Ryūichi Sakamoto

Ryūichi Sakamoto (坂本 龍一, Sakamoto Ryūichi^?, Tokyo, January 17, 1952 - Ib., March 28, 2023) was a Japanese musician, activist, composer, producer, writer, singer, pianist, and actor. He lived in Tokyo and New York. He began his career in 1978 as a member of the pioneering electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), where he played keyboards and was an occasional vocalist. The band was an international success, with hits such as Computer Game / Firecracker (1978) and Behind the Mask (1978), written and sung by Sakamoto.

He was focused on his solo career, debuting with the experimental fusion music album The Thousand Knives of Ryūichi Sakamoto (1978); he subsequently released the pioneering album B-2 Unit (1980), which included the electro classic Riot in Lagos. After YMO split in 1983, he produced more solo albums, including collaborations with various international artists throughout the 1990s. He began acting and composing film music with Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), in which he played one of the main characters and made the soundtrack for it. The song Forbidden Colours that he composed for the film became a worldwide hit and won a BAFTA Award for the film's score. He later won an Academy Award and a Grammy for the score for The Last Emperor (1987), and also won two Golden Globes for his work on film music. Additionally, he composed the music for the opening of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.

In the early 1990s, he had a brief reunion with YMO, playing a significant role in the techno and acid house movements of the time, before they broke up again. His composition Energy Flow (1999) was the first instrumental song to reach number one in Japan. He has occasionally worked on anime and video game music, as a composer and scriptwriter. In the late 2000s, he reunited with YMO, while composing music for film. In 2009, he was awarded the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture for his musical contributions.

Biography

Early years and Yellow Magic Orchestra

Sakamoto entered the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1970, earning a degree in music composition and a master's degree with an emphasis in electronic music and ethnic music. He studied ethnomusicology with the intention of becoming a researcher in that area, due to his interest in traditional music of the world, particularly music from Japan (especially Okinawan music), from India and from Africa. trained through classical music and began experimenting with his university's electronic music equipment, including synthesizers such as the Buchla, Moog, and ARP. One of Sakamoto's classical influences was Claude Debussy, whom he describes as his hero and saying that "Asian music greatly influenced Debussy, and Debussy influenced me greatly, therefore we can say that music revolves around the world like a circle. "

After working as session musicians with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi in 1977, the trio formed the successful electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) in 1978. They are known to be a major influence on electronic music, the group helped the growth of various genres such as electropop/technopop, synthpop, cyberpunk, ambient house, and electronic music. The band's work has influenced across various genres, from hip hop to techno. to acid house and melodic music in general.

Sakamoto was the composer of several hits for the band including, Tong Poo (1978), Technopolis (1979), Nice Age (1980), Ongaku (1983) and You've Got to Help Yourself (1983), and as keyboardist on other songs, including hits like Computer Game /Firecracker (1978) and Rydeen (1979). He also sang for songs like Kimi ni Mune Kyun (1983).

Sakamoto's composition Technopolis (1979) is credited as a contribution to the development of techno music, while Behind the Mask (1978), a synthpop song in where he sings through a vocoder, he covered various artists including Michael Jackson and Eric Clapton.

Solo career

Sakamoto released his first solo album, Thousand Knives of Ryūichi Sakamoto, in mid-1978 with the help of Hideki Matsutake, later the "fourth member" of the band Yellow Magic Orchestra, Hosono contributed to the song 'Thousand Knives'. The album experimented with different styles, such as "Thousand Knives" and "The End of Asia" where traditional Japanese music is fused with electronic music, while Grasshopper is a more minimalist piano song. The album was recorded from April to July 1978 with a variety of electronic instruments, including synthesizers such as the KORG PS-3100, a polyphonic synthesizer; Oberheim Eight-Voice, Moog III-C, Polymoog, Minimoog, Micromoog, Korg VC-10, which is a vocoder; KORG SQ-10, which is analog sequencer, Syn-Drums and Roland MC-8 microprocessor, which is sequencer that was programmed by Matsutake and played by Sakamoto. A version of "Thousand Knives" was released by the Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1981 on the album BGM.

In 1980 Sakamoto released the album B-2 Unit, which is considered his "best album" and is known for the electronic music song &# 34;Riot in Lagos", which is considered an early example of electro music (electro funk), where Sakamoto anticipates the rhythms and sounds of electro. Among the first electro and hip artists hop, such as Afrika Bambaata and Kurtis Mantronik were influenced by the album, especially by "Riot in Lagos". Mantronik lists the record as the biggest influence on his electro hip hop group Mantronix. "Riot in Lagos" was included on a Playgroup compilation, Kings Of Electro (2007), along with other electro compositions, such as "Al-Nafyish" (1983) by Hashim.

