American Fiction (soundtrack)

American Fiction is the soundtrack to the 2023 film of the same name directed by Cord Jefferson, based on the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett. The film's musical score composed by Laura Karpman featured 21 tracks from the film score for around 47 minutes. The soundtrack was released by Sony Masterworks on December 15, 2023, alongside the film.

Development
When Karpman received the rough edit of the film, she "scream-laughed at one of the film’s fake-out endings," which she loved on several different levels, because of the kind of conversation of what an artists should be judged on his appearance over character, which many artists have. Karpman called the film as a nuanced conversation of race in America with the integral part is the story regarding Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) and his family.

Karpman acquired her late father's 1927 Steinway piano and played around the ivories to get a feel for the instrument, and that became a "jazzy, wistful" tune regarding the family. Karpman felt that the piano "spoke" to her which was her father "himself" communicating to her. Karpman described the theme—like Monk's family— as very thoughtful but out of sync; the theme which two pianos, or a piano played with flute and guitar, that are never played together. When Monk and his brother (Sterling K. Brown) are having fun in a pool, it is transitioned into a bossa nova.

Inspired by the character's namesake—Thelonious Monk, Karpman was influenced to give a monk-like theme but also has a humour to it. After a couple of iterations, where Karpman considered arranging a Monk tune "Ruby, My Dear", but they loved the original theme she wrote for the protagonist and that became Monk's theme. The theme limps to 5/4 and stops looping the process, but with the points where it "kind of kicks into a nice kind of groove". To evoke the dark humour, Karpman wrote a piece inspired by Maurice Ravel and Herbie Hancock's works where two actors enact characters on the page of Monk's cynical fake memoir and wrote a "romantic cue" for the sequence. Jazz artist Patrice Rushen, flautist Elena Pinderhughes and saxophonist John Yoakum were the players, and the score was recorded at the Abbey Road Studios supervised by Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum. Karpman used several instruments like saxophones, brass, drums, flute, and strings in the score.

Reception
Amy Nicholson of The New York Times called the work a "tender piano-forward score". Steve Pond of TheWrap called the score "indelible". Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair said that Karpman's "alternately jazzy and melancholy score is a highlight."