Certainly the biggest TV cooking phenomena to hit since “Hell’s Kitchen,” “The Bear” makes Gordon Ramsey seem positively Pollyanna when it comes to the blistering, scream-in-your-face insanity of a cast of characters that’s anything but what you’d expect from refined dining. Yet that’s the world that disgraced top chef “Carmy” Berzatto crashes into when he inherits his suicided bro’s beef sandwich shop, proving to ironically be the quietest guy in the house (if maybe the most tormented) as he teams with relatives and a cooking crew with a taste for something better. With Season 1 having mountained au jus greatness, Season 2 sets Carmy’s eyes on something greater, the season building to the soft family and friends opening of the shop’s transformation into a way more cultured restaurant, significantly upping the decibel levels of family crisis while conversely offering the quiet space that’s about the love of crafting food.
Created by Christopher Storer with an eye and ear for culinary realism, as well as a taste for larger than life blow outs, one vital ingredient in keeping the setting grounded in The Chicago Way is the music by homegrown DJ-actor-playwright-composer Jeffrey “JQ” Qaiyum, who now takes on a musical sous chef with Johnny Iguana for the music of Season 2. Weaving its way around near-continuously blasting songs with the dexterity of Carmy’s crew in the heat of kitchen battle, Qaiyum and Iguana’s grooves smell and taste a foodie city unlike any other. Hip-hop, piano, vocals, the rhythms of kitchen instruments, relentless beats and emo piano are some of the myriad ingredients here that offer constant surprises, music equally full of attitude and inventiveness that holds its own amidst people on a knife’s edge. It’s the kind of alternately boisterous and contemplative freshness that mark a self-taught composer immersed in any number of styles – all adding to a crazed, bittersweet streaming menu that audiences are digging into like never before.
Chicago is definitely part of your blood. What would you say is the musical vibe of the city, and how did it play a part in your musical development and lead to you DJ’ing?
I’m a hip hop kid at heart. When Common (then known as Common Sense) came out, it blew my mind. This was the early to mid 90’s and it was the golden era of hip hop. I became a collector of vinyl and that led to DJing. I learned to scratch and spin a party, and eventually to make sample-based beats. But historically, Chicago was a huge destination for black people during the Great Migration. This brought the blues up north. Muddy Waters plugged in his guitar instead of an acoustic and he electrified the Blues, essentially inventing Rock and Roll. This is obviously an oversimplification, but the truth is, without Chicago there is no Rock music. And we definitely invented House.
In a way, do you think that being a DJ gives you more of a music appreciation than being a one-genre kind of artist?
More than being a DJ, being a golden era hip hop head gave me a deep appreciation for many genres. All of my heroes were sampling Jazz and Blues and Pop and Funk. I learned lots of music because my favorite artists sampled them. My introduction to Screamin Jay Hawkins was DJ Premier. My introduction to Stan Getz was Dilla’s beat for Pharcyde’s “Runnin.” From there, you just start to connect the dots and keep collecting vinyl.
You started out as both an actor and composer on 2002 MTV sketch series “Scratch & Burn.” What were both experiences like?
I was like 21 years old when we signed that MTV deal. I was so high all the time. I really don’t remember much. It was fun but it was a LOT of attention. And it all happened really fast. I kinda freaked out after the show was canceled and I bought a minivan and toured the country with 2 different bands for the next 4 or 5 years after that.
You’d do double duty again on the DJ dramedy “Just Another Story.”
Right. I made a little cameo in that. Hahaha. That was a cool project because it was pretty experimental. Also, my brother GQ wrote and directed and starred in that. Y’all probably remember him from “Drumline.” But anyway, he gave me free reign. I made the whole soundtrack and the score for that. It was really fun.
How do you think your work in the Chicago theater scene shaped you as a composer?
Live theater has its own challenges and one of those things is simply that it’s live. You don’t capture a perfect mix one time and move on. You have to do it 8 times a week and your voice is in a different place on show 1 than it is on show 8. Plus, the audiences change and get louder and quieter depending on the vibe. So, when you are making music for theater, at least the kind I made (super verbally dense hip hop musicals), you need to leave a larger pocket for the voice. It’s something I try to take with me when I work in another medium. Try to avoid corrective mixes through better arrangement. Sometimes that means giving the actor a bigger pocket.
