Tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto |
This month, make room for a great composer who just left us and whom you may not know as well: Ryuichi Sakamoto.
[« The Last Emperor – EXTRAIT SONORE]
[« SérieFonia : Season V : Opening Credits » – Jerôme Marie]
March 28, 2023… One of the biggest names in film music has sadly left us at the age of 71. An international career… A style… what am I saying? … styles that are as varied as they are inimitable. But only one Oscar… 1988 for… The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci…
[« The Last Emperor – Theme Variation 2 » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
The cult film won not only for its music… Best film, director, screenplay, set design, costume, editing, photography, sound… No less than 9 statuettes pay tribute to this incredible fresco, one as we do more while France also rewarded the team by the César award for best foreign film. But we still have a long way to go before we get there. Born in Nakano in January 1952 – because it’s about him – Ryuichi Sakamoto is the son of a publisher who is passionate about both Debussy-style classics and Beatles-style rock. His love of music immediately immerses him in the best of both worlds… and again, why limit yourself to just two worlds?
[« Furyo – Beyond Reason » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
Because the electronics regularly rock a wide discography composed of film music, of course, but also solo albums, often rich and destabilizing, pop music, music from video games … but also, and perhaps above all, debris from the collaboration. Like the German Carsten Nicolai, also known as Alva Noto… or the Japanese jazz musician Yosuke Yamashita… It was an excerpt from Furyo. In 1983. Yes, yes, it was Furyo… I didn’t mean to draw you the most famous piece so easily… But hey, I know it’s a must see… might as well continue right now…
[« Furyo – Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (Solo Piano Version) » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
Come on, I’ll save a live version for last… In case you don’t know, Furyo also features Ryuichi Sakamoto. He plays the samurai Yonoi, a young and passionate commander desperate to serve his country, and he’s headlining alongside none other than David Bowie and Takeshi Kitano. At the time, he was also part of a Japanese synthpop group, the Yellow Magic Orchestra, alongside Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi. The musicians came together in 1978 after Sakamoto studied at the University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo, where he majored in ethnomusicology… understanding the study of different ethnic musical currents. And especially those from Okinawa, India and Africa. Which isn’t necessarily reflected in the band’s early songs… like 1978’s “Firecracker”…
[« Firecracker » – Yellow Magic Orchestra]
No more so than Behind the Mask, which came out the following year… and was a thoroughly international success.
[« Behind the Mask » – Yellow Magic Orchestra]
A title that Michael Jackson appropriated for his legendary album Thriller in 1982, but which was not retained. Since then, from anniversary edition to anniversary edition… the damage has been fixed…
[« Behind the MAsk » – Michael Jackson]
But long before that, the young composer with a penchant for electronics started with a first album (Disappointment-Hateruma) in 1975, after spending five years working as a keyboard player for various artists. His sidekick Tsuhitori Toshiyuki’s percussion features a minimalist approach that will endure in his work for decades to come… His first official solo album (Thousand Knives) was released in 1978, on the eve of his formation with the Yellow Magic Orchestra. But to get a little closer to his years as a film musician, let’s jump straight to 1987’s Neo Geo album… and while it’s supposed to be a reinterpretation of Okinawan music, it still sounds a little “angry”. Bowie, right? So… coincidence or no coincidence? NO ! Since it’s his friend Iggy Pop singing…
[« Risky » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
As successful as it may seem, Furyo is only the second film to be voiced by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Shortly before that, he signed “Daijobu, My Friend” for Ryu Murakami… And the success of “The Last Emperor” came just four years later. He constantly switches between cinema, world tours of the Yellow Magic Orchestra and more personal projects. Among them we find in particular this sublime piece for piano four hands, baptized “Tong Poo”… It was on the 1998 album BTTB. Back to basics understanding… A return to basics of what…
[« Tong Poo » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
The impact of the last emperor’s worldwide success is enormous. And as a first consequence, Sakamoto faithfully continues his collaboration with Bertolucci. First there is Un thé au Sahara in 1990…
[« The Sheltering Sky – Theme » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
Then Little Buddha in 1993…
[« Little Buddha – Theme » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
And a second consequence, just as natural: his approach, which is so original, arouses the greed of other great filmmakers like Brian de Palma. Who first entrusted him with his “Snake Eyes” with Nicolas Cage in 1998 …
[« Snake Eyes – Theme (Long Version) » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
Then his femme fatale with Antonio Banderas and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, which offers him the opportunity to immerse himself in the dark thriller like never before…
[« Femme Fatale – Déjà Vu » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
And then let’s not forget his TV outing alongside Oliver Stone! Because a year before Little Buddha, between May 16 and May 20, 1993 on ABC, the miniseries Wild Palms caused a stir by airing five straight nights… Half thriller, half SF, with a touch of glam, it is nevertheless broken down by a somewhat confusing graphical approach and breakdown. Produced by Stone, yes, but written by Bruce Wagner and directed in part by Point Break and Strange Days director Kathryn Bigelow, “Wild Palms” remains one of my favorite TV moments…
[« Wild Palms – Main Theme » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
So that was the intro. But to prolong the pleasure even longer, I can’t resist telling you a little bit about the finale…Or almost all of Sakamoto’s influences come together in perfect harmony…He may mix up ethnic groups, we don’t I won’t feel any less the humid heat of this sunset on the edge of the bloody beaches of Los Angeles…
[« Wild Palms – Finale » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
Increasingly unique…atonal…experimental… He makes film scores without caring about the codes that, however, largely determine them. It integrates sounds… but also silence. He breaks the rhythm of harmonies and melodies… He searches, he has fun… And offers scores that are as unique as they are enchanting; such as Taboo (or Gohatto), which addresses the thorny issue of homosexuality among Shinsengumi warriors, low-ranking samurai between 1853 and 1867. The film was made in 1999.
