Author | Xing Chu
On April 2, according to media reports, Ryuichi Sakamoto died. Many Chinese were saddened by the departure of this Japanese artist.
I have always believed that there is some kind of tough and hidden connection between words and notes. Both are art, both have rhythm, emotion and tension, and many writers who are good at writing are good at appreciating and even creating music at the same time, such as Yu Hua, who likes classical music, Kazuo Ishiguro, who once dreamed of being a rock and roll, Haruki Murakami, who is obsessed with jazz, and so on.
Compared with other arts, music can indeed invade people's senses more directly and strongly, plucking fantasy and emotions. Mozart even believed that poetry should be the submissive daughter of music.
As a writer, listening to Ryuichi Sakamoto for the first time, I also feel like hearing a poem.
Ryuichi Sakamoto
The beginning is not stunning, there is no fancy rhetoric, you need a little patience, and after gradually entering the best situation, it is as if stepping into a quiet and quaint forest, barefoot in the fallen leaves and birdsong to feel life. Harmony is lyricism, symphony is prose and description, simple and repetitive melody, and narration.
But that path leads not to love and peace, but to a grand and deep sorrow, a grand sense of fate, and in the depths of the meditative universe, Ryuichi Sakamoto's favorite Bach is drowning in contemplation.
This tragic touch is different from the "faint sadness" of traditional Japanese mourning aesthetics, and there is always a tenacity of struggle and confrontation in the notes, the vastness of life and death, and the respect and intolerability of all natural things.
This is Ryuichi Sakamoto. A musician who can make people watch an entire film for one episode of his, a social artist who reflects on wars and disasters with melody, reshapes the aesthetics of life with musical notes, and a philosopher who gives people infinite peace and strength because of its vastness and depth.
In October 2022, Ryuichi Sakamoto announced via social media that on December 11, he would hold a solo piano concert for the world. "I don't have enough physical strength to give a live concert, and maybe the last time I'll do it in this format."
In 2014, Ryuichi Sakamoto was diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer, and in 2021, he developed rectal cancer and underwent surgery, and in October and December of the same year, the cancer metastasized to both lungs.
"Professor" Ryuichi Sakamoto is not really a professor, but he has left traces of exploration of "what else can music do" in almost all walks of life. From war to politics, from natural disasters to environmental issues, his music flows in all things, but in the end, he remains true to his original self.
"Human life is shorter and shorter, I am a musician, I must be honest when creating". Honesty makes creativity free, music makes people free, and free music is for the world and all mankind.
01
Debussy in Japan
If you don't talk about cancer in his later years, Ryuichi Sakamoto's life was lucky and smooth. Coming from elite families, both parents engaged in literature and art, and have never personally experienced major setbacks in terms of money, disaster, and emotions.
Great art does not have to draw inspiration and vitality from suffering, but it can also be accomplished through a heart that transcends experience and reaches all things.
Childhood Ryuichi Sakamoto
Of course, talent is unavoidable. Ryuichi Sakamoto began learning piano at the age of three, became fascinated by Stravinsky and Bach at a young age, and while caring for the rabbit in kindergarten, he wrote his first song, "The Song of the Bunny". Ryuichi Sakamoto later recalled his childhood: "I met sound instead of being attracted to it."
It's a native, honest spiritual reflection on music that will last a lifetime.
Today's "professor" is a gentle, gentle and calm old man, but the adolescent Ryuichi Sakamoto is a rebellious, middle two, self-indulgent genius teenager.
Ryuichi Sakamoto when he was young
He would study seriously just because his school uniform was good-looking, ask girls out not to see a movie but to participate in demonstrations, write love letters instead of "I love you", but only write a line from Baudelaire's "Flowers of Evil": "You are the executioner who rules the fate of death row prisoners"...
He was also fascinated by Impressionist masters such as The Beatles and Rolling Stones, fascinated by their complex and delicate harmonies, and marveled at their unbridled freedom of expression. Until he accidentally met Debussy from his uncle's favorites, Sakamoto Ryuichi was shocked to find "another self in the world".
