"The industrial revolution made the production of an instrument like [the piano] possible. Several planks of wood - six I think in this case - are overlaid and pressed into shape by tremendous force for six months. Nature is molded into shape. Many tons of force and pressure are applied, making the strings what they are. Matter taken from nature is molded by human industry, by the sum strength of civilization. Nature is forced into shape. Interestingly, the piano requires re-tuning. We humans say, 'It falls out of tune', but that's not exactly accurate - matter is struggling to return to a natural state. The tsunami, in one moment, became a force of restoration. The [tsunami-damaged] piano re-tuned by nature actually sounds good to me now. In short, the piano is tuned by force to please our ears or ideals; it's a condition that feels natural to us humans. But from nature's perspective, it's very unnatural. I think deep inside me somewhere, I have a strong aversion to that."
It should be quite clear to you that on this Earth, at the level of the biosphere, there is nothing except humans that produce radioactive waste. We are the only species that does something so dangerous. It's a problem because it contaminates and destroys the biosphere if it's not handled extremely carefully and there are no organisms which can compost such waste in any useful way. So it's unnatural.
Plastic is another unbelievably horrible man made concoction which is absolutely destroying the natural world due to poor handling.
Since plastic waste and nuclear waste aren't food for other organisms, or don't naturally break down, they're not materials that belong in the natural environment. The is the same environment from which you come from, owe everything too, and which you're still totally and utterly dependent on for your survival.
Hopefully that's a good answer...
By the way, I used to share your beliefs, that it's all the same, it's all "natural", but I just can't keep up the mental charades anymore. Our intellect and creativity is an important part of our short-term survival, but thus far it's been massively destructive and I can't see that changing anytime soon.
There have been many innovative organisms that produced an "unnatural" material. The earth was covered in a huge, dense, undecayed layer of dead tree matter before bacteria eventually evolved to break it down... 60 million years later. It's now coal.
quite a strange example. to choose piano components yet omit ivory. not all pianos are made from wood and strings either. perhaps a worn-out sword or a bursting dam would have been better, but what do I know. nice sentiment nonetheless
The piano fits for Sakamoto over a sword or a dam because he is a musician who spent his life with the piano as his primary instrument. It's where he is most experienced and he has a much closer relationship to that than a dam or a sword.
Ivory is also typically only used for the keys, and doesn't actually impact the tuning of the instrument.
He was also referencing a specific piano, an old Yamaha piano in the gymnasium of Miyagi Agricultural High School, which had been damaged by the tsunami. It seems very unlikely that a high school Yamaha grand piano had ivory keys.
What surprises me is that the description seems to imply a wooden framed piano.
They exist, but they are notoriously difficult to tune and keep in tune compared to iron framed pianos. I think they have stopped making them for quite a while. I find it hard to imagine a high school using an instrument requiring so much maintenance.
If it