[« Gohatto – End Theme » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
A more radical approach that we find until 2015 in The Revenant by Alejandro G. Inarritu… whose encounter between a grizzly bear and Leonardo DiCaprio has become legendary…
[« The Revenant – Final Fight » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
But back to the melodies with a melancholic tendency … In particular, in 2007 he worked on “Silk” for the Canadian director François Girard … We can’t really say that the critics took kindly to this drama with a love triangle consisting of Keira Knightley , Koji Yakusho and Michael Pitt… Yet the music knows how to reach its goal…
[« Silk – Sadness » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
Minimalism always… with Smithereens. Second episode of the fifth season of Black Mirror. Written by series creator Charlie Brooker himself and directed by James Hawes, to whom we owe a number of episodes of Doctor Who, Merlin and most notably Penny Dreadful, among others… We are then in June 2019…
[« Black Mirror, Smithereens – Momory of a Single Moment » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
For television, he also took a detour through animation… And that’s new. It was October 2022 with the first eight episodes of Exception … It’s the title of the series, not I say it … In the writing and in the creation we find Hirotaka Adachi … and in the designs, so special, the great Yoshitaka Amano , the You probably know him for his work on quite a few Final Fantasy games… And one exception, airing on Netflix, looks like this…
[« Exception – Rebirth » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
Speaking of video games, it turns out that Ryuichi Sakamoto also composed for several of them… There was Tengai Makyô in 1989, for example… or Seven Samurai 20XX in 2004. It was for the Playstation 2 and, as the name suggests It was an adventure directly inspired by Akira Kurozawa’s 1954 film The Seven Samurai. And as for the designs, we owe them no more and no less than Moebius, national pride and incidentally father of The Incal, Blueberry and the Master of Time…
[« Seven Samurai 20XX – Ending Theme » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
In his filmography, it is impossible not to mention Tony Scott’s Black Rain, but for one piece… Stilettos by Pedro Almodovar… the 2004 cartoon Appleseed… 2017’s Call Me By Your Name. .. or even Beckett in 2021… and of course the mighty Babel for Inarritu. It was in 2006…
[« Babel – Bibo No Aozora » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
A variety of genres and territories that would make other composers present on the international market shudder… And perhaps that’s why its disappearance was able to cause such a wave of sadness and sympathy among music lovers around the world. How seldom have television newspapers of all stripes confirmed his departure with many testimonials and archive images… A media and public treatment that even James Horner or Michael Kamen did not know… And even if similar differences in treatment remain regrettable… One has to admit that given the scope and diversity of his career, such an honor was well deserved. And since music by nature is always alive, I will close this SérieFonia with three excerpts from the wonderful concert conducted by the masterful hands of conductor Dirk Brossé at the Ghent International Film Music Festival… First of all: the very instinctive Hara-Kiri : The Death of a Samurai for the equally talented Takashi Miike from 2011…
[« Hara-Kiri (Ichimei) – Small Hope (Live) » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
And since we must never forget that this show is called SérieFonia, we return to the small screen with this excerpt from Yae No Sakura: a Japanese series that aired on NHK throughout 2013, with no less than 48 episodes and two TV movies… and revealing the true, albeit fictional, story of Japanese warrior Yamamoto Yaeko, who lived to be 86 after taking an active part in the Boshin War between January 1968 and May 1969…
[« Yae No Sakura – Opening Theme (Live) » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
And finally, I promised you … It is impossible to end this tribute with anything other than what remains its most famous theme … the symbol of a career that, however, cannot be limited to these few notes … But you have to admit that in between, the charisma of Sakamoto and that of David Bowie… Any resistance is basically useless. In addition, at the end of the song, as a bonus, you will find the program 2021 dedicated to Bowie in the cinema … and in which Furyo already and quite naturally took a privileged place. So… Thank you for everything and… Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence…
[« Furyo – Merry Christmas Mister Lawrence (Live) » – Ryuichi Sakamoto]
[« SérieFonia 2020(2021, Pastille 32 – Bowie au cinéma »]
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