Debussy is a special impressionist musician, his music always seems to have an oriental subtlety and softness, a childlike purity and cosmic vastness, deep, in those direct to nature, life notes, Sakamoto Ryuichi and Debussy meet.
He even considered himself a "reincarnation of Debussy" and did not understand "why did he live in such a place?" Why do you speak Japanese? He also imitated his signature over and over again in the exercise book, as if he had gone crazy.
Japan in the post-war 60s was itself a crazy and rebellious era. The world situation has changed dramatically, security movements have flourished, postmodernism has flourished, national liberation and independence movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America have surged up, and students have taken to the streets to protest against the war.
Ryuichi Sakamoto's early band YMO had a distinctly left-wing style
Many Japanese texts, music or films are aimed at that era of confusion, such as the familiar Haruki Murakami, Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe, and so on.
The blood of young people pervades society, and Ryuichi Sakamoto is also deeply influenced by left-wing ideas, drinking with friends in a tavern and boldly declaring, "Let's liberate the music controlled by capitalism together, let us emulate the spirit of Chinese and use music to serve labor!" ”
In the later song "Thousand Knives", Ryuichi Sakamoto also sampled Mao Zedong's "Water Tune Song Head Re-Shangjinggangshan", using a large number of electronic synthesizers to complete the album, full of a novel sense of technology and futurism.
Album "Thousand Knives"
That year, Ryuichi Sakamoto was 26 years old, the year he formed the first band "Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO)" with Yukihiro Takahashi and Harutomi Hosono. In the team of three, because Ryuichi Sakamoto had the highest education, Takahashi also gave him the nickname "Professor", which has been known since then.
During his master's degree in sound science, Ryuichi Sakamoto made many musical acquaintances, and their different styles also influenced Sakamoto to varying degrees, which contributed to his gradual formation of his own style.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, an academy and classical school, discovered for the first time that masters such as Debussy and Ravel, who he had regarded as authorities since childhood, might not be the necessary foundation for creation. His wild, pop-playing friends can meet the master by teaching themselves alone.
In 1983, the band announced its disbandment, and since then, Sakamoto Ryu has focused on music composition and film scores, exploring the intersection of sound and painting.
Merry Christmas on the Battlefield soundtrack album Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
In the spring of this year, the movie "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" was released in Japan. And most people know Ryuichi Sakamoto, in fact, they all started with the soundtrack of the same name of this film, and the song itself is more famous than the movie.
02
Broader than the movie
Director Xu Anhua wanted to find Ryuichi Sakamoto to participate when filming "The First Incense", so she also made a special trip to Tokyo, but Ryuichi Sakamoto repeatedly refused, "He just wanted to be a musician, so he died", Xu Anhua said helplessly in the interview.
Ryuichi Sakamoto's relationship with the movie is indeed not shallow. He gave his first on-screen role, Army Captain Senoi, in the shot directed by Nagisa Oshima, and the BAFTA Award-winning theme song "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" was considered to be: "If you haven't heard this song, your life will be missing a quarter." ”
The song is dominated by an ensemble of metal percussion instruments, accompanied by gongs and a small number of orchestral instruments, and a very oriental characteristic of poignancy and calm natural flow. The emotional rhythm is progressively rich, the first half is soft and gentle, like a whisper, the song of summer cicadas, and the quiet dream, but it corresponds to the picture of the prisoner of war camp in the film, the love and desire that are not allowed in the war, the endless suffering and oppression endured in silence, and the ethereal music.
The intensity and ruthlessness of the second half, the cruelty and violence brought by the war, cannot but make people instantly stunned.
And a few years later, the famous "The Last Emperor" took Ryuichi Sakamoto from another perspective - to some extent, it can also be said that from China, a broader and far-reaching world.
All the soundtrack work for the movie "The Last Emperor" was performed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also won the Best Original Score Award at the 60th Academy Awards for Film
At that time, director Bertolucci temporarily asked Ryuichi Sakamoto to score the scene of "Puyi's Coronation", but only 3 days were left for composition and recording. The staff brought an old piano from "Manei" (formerly known as the "Manchurian Railway Film Department") by truck, and the sound was so bad that Sakamoto almost "imagined the music while writing the music".
