Ego Plum Talks Legacy and Reinvention in “Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires” Score
The world was introduced to the character of Batman almost 90 years ago. In that time, he’s appeared in comic books, television series, movies, and so much more. The legacy of Batman transcends language, culture, space, and time. The character, created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, has lived a multitude of lives, but Batman hasn’t traveled back in time until now. Way back in time. Premiering on HBO on September 19, Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires sees Batman reimagined as a young Aztec boy who takes on the persona after his father is murdered at the hands of the newly arrived Spanish conquistadors.
courtesy of Animation Xpress
To provide a richly textured score for the film, director Juan Meza-León called upon Ego Plum. Nicknamed The Cartoon Composer, Plum has built a career scoring for storied shows like SpongeBob SquarePants and The Cuphead Show!, writing music for the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, and collaborating with a wide variety of high-profile musicians. This list of credits is all the more impressive knowing that Plum’s only formal musical training was one tap dance class he took in his early twenties.
“I was primarily a percussionist and a drummer, and I thought I could be really good at tap dancing because I have a natural sense of rhythm,” recounts Plum. “I was quickly humbled in that class when I realized it was requiring me to access all these groups of muscles that I wasn’t used to using. I was like a child. I could barely do anything. I think dancing is awesome, even though I don’t know how to dance.”
“Things that make you step outside your comfort zone are really cool. Music is a lot like that for me. When I go into a project, it’s pretty scary a lot of the time,” says Plum. “When I worked on Cuphead, I’d never written a note of jazz before. I was lucky enough to have these people who really believed in me and my vision. I approach everything I do without any sense of what the rules are for it. This is not to say that I’m happy I didn’t go to music school. I think I regret it a little bit in the sense that I wish I could have met the network of people you’re supposed to meet when you’re in college. Maybe it would have been a little easier for me to get the first job, or the second and third.”
“That didn’t happen, but I have a unique approach to music that’s a bit punk rock, where I sort of make my own rules as I go along.”
When Plum signed on to score Aztec Batman, he conceptually understood the weight of what he was agreeing to. Not only is Batman a beloved character who means so much to so many people, but Plum is the child of immigrant parents. As he describes it, he has Aztec blood running through his veins. This is a deeply personal project, and this legacy component of the project is something Plum is still trying to wrap his head around.
courtesy of HBO
“This is serious business, right?” muses Plum. “Not only is it important because it’s Batman, but culturally there’s another level of gravitas and weight that I have to deal with. It’s the first time Warner Brothers has partnered with a studio in Mexico to make a project like this. The film was originally done in the Spanish language, and then English was done second. It means a lot to Spanish-speaking people.”
The idea of legacy is baked into the narrative of Batman, no matter the iteration. Bruce Wayne becomes Batman as a means of avenging the deaths of his parents. The hows of these deaths change from one version to the next, but Bruce doesn’t become Batman without this loss that inspires his desire to keep the legacy of his parents alive. Plum had to create a balance of legacy and reinvention for Aztec Batman to honor where this story came from, but also where Batman can go in the future.
“Even though I’m reverent and I take the step seriously, it’s like what we were talking about earlier, about that lack of training, that sort of naivete,” says Plum. “It’s important when I approach something like this to just keep that punk rock attitude and accept mistakes, take risks, and try things that maybe are irreverent and a little different. I can’t be too reverent about these sorts of things. I still have to break them a little bit.”
“Ultimately, I have to trust myself. I can do no wrong if Aztec blood is running through my veins. I am from the people this movie’s about. I have a right to create in that world. It’s a tough question, what you’re asking. I haven’t really processed it that much. I’ve been so deep in it, doing it, that I’d never really stopped to think about what I’m doing. I was just sort of in it because we had intense deadlines, but it’s really neat to reflect on it now.”
Aztec Batman takes place at a time in history where two distinct cultures are interacting with each other for the first time. Plum took inspiration from both Aztec and Spanish instruments to craft a score that speaks to this clash of empires. When doing research, though, Plum discovered that there wasn’t much information about what Aztec music sounded like. What he did find was information about the different instruments, and it was from there that he began to shape the score.
“There were teponaztlis and huehuetl, two types of drums. There are also these beautiful clay flutes and seashells worn around the ankles that are used like a percussion instrument when you dance,” explains Plum. “When I was in Mexico City, I visited Teotihuacan, which is the Pyramid of the Sun, and I picked up this little thing, which is what they call an Aztec Death Whistle. It’s this horrific sort of banshee scream that I recorded in multiple layers and used throughout the film.”
courtesy of HBO
“I also made this xylophone out of antique turtle shells. Actual, real turtle shells. I got a dozen, checked the tonality of them, and found that there are three different places I could hit to get different tones. I set them up in a way where I could play them with mallets. That was pretty wild and that’s something I made.”
“These were all sorts of instruments that I knew were used in the early 1500s in Mesoamerica. At that point it was just like, let’s go. I brought in some great musicians. I played myself as well, started inventing stuff, a lot of rhythmic things. And then on top of the rhythms, I would build other layers of instruments to pay homage to the Batman that I really loved growing up, which was Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman and Danny Elfman’s score for that. I’ve always loved what Shirley Walker did as composer on Batman: The Animated Series. All that stuff was this grand gothic, orchestral, dark sound.”
“That always was the sound of Batman,” continues Plum. “The idea was to combine these sorts of primal, tribalistic, Aztec-heavy percussion things with grand, gothic orchestral elements. Beyond that, in the film, when Cortez arrives in the New World, he brings certain things that didn’t exist here yet. Like the armor they were wearing, the swords, iron, and gunpowder. It was sort of like, how do you bring in elements to music that feel completely unexpected and anachronistic to what’s happening musically?”
“At that point, I introduced electric guitars, sort of punk or metal drumming. Just like electricity essentially. That’s different from what’s going on on the screen, but musically it kind of makes sense to have these elements that don’t make sense within a primitive tribal score.”
“Drums and percussion are the one instrument I don’t have to think about when I play,” reflects Plum. “It just sort of happens. It’s very physical. It’s very instinctual. A lot of trusting myself and letting my body move. We were talking about dancing earlier. It’s a similar thing and that’s why I love drumming. I don’t intellectualize music. It’s not cerebral to me. It’s emotional and physical. Maybe that’s why I love punk rock music so much because when you go to shows, it’s people moshing or slam dancing into each other. It’s all very physical and primal in a lot of ways.”
When considering what he wants people to notice when they watch Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires, Plum reflects on the collaborative nature of this project and what it means for the little kid he once was.
“I grew up in East L.A. I identified with the people around me who had similar-color skin as me. Superheroes didn’t look like us Latino kids, you know?” says Plum. “It’s very cool to have this new version of Batman. It’s very inspiring. When I was younger, I didn’t think about things in those terms, but now that I’m a little older, it’s like, wow, this is a really cool and important thing. It’s a very positive thing for young people to experience.”
“I want kids and young people to enjoy this film more than anything and to enjoy the music. There’s something here that we’ve done that’s bigger than all of us.”
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