Do you think there’s something to be said for composers who don’t take the traditional way into the craft, especially when it comes to creating more of a unique sound?
I think there’s something to be said about anyone who doesn’t take the traditional way into anything.
While you were scoring, you also established yourself as Dex on the “Saints Row” videogame series. Tell us about vocally playing that character.
I’ve always loved voice acting. I much prefer it to acting in a play or on screen. The microphone is an instrument and I know how to use it pretty well so it’s fun to flex that muscle. My character Dex was highly influenced by Method Man, who is one of my favorite rappers.
Before “The Bear,” did you ever associate music with cooking?
Sure! I love listening to music when my hands are occupied because I can really let it wash over me and listen deeply. Driving, doing dishes, cleaning, and cooking are all good times to listen to music.
Johnny Iguana
How did “The Bear” come your and Johnny’s way?
Well, I was a guest professor at Lehigh University teaching a class in Hip Hop Theater and one of my students there was Josh Senior. He is an executive producer on “The Bear,” plus I think he has like 3 other jobs too. We’ve always collaborated through the years and when this came through for him, he called me up! I use session musicians when scoring and I wanted to use only Chicago people for “The Bear.” Johnny Iguana is one of the greatest piano/organ players alive. He’s a Chicago legend and has played in the Junior Wells band and was quite big regionally with a band called Oh My God. His current band is The Claudettes. I used Johnny Iguana a lot in Season 1 and when we were discussing the vibe for Season 2, I got him involved in a more official capacity and we co-wrote many of the themes for S2.
Tell us about developing your approach with show creator Christopher Storer to establish “The Bear’s” sound in the first season.
The first season is so damn hectic and honestly, the process felt that way a bit too. I think that’s why the thing was magical and felt right. I felt like I was filling potholes a lot and playing catch up because the whole thing happened so fast. I guess I felt like Carmy! Ha!
How would you musically describe the character of the lead chef Carmen, whom it seems would rather not speak at all.
Carmen is played by Jeremy Allen White, who brings such a quiet intensity to his character. I think our job is to support a bit only when absolutely necessary, and then just get the hell out of the way because he’s crushing it.
Given that you’ve artistically worked with your brothers, did that help you identify with the family dynamics of “The Bear?”
For sure! The fights, the loyalty, the love. Me and my brothers went through it all. Especially when we were all younger and had much more ego. Now we try to give each other space and depend on each other in our established roles as a team.
Talking about incorporating metallic and chopping kitchen rhythms and sound effects into your scoring.
They came to me with that idea. Someone had seen some installation art piece and sent it over for inspiration. So, I sampled chopping vegetables, sharpening knives, clinking forks, lighting gas stoves, pouring wine, and much more. That was a really fun time because it brought me back to my sample-based roots. But man, my house was a mess that day.
You’ve also got a bunch of police siren sampling here. Did that hit you for situations that are always on the edge of disaster, let alone arrest?
The sirens, the ticking clocks, the chopping knives are all designed to never let you relax. This show is all about tension and anxiety. To quote De La Soul, “the Stakes is High.”
“The Bear” makes succinct, and impactful use of score cues in comparison to all the songs that are in it. How did you want your work to play with all of the varied tunes on hand, as well as to emulate and contrast with them?
We ended up doing much of the scoring in the kitchen scenes to add tension. There’s one particular theme in Season 2 that the producers and editors really loved. We then took those instruments and used it like a band and built out a bank of stuff using a lot of those sounds. Then the editors could use it to edit the scene to, as opposed to scoring to picture. That’s part of what keeps the sense of urgency in the show and why the whole thing feels so rhythmic and pulsing.
“The Bear” is a real in-your-face show, where characters are often screaming at each other. How did you want the music to add to that Scorsese-like intensity at times, especially given how many of the characters are dealing with both physical and mental illness?