In a later interview, Ryuichi Sakamoto recalled that in his eyes at the time, China in the 80s of the 20th century was black, white and red, but people were extremely energetic.
As soon as Sakamoto was in the Forbidden City, a thousand-year-old palace, he felt the echoes of history setting on the Chinese characteristic buildings, and on the other hand, he saw the streets of the new Beijing city, the sound of people, the wind, the clanging of bicycles, the vastness and cruelty of the times, which was rubbed into the magnificent court soundtrack.
After the completion of "The Last Emperor", the producers wanted Ryuichi Sakamoto to be responsible for all the soundtracks of the film.
In order to familiarize himself with Chinese folk music, Ryuichi Sakamoto bought 20 Chinese music collections, listened carefully from beginning to end, mixed Western violins and pianos with Eastern erhu, guzheng and pipa, and finally composed a total of 44 pieces in two weeks, which not only became the magic stroke of the movie, but also won the Academy Award, the Golden Globe Award and the Grammy Award.
Ryuichi Sakamoto also began to collaborate with film artists of different nationalities, regions and styles, from Amir Khan in India, to Iranian director Shilin Naisa, to Mexican director Inaritu, in their films, you can hear Sakamoto Ryuichi in amazement, he told the world that he is not only soothing, calm and sad.
His vastness transcends nationality and tradition, and is a postmodern flower that grows from history.
Nowadays, listening to Ryuichi Sakamoto's music in general, I always feel that the word "sad" is the background. But Ryuichi Sakamoto's understanding of tragedy has always had a rich layer of resilience that stretches the tension of life. It is not the sorrow and sinking of one play, but the tone and color built around multiple senses, and each note grows tentacles, and the more you listen to it, the richer and more expansive you listen.
Ryuichi Sakamoto fuses compassion for the fate of all things into a note, smelting reverence for the return of the soul to its roots. He picks up every sound of the planet, the moaning of glaciers as they die, the slight of fishing, the sound of leaves falling to the ground, the rain hitting the birds' wings... Everything changes, life and death alternate, natural flow, you can't predict the direction of the next note, but the melody and rhythm of the interplay and contact, natural as if there are no traces of man.
In 2008, Ryuichi Sakamoto traveled to Greenland and witnessed the melting of glaciers caused by global warming, and the sound of ice and snow breaking and water flowing remained etched in his memory.
After returning, he engraved those voices on the album "Out of Noise", "When the burden that human beings impose on nature exceeds the scope that nature allows, it is human beings who suffer, and nature will not feel any trouble." During my time living in a world of icebergs and seawater, I constantly felt how insignificant human beings are. ”
In the documentary "Ryuichi Sakamoto: Finale", Ryuichi Sakamoto records the sound of melting glaciers in Greenland, he puts his radio device into the seawater and says to the camera: "I'm fishing the sound." ”
03
What else can music do
In the spring of 2020, when the epidemic broke out in Wuhan, Ryuichi Sakamoto presented a 30-minute performance to the Chinese audience on Kuaishou. At 12 o'clock in the night, more than 3 million people watched the performance.
Ryuichi Sakamoto performed with a 20-inch han cymbal engraved with the words "Made in Wuhan, China," and the black marimba mallet in his hand was recycled from medical rubber. "20 inches" corresponds to "2020", and "Han cymbal" symbolizes Wuhan, showing the concern of Ryuichi Sakamoto for a people who are undergoing the test of the virus, and he will effectively integrate his support into the performance, turning it into a sentence in Chinese at the end: "Everyone, come on!" ”
During the 2020 Wuhan pandemic, Ryuichi Sakamoto played for a Chinese audience with cymbals made in Wuhan
Such a man would convince you that his long-term concern for disaster and suffering transcends nationalities, ethnicities and geographies, and at least has a spirit of global citizenship for all mankind and the entire era.
