our work is often taken, repackaged, and monetized without acknowledgment. Sinners doesn’t just expose the vampire myth; it reveals the harsh realities beneath the surface—the theft of history, identity, and power. But it also shows how rhythm, memory, and sound resist and endure. That is the true power of music: to hold history in our hands and transform it into something living, something impossible to erase.