According to Dusted Magazine, the use of "squashed sounds" of Sakamoto's bounce music and mechanical rhythms was later incorporated by early electro and hip hop productions, such as Melle Mel and Duke Bootee's Message II (Survival) (1982); Magic's Wand (1982), by Whodini and Thomas Dolby; "Electric Kingdom" (1983) from Twilight 22; and Mantronix: The Album (1985) by Kurt Mantronik. The release of "Riot in Lagos" in 1980 it was listed in 2001 by The Guardian as one of the top 50 events in dance music history.

Also in 1980, Sakamoto released the single "War Head/Lexington Queen", an experimental synthpop and electro record, and began a collaboration with David Sylvian, when he co-wrote and performed on the song &# 34;Taking Islands In Africa" from the band Japan. In 1982, Sakamoto worked on another collaboration with Sylvian, a single titled Bamboo Houses/Bamboo Music. He also collaborated in 1980 with Kiyoshiro Imawano's 'Ikenai Rouge Magic', which topped the Oricon singles charts.

Sakamoto released several solo albums during the 1980s. While focusing on the use of piano and synthesizers, this series of albums featured collaborations with the likes of Sylvian, David Byrne, Thomas Dolby, Nam June Paik, and Iggy Pop. Sakamoto would alternate between exploring various musical ideas and genres, which is highlighted in the album Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia, and focusing on a specific theme, such as the Italian futurist movement in Futurista (1986). For the song Broadway Boogie Woogie, Sakamoto would use sound samples from the Ridley Scott film Blade Runner along with a strident technopop-style saxophone.

As his career began to spread outside of Japan in the late 1980s, Sakamoto's explorations, influences, and collaborations also developed. Beauty (1989) features a set list that combines pop with traditional Japanese music and Okinawan songs, as well as appearances by Jill Jones, Robert Wyatt, Brian Wilson and Robbie Robertson. Heartbeat (1991) and Sweet Revenge (1994) feature Sakamoto's collaborations with world-class artists such as Roddy Frame, Dee Dee Brave, Marco Prince, Arto Lindsay, Youssou N&# 39;Dour, David Sylvian and Ingrid Chavez.

In 1995 Sakamoto released Smoochy, described by the website Sound On Sound as "a jaunt into the land of easy listening and Latino", it was followed by the album "1996", which featured a number of duly published musical pieces arranged for piano, violin and cello. After 1996, Sakamoto composed the orchestral work of a hour titled "Untitled 01", released as the album Discord (1998) and divided into four parts: "Grief", "Anger", "Prayer" and "Salvation". Sakamoto collaborated primarily with guitarist David Torn and DJ Spooky, artist Laurie Anderson provided her vocals for the composition, and the recording was the result of nine performances of the work, recorded while on tour in Japan. Sakamoto in a 1998 interview explains:

The themes of Prayer and Salvation come from the feelings of sadness and frustration that I have expressed in the two movements, about the hunger that people live in the world, and our inability to help them. People are dying, political, economic and historical situations are complicated and inert so that we who can do something about it will do nothing. I got pretty mad at myself. I wondered what I could do, and because there is not much I can do at a practical level, all I have left is to pray. But it's not enough to pray; I also had to think about saving those people, so the last move is called Salvation. In general, that's the part.

Sakamoto would later explain that in 1998 he was not referring to a "religious approach but perhaps a spiritual one" and that "the prayer is for anyone or whoever you want." Sakamoto composed the work in one month, during December 1996.

Sony Classical's release of "Discord" it was sold in a jewel case covered with a blue colored sleeve made of metallic packaging, while the CD contained a video track. In 1998 Ninja Tune released Prayer/Salvation Remixes, which featured remixes by artists Ashley Beedle and Andrea Parker of "Prayer" and "Salvation" from "Discord".

Sakamoto's next album, BTTB (1998) an acronym for "Back to the Basics," was partially overshadowed by public reaction to the orchestrated Discord . The album consists of a number of original piano pieces, including "Energy Flow" (hit in Japan) and a frenetic, four-hand arrangement of the Yellow Magic Orchestra classic "Tong Poo". On the BTTB tour of the United States, he opened the show by performing a short avant-garde DJ set under the name DJ Lovegroove.

1999 saw the long-awaited release of the "opera" by Sakamoto LIFE. It opened to seven sold-out performances in Tokyo and Osaka. This ambitious multi-genre and multimedia project included collaborations from more than 100 artists including: Pina Bausch, Bernardo Bertolucci, Josep Carreras, Tenzin Gyatso and Salman Rushdie.

