Ryuichi Sakamoto: Staying Curious

My friend Jon introduced me to the work of Ryuichi Sakamoto, which sent me down a deep, winding musical rabbit hole of inspiration. 

For starters, Sakamoto is a living legend. Now 69, he has been making music since the 70’s, and has spent time exploring many different regions of the musical landscape. From his synth-pop origins with Yellow Magic Orchestra (where he was covered by Michael Jackson and Eric Clapton) he followed a long, creatively diverse, highly collaborative musical path, recording scores of albums, and scoring even more films, earlier being The Last Emperor (1987) and more recently, The Revenant. Most recently, he released a video performance titled Playing the Piano for the Isolated, which is also pretty incredible.  Sakamoto is the real deal. 

What pulled me in initially was a New York Times article about how he made a playlist for a restaurant that he frequents in Midtown. It seems so obvious that the music that is played in a restaurant should be as thoughtful and considered as the food — it’s part of the experience. But so many restaurants miss the mark. Food can create emotion, as can music, and the lighting, and the surroundings. Shouldn’t they all work in concert to deliver a memorable, intentional experience? Of course, the Kajitsu playlist didn’t include any of his own music, just the work of others that he appreciated.

After reading the NYT piece, I was obsessed with learning more, and knew I had to watch the documentary Jon recommended about Sakamoto, titled Coda. This film pretty much blew my mind. He’s an intensely committed artist in the truest sense — following his curiosity down strange and unexpected avenues, and clearly finding so much delight in that process. For Coda, he seeks out a “drowned piano” in Fukushima that the tsunami had fully submerged — a warped, twisted, out-of-tune piece of musical tragedy. And there is a shot of him standing outside in the rain with a plastic bucket on his head, that destroyed me. He is fully tapped in to his curiosity and along for the ride, which is so inspiring to watch. And even more inspiring to listen to and experience. It almost makes me want to watch (endure, really) The Revenant again. Almost.