Most of those scenes just have “music” in the background because that’s really what would be on the radio in the background in that moment. You don’t have to score those moments, because the actors are killing it and you don’t have to manufacture feelings when they’re already there. That’s real. Scoring in “The Bear”: is used for bringing out the inner life of characters and is kind of like The Kitchen is talking and taking over. At least that’s how it feels to me.
How do you think you’ve captured Chicago here? And what do you think makes it a unique food town?
Season 2 especially just feels very much like a love letter to the city of Chicago. If you’re not from here or haven’t been here, you’ll still very much enjoy the show. But if you’re from here, wow, it’s hard not to feel great about how your town is captured in this show. It’s a great food town. Not a lot of cities have the incredible street food AND the high-end foodie scene, and Chicago does them both very well. I feel fortunate to live here.
There’s some particularly nice work with the piano in “The Bear.” What do you think makes this instrument stand out here, especially given your fusion of electronic and organic instruments?
I have to give props to Johnny Iguana there. He’s so good at messing around and bringing so many ideas to the table. It’s my job to locate the moments that are really interesting and feel like you’re sort of pulling at a thread. Then we expand on it. Adding the thumps and the ticks and the spaced out far-away stuff that all comes together to keep that tension. Tension, tension, tension.
Given that the beef sandwich store ups its game to a fine dining restaurant in season 2, did you want to approach to shift focus as such, especially with the “pressure cooker” count down to the friends and family opening?
They’re trying to do something more sophisticated with the restaurant, and the whole show has to do that as well, including the score. Less raw beats, less dirty electric guitars. Season 2 has more pizzicato strings and cellos and Rhodes and piano. Even in the mix, I was using sidechaining compression stuff you usually hear in EDM music to add a level of sophistication to the sound.
Tell us about scoring the truly psychotic episode 6 with its seven fishes feast from hell.
I don’t believe any of the scoring for episode 6 made it into the final cut. We tried stuff but nothing was really necessary. It’s full of people screaming at each other. The Christmas songs in the background were the perfect bed. It’s all about that dissonance. It was already there. And it was real. Scoring wasn’t needed. Anyone who’s played in a band with a guitarist can tell you– bro, sometimes you gotta know when NOT to play.
What about scoring the climactic soft opening.
That was the first piece I made. It’s not even really music, it’s more of a surging rumble. Like something from science fiction. That’s when I knew this was not going to be like any other show that took place in a kitchen.
Why do you think “The Bear” has taken off?
Certainly not the score! Haha. But for real, there’s so many reasons a show does or does not take off, and many of those reasons are not artistic in any way. I don’t pretend to know why something blows up. I know that the people working on this show are talented and creative and work extremely hard. But that’s true for lots of shows. I guess it’s like cooking and sometimes you just get the right ingredients, in the right amounts, in the right order and BAM! It’s magic.
How do you see the music developing for season 3, which more than likely will show the restaurant in full swing.
No spoilers. Stay tuned!
Johnny Iguana and The Claudettes
Beyond “The Bear,” what’s ahead for you as a DJ and composer?
I’m producing some records for The Claudettes, Johnny Iguana’s band in Chicago. I’m also working on a Hip Hop / Jazz album with Marques Carroll, a Chicago trumpet player who was involved quite a bit in Season 1. I love scoring and I want to do more shows. But I also want to find a way to sample again so I’m doing some remixes for bands where I take their stems and chop them all up and play with them.
Do you think working on “The Bear” has made you a better cook, or made you more adventurous in picking out restaurants?
I definitely made the spaghetti from Season 1 and the omelet from Season 2. They were both delicious! I’ve always been a foodie and an adventurous eater, but after the Richie episode in S2, I’m seriously considering springing for Alinea. But it’s pricey… I’ll just have to eat Chicago-style hot dogs for the next six months. My kids will enjoy that!
Visit Q Brothers web site HERE
Watch “The Bear” on Hulu HERE
Thanks to John Tempereau, Koyo Sonae and Isabel Pappani at Soundtrack Music Associates