Sakamoto later teamed up with cellist Jaques Morelenbaum (a member of his 1996 trio) and his wife [Paula Morelenbaum|Paula]], on a pair of albums celebrating the work of the bossa pioneer new Antonio Carlos Jobim. They recorded their first album, Casa (2001), mostly in Jobim's home studio in Rio de Janeiro, with Sakamoto playing Jobim's piano. The album was well received, being included in the list of the best albums of 2002 by the New York Times.

Sakamoto collaborated with Alva Noto (an alias for Carsten Nicolai) to release Vrioon, an album in which the clusters played by Sakamoto are treated by Nicolae in a Nico style of digital manipulation, involving the creation of "micro-loops" and minimalist percussion. The two produced this work through repeated listening to the tracks until they were both satisfied with the result. This debut, released by the German record label Raster-Noton, was voted Record of the Year 2004 in the electronic category by British magazine The Wire. They later released Insen (2005), produced in a similar way to Vrioon, this album is somewhat more restrained and minimalist.

Meanwhile, Sakamoto continues to create music for any context: in 2005, Finnish cell phone manufacturing company Nokia hired Sakamoto to compose the ringtone and alert tones for its Nokia 8800 cell phone. The recent meeting with his colleagues from YMO, Hosono and Takahashi, caused a stir in the Japanese press. They released the single "Rescue" in 2007 and a DVD "HAS/YMO" in 2008. Sakamoto's most recent album, Out Of Noise, was released on March 4, 2009 in Japan. In July 2009, Sakamoto was awarded the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Embassy in Tokyo.

Career as a Producer

The productions Sakamoto has made represent a prolific career in this role. In 1983 he produced Mari Iijima's debut album Rosé, the same year the Yellow Magic Orchestra disbanded. Sakamoto subsequently worked with other artists such as Thomas Dolby; Aztec Camera, on the album Dreamland (1993); and Imaj Miki, co-producing the 1994 album A Place In The Sun.

Frame, who worked with Sakamoto under the name Aztec Camera, explained in a 1993 interview prior to the release of Dreamland that he needed to wait a long period of time before being able to work with Sakamoto, who he wrote two soundtracks, an album and the music for the opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, before working with Frame for about four weeks in New York. Frame explained that he was impressed by his work on YMO and the soundtrack to Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, saying: "It's where you realize that the atmosphere around his compositions is found in his creation, it has nothing to do with synthesizers & # 34;. He finally decided to ask Sakamoto after seeing one of his performances at a Japanese festival held in London About the experience of recording with Sakamoto, Frame mentioned:

He has the reputation of being a "cloud," a music teacher who sits in front of a computer screen. But he's more intuitive than that, he's always trying to corrupt what he knows. In the middle of a day's work in the studio, he stops to listen to some hip hop or some house for 10 minutes, then returns to what he was doing. He always tries to clear himself that way, and discover new things. Just before we worked together he was in Borneo, I think with a recorder looking for new sounds.

Composer for films and actor

Movie fans may recognize Sakamoto primarily from his work on the soundtracks of two Nagisa Oshima films: Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), including the theme song and duet Forbidden Colours with David Sylvian, and Bernardo Bertolucci's film The Last Emperor (1987), which would lead him to win an Oscar with his colleagues David Byrne and Cong Su. During the same year he composed the soundtrack for the cult anime film Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise.

Frequent collaborator, David Sylvian, contributed lead vocals to "Forbidden Colours," the theme song Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, which was a minor hit. 16 years later, the composition resurfaced as a dance song titled "Heart of Asia" (by the Watergate group).

Other films for which Sakamoto composed the soundtrack are Pedro Almodóvar's High Heels (1991), Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha (1993), Wild Palms (1993) by Oliver Stone, Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998) by John Maybury, Snake Eyes (1998) and Femme Fatale (2002) by Brian De Palma; Gohatto (1999) by Oshima and Dhobi Ghat (2011) by [Kiran Rao]]. He also composed the music for the opening ceremony of the Barcelona Olympic Games 1992, event broadcast to over a billion viewers.

Several of the songs from Sakamoto's early solo albums have appeared on film soundtracks. In particular, variations of "Chinsagu No Hana" (from Beauty) and "Bibo No Aozora" (from 1996) used to close the stories Japanese Story (2003) by Sue Brooks and Babel (2006) by Alejandro González Iñárritu respectively.

Sakamoto has acted in a number of films, his most notable performance being the troubled Captain Yonoi in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, opposite Takeshi Kitano and British rock singer David Bowie. He did a few roles in The Last Emperor (as Masahiko Amakasu) and in Madonna's music video, Rain .

Other jobs

In 1993 he participated in the role of director of the video Rain by Madonna.

In 1998 the Italian ethnomusicologist Massimo Milano published Ryuichi Sakamoto. Conversazioni Via Padova, Arcana. All three editions of the book were published in Italian.

