So I asked myself what salvation was to me. “I felt there was a new crisis not to be able to save each other. “I was very frustrated with watching the news of starvation in Africa in ’95,” he told CMJ when the recording of the work was released in the U.S. Laurie Anderson and David Sylvian open the piece with their own ruminations an extended passage of bittersweet strings follows. Its four sections terminate with “Salvation,” a wrenching investigation into the meaning of redemption. He also looked ahead with the new symphonic work Untitled 01. Ryuichi Sakamoto & David Sylvian: “Forbidden Colors” (1983)Īs the millennium approached, Sakamoto looked back on his career with 1996, reconfiguring works from his soundtracks for The Sheltering Sky, The Last Emperor, and other projects for a piano trio. Meanwhile, Sakamoto performed the song in various configurations over the decades, including a beautiful 2013 rendition with an amateur youth orchestra of survivors of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. “Behind the Mask” was a huge hit, with lyrics by the British poet Chris Mosdell, but its critique of alienation turned sour when it was covered in 1987 by celebrities including Eric Clapton and Phil Collins, who both had histories of anti-immigrant bigotry, or by Michael Jackson, who in 1982 turned it into a middling love song that went unreleased for almost 30 years. They were a more ironic Kraftwerk, perhaps, yet the politics rarely traveled well. The trio formed the Yellow Magic Orchestra with the idea, Hosono said, “to take these western ideas of the exotic and subvert them.” It worked like gangbusters: YMO began international superstars, fusing Asian kitsch and innovative electronics. But as with much of Sakamoto's music, the song has a power that transcends its original context - it serves as accompaniment to an ever-manifold theater of the mind, theater of the heart.This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.īy his mid-20s, Sakamoto was already a sought-after session musician in Tokyo when he took up with Haruomi Hosono, previously of the psyche-folk band Happy End and the country-tropical collective Tin Pan Alley, and the glam rocker Yukihiro Takahashi. With its Schubertian songfulness incorporating an atmospheric Japanese folk motif, "Forbidden Colors" summons the pathos of the film, a tale of tortured emotions among British captives and their Japanese wardens in a World War II prisoner-of-war camp. Typically, it is Sakamoto's heartrending melody that makes this piece communicative in whatever guise.
Lawrence soundtrack album and adorned Sylvian's 1987 masterpiece Secrets of the Beehive.
But the poetic version here, with lyrics and vocals by English avant-pop auteur David Sylvian, is by far the best known, as it was featured in different performances on the Merry Christmas, Mr. In addition to the original electronic version of the score, Sakamoto has recorded the theme in renditions for solo piano (on his album Coda) and piano trio (on the superlative 1996). Lawrence (which also showcased Sakamoto in a starring role).
Sakamoto's music for Bernardo Bertolucci's epic Chinese tragedy The Last Emperor earned 1987 Oscar(R) and Grammy awards among its slew of honors, and his recent score to Brian DePalma's Snake Eyes managed to channel the ghosts of both Mahler and Miles Davis in the cathartic mini-symphony of its final cue.įinally, the emotional centerpiece of Cinemage is one of Sakamoto's most affecting and acclaimed creations: "Forbidden Colors," the theme song to Nagisa Oshima's 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr. And his soundtracks have made Sakamoto one of the world's most successful film composers not immersed in the Hollywood machine. Since then, he has lived in New York and Tokyo, pursuing a dual career: As a producer and performer, Sakamoto has retailed a sophisticated brand of one-world pop, collaborating with artists from Youssou N'Dour to Iggy Pop. Inspired by Kraftwerk's proto-electronica, Sakamoto co-founded Yellow Magic Orchestra in the late '70s and went on to sell millions of albums and fill stadiums throughout Asia with the band. Born in 1952 in Tokyo, Sakamoto was taught from an early age by Taminosuke Matsumoto (a devotee of Hindemith), and he graduated from Tokyo National University for the Fine Arts & Music with a concentration in electronic and ethnic music.