The year after the Great East Japan Earthquake 311, Ryuichi Sakamoto went to visit a piano that had survived a tsunami. This "drowned piano corpse" is covered in scars, the keys are loose, and it is dying, but Ryuichi Sakamoto sees not death, but life.
In his view, "the piano is to make nature meet human standards through the 'power of civilization', and the sea water hits the piano, which is inaccurate for humans, but in essence, they just restore the original state of nature." "The cast piano has gone through history, and the keys that are out of tune do not emit a quiet sound, but "the wood is trying to return to its original state", distorting its original, natural state.
Throughout his life, Ryuichi Sakamoto never stopped thinking about "what music and art can do for disasters."
Throughout his life, Ryuichi Sakamoto devoted himself to composing music for social issues
In a 2019 interview with the media, he gave the answer: "Instead of sending food and donating, I think the highest level of what can be done is to think deeply about the meaning of the disaster and express it in my own works... Accepting the fact that human civilization and nature are antithetical to each other, and translating the serious thinking that arises from it into works, is a thing that has no end to at any time. ”
Everyone who creates anti-war art with their hearts is essentially pursuing a better world of peace and equality.
In the 1990s, Ryuichi Sakamoto immigrated to New York, and soon after the 9/11 incident, the United States launched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The panic and war facing human society seem to be not over, which prompts Ryuichi Sakamoto's work to be further socialized, because he "can't stand it at all."
In 2001, when the World Trade Center was attacked, Ryuichi Sakamoto, who was near the scene of the accident, recorded the scene on camera
In his new album Chasm, he uses 5 songs to reflect on war and 2 songs to deal with environmental issues. For example, this one, called "War & Peace," features recordings of 20 people in different tones, repeating the lyrics: "War is the best game and the worst life." ”
Ryuichi Sakamoto also published a book with a friend called "Non-war", which is different from the "anti-war" that protests with clear goals, and "non-war" means peace and friendship away from contradictions. Later, in Xu Zhiyuan's "Thirteen Invitations", Sakamoto Ryuichi also used this incident to reflect on his rebellion in his youth, believing that at that time, "resistance was sometimes too easy and not deep enough".
It is easy to complain, but it is difficult to establish and fight.
Ryuichi Sakamoto has never given up his concern for his homeland. In 2015, Japan passed a new Security Act, and the Japanese people set off anti-protest demonstrations, including Ryuichi Sakamoto in the crowd of rainy rallies in front of the Diet.
Ryuichi Sakamoto participates in demonstrations against the Security Act
Wearing a black raincoat and holding a loudspeaker, he announced his retirement due to cancer: "Please don't take this as a whim, even if the Security Act is passed, it will not be the end." Please join me, keep going, and keep the action going. ”
After being diagnosed with throat cancer, Ryuichi Sakamoto could only secrete half of the saliva of normal people, which forced him to be thirsty all the time, and he could only chew gum to stimulate saliva secretion.
But he did not stop reflecting on life, "People always think that life is a well that does not dry up, but everything is limited. How many charming childhood afternoons, looking back, still make you feel such a deep tenderness. ”
The 2017 documentary "Ryuichi Sakamoto: The Finale" presents Ryuichi Sakamoto's daily life in his later years: practicing the piano every day, recording inspiration, reading newspapers, making some simple food, taking medicine, wearing a plastic bucket to listen to the rain, and then sitting back on the stage, facing himself, and composing the melody of life.
By reading Haruya Noguchi's "The Effect of Colds", he realized how the body's natural defense function against viruses and bacteria has been weakened by drugs, and also reflected on the rigid work rules and habits after the industrial age that are distorting and skewing the human body.
How to remain faithful to the essence of the heart and body in modern society? How to restore our perception, which has become dull? Release the original tension of life?
From musician to activist, from environmental fighter to patient, even though death can already be seen, Ryuichi Sakamoto still does not stop thinking about the new boundary between music and life, and art transcends life in him.
As his autobiography once commented: "It is as if he were a practitioner, constantly experiencing the repetition of 'keeping, breaking, and leaving', and finally returning to the simplest and purest 'human' identity." ”
Edit | Sumi
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