In 2013, Sakamoto was selected as a jury member at the 70th Venice International Film Festival. The jury rated 20 films and he was represented by director Bernardo Bertolucci.

Activism

Sakamoto was a member of the anti-nuclear organization Stop Rokkasho and has called for the closure of the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant. In 2012, he organized the No Nukes 2012 concert which featured 18 bands, which include Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kraftwerk.

Ryuichi Sakamoto on the third anniversary of Independent Web Journal SYMPOSION IV in Grand Hall (Shinagawa, Japan) on 22 December 2013.

Sakamoto was also known as a critic of copyright, arguing in 2009 that it is an outdated measure for the information age. The argument that "in the last 100 years, a handful of organizations have dominated the world of music and have separated the fans from the creators" and that "with the Internet we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music."

Sakamoto was a collaborator and founder of ap bank, an NGO focused on nature conservation and support for small entrepreneurs.

Commons

In 2006, Sakamoto, in collaboration with Japan's largest independent company Avex Group, founded Commmons (コモンズ, Komonzu^?), a record label that seeks to change the way music is produced. Sakamoto explained that Commmons is not a record label, but a platform to inspire all artists to come together as equal collaborators to share the benefits of the music industry. Within the website it is explained that the name "Commmons" is written with three "m", because the third "m" means music.

Awards

Sakamoto has won a number of accolades for his work as a composer of soundtracks, beginning with the score for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) which led to his BAFTA-winning a the best original music. His greatest recognition was for the music of the film The Last Emperor (1987), which allowed him to win the Oscar for best soundtrack, a Golden Globe for best band Soundtrack and a Grammy for Best Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, as well as a BAFTA Award nomination.

The music for The Sheltering Sky (1990) earned him his second Golden Globe, and the score for Little Buddha (1993) received a nomination for a Grammy. In 1997, his collaboration with Toshio Iwai, Music Plays Images X Images Play Music, was awarded the Golden Nica, the Grand Prix of the Prix Ars Electronica competition. He also contributed to the Oscar for the soundtrack of the film Babel (2006) several pieces of music, including the ending theme "Bibo no Aozora". In 2009, he was awarded the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture for his musical contributions.

The music video for "Risky," written and directed by Meiert Avis, won the first ever "MTV Award for Most Experimental Video". The video explores the transhumanist philosopher FM-2030, focusing on the ideas of 'nostalgia for the future', adapting them in the form of an imaginary love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris at the end of the 30s. Additionally, he takes inspiration from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch with his painting "Puberty" (1894), and Roland Barthes with "Death of the Author". The surreal black and white video uses stop motion, light drawing, and other vintage flaws with camera techniques. Meiert Avis recorded camoton while working on the score for The Last Emperor in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video drawing words and messages towards the camera. Iggy Pop, who plays the voice in "Risky", decided not to appear in the video, allowing the role of him to be played by the surreal robot.

Sakamoto won the Golden Pine Award (Career Achievement) at the 2003 Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Clint Eastwood and Gerald Fried.

Personal life

The first of Sakamoto's marriages was in 1972, but it ended in divorce after two years. He subsequently married the popular Japanese pianist and singer Akiko Yano in 1982, after several musical collaborations with her, including tours with the Yellow Magic Orchestra. Sakamoto's second marriage ended in August 2006. Yano and Sakamoto have a daughter born in 1980, J-pop singer Miu Sakamoto.

In 2017 the documentary Ryuichie Sakamoto:CODA by director Stephen Nomura Schible was released, filmed over a period of five years, where the Japanese composer can be seen recording on a piano that had survived the tsunami caused by the earthquake that also causing disasters at the Fukushima nuclear power plant and holding a concert at a shelter for the victims. The film also accompanies him during his throat cancer illness and shows him in his studio recording the soundtrack for The Revenant.

Health

On July 10, 2014, Sakamoto revealed that he was diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer, which led him to cancel his scheduled concerts this year to treat his illness.

Discography

Studio Albums

Several of the albums exist in two versions, the original Japanese version and the international version, each with different track listings.

Soundtracks and Music for events

With Morelenbaum²

• House (2001)
• A Day in New York (2003)

With Carsten Nicolai, as alva noto + ryuichi sakamoto

• Vrioon (CD, 2002)
• Insen (CD, 2005)
• Revep (CD EP, 2006)
• Insen Live (DVD, 2006)
• Utp (CD+DVD, 2008, with Modern Assembly)
• Summvs (CD, 2011)

With Fennesz

• Sala Santa Cecilia (2005, live EP)
• Cendre (2007)
• Flumine (2011)

Other collaborations

Awards and distinctions

Oscar Awards