Composer Segun Akinola on The Vast Soundscapes of New Docuseries ‘Origin: The Story of the Basketball Africa League’
the prolific british composer discussed his creative approaches for the expansive new docuseries
Composer Segun Akinola has emerged as one of the prominent musical voices in UK film and television with his composing talents having graced a whole gamut of projects. They range from numerous documentaries, to marquee productions like Doctor Who and Agatha Christie adaptation Murder Is Easy. His latest project, Origin: The Story of the Basketball Africa League is an ambitious new docuseries that chronicles the rise of the eponymous basketball league, through the firsthand perspectives of league officials, players, and staff, head architects such as former Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri, and testimonials from former NBA stars like Luol Deng, Joakim Noah and late Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo. Akinola spoke with FilmSpeak about his involvement and creative processes with scoring the innovative new docuseries.
“I knew nothing about BAL at all” Akinola admits, “but I was introduced to it because I knew the editor, the lead editor on this series, Andy, because we had met at Sundance years and years ago, and we worked on a feature doc called Lost Sons. He was on this, and they were looking for someone, and I had worked with him. Then, I had also worked on a series in the U.K called Black and British Forgotten History, where I had to kind of pull in influences from all of Africa to create a sound world, and those things really worked here, because I’d worked with Andy and knew him really well, and using that sense of music that I’d worked on for this other British series, for the producer Richard Brown. It was a case of chatting to them and trying to make schedules align and everything, and we were able to make it happen, get cracking and get started, and by that point, I think most, but not all of the filming was done, they’d done about 70-80%. So I had a good amount of the material to see. Taking a few steps back, I didn’t know anything about BAL at all, but I just thought it sounded great, and it sounded really excited. The moment I saw what they had filmed, it all clicked and kind of made sense. It didn’t just sound exciting, it looked exciting, and seeing what they did in the first season of BAL during covid, it was brilliant.”
Composer Segun Akinola (left) and fellow key creatives attending Origin’s world premiere at TIFF 2025.
Akinola is no stranger to scoring incredible title sequences, namely, providing the iconic iteration of the Doctor Who theme for the Jodie Whittaker era. He spoke about the process of creating a triumphant title sequence for Origin, with the added pressure of having to represent not just the series, but the incredible story of a multi-national league in the process.
“I think, first of all, it’s about not overthinking it, but also realizing, it does need to be memorable. You always want to do something that’s memorable. When I was working on Doctor Who, there was this incredible main title piece and main theme that has existed for years and years, and it was more about me refreshing it, and adding my approach, my soundworld, and where I was taking the music of the show. In this instance, with Origin, it was all down to me (laughs). I think one of the things I do is that I never start with the main theme or main title, never ever. What I like to do is figure out themes for the show, which I did here, and there’s some specific themes that reoccur, and get into at least an episode. With anything you work on, you have to respond to your ideas. You have to put something down and try it, get some feedback, talk with people, see if it’s working or not. I wanted to make sure we were down the road a bit, see what the music needed to be, what was working and what wasn’t before I tacked the main theme, and then it’s really just about the fact that it needs to be memorable and needs to represent everything you’ve done so far. I knew the series really well, so it was just about encapsulating everything that we’ve done.”
Origin tells the sprawling, international story of the Basketball Africa League, inhabiting regions from all over Africa. Segun spoke about the creative conversations and decisions about how the show would try to reflect and incorporate score in a way that respected all of Africa’s vast cultures and the identity of the docuseries in tandem.
“I didn’t use character themes overly. I moreso used story themes, so hope, a big element in this, when people are talking about their aspirations, or what they’ve come through. So, I kind of pinned themes to those important story elements, so that it wouldn’t matter who or what got to the end [of the BAL competition]. You really get to connect to people through these story themes… having these themes around common feelings really seemed to be what would work best.” It was a challenge when I started, but really early on, if not possibly straight away, we agreed that we weren’t going to try to do music that was Senegalese for the Senegal team, or Zambian for the Zambia team, or just pulling from countries. It was just going to get too complicated, and too specific. I’m all for authenticity, using and celebrating music from culture, when it works, and when it is appropriate. This is a time when I had to say, you know what, it actually isn’t appropriate here, it’s too complicated. We want to respect the fact that there are different countries with different cultures, but this is all about coming together for something, so this is about the overall sound. So, for example, I was working on a whole sound for drums. You think of drums and you think of Africa, there’s so many different countries, so many different drums, different ways that you can handle it, but, for me it was a case of knowing it’s an important part of African music. What I’ve got to do, is sort of cherry pick from a few places, and then come up with an overall sound. That’s not to say that the distinct sound of each culture isn’t important, but that this project is more about coming together. I tried to combine string music from different parts of Africa and bring those in as well. I took that approach, so that there was this feeling of an African influence right at the centre of what we were doing, and so that it’s not just little sprinkles and flavours, but instead at the heart.”