Like David Bowie and Leonard Cohen, too Ryuichi Sakamoto, founder of the Yellow Magic Orchestra and colossus of soundtracks wanted to turn his death into a work of art and recorded ’12’ shortly before he died, an exquisite and painful requiem requiem made of vaporous atmospheres, minimalist pianos and careful electronic grafts. A studied goodbye for a musician who always knew what key to press to awaken deep emotions; the soundtrack of a transfer that played on a loop yesterday to formalize the elegant and silent farewell of a musician who, sick with cancer, died on March 28 and was fired at a private funeral.
Sakamoto, 71, had overcome throat cancer in 2014, but recently, last June, he announced that he had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer. “Now that I have cancer again at the age of 70, I don’t know how many times I will be able to see the full moon in my life, but in the meantime, I want to continue composing until the last moment, just like Bach and Debussy did, whom I have great admiration,” he said then.
«He lived with music until the end», the Japanese musician’s team said in a statement. The phrase, in this case, could not be more literal, since until March 24 he was interacting with his followers on his Twitter account and organizing question and answer sessions related to his latest album. Her last response from him? “If you mean sounds that aren’t on the album, I have to say the sound of rain.” The question? “Of the sounds you heard while composing, which was your favorite?”
Poetic to the end, Sakamoto already made his intentions clear by assuring that all he wanted was to continue composing until his last breath. Like Bach. Like Debussy. Classic heroes for a visionary creator who grew up facing the abyss. “I like to explore new landscapes and music is a territory full of unknown spaces”; he said in one of his last visits to Barcelona, minutes before going on stage at Sónar with the German Alva Noto.
Born in Nakano on January 17, 1952, Sakamoto It was one of the great, perhaps the greatest, musical hinges between East and West. He is also one of the most daring adventurers of the second half of the 20th century: he founded, together with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, the Yellow Magic Orchestra, a pioneering group of electronic pop; he recorded with David Sylvian and Iggy Pop; and won an Oscar for the soundtrack of ‘The Last Emperor’, by Bernardo Bertolucci. And that, of course, sums up a lot.
Starting in the eighties, Sakamoto strengthened his relationship with cinema and ended up composing the soundtrack for more than 30 titles, including ‘Snake Eyes’, by Brian De Palma, ‘Tacones Lejanos’, by Pedro Almodóvar, or ‘ Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence’, a film by Nagisa Ôshima who also co-starred with David Bowie.
Although Sakamoto announced last year that his cancer had entered its near terminal phase, he had been dealing with various forms of the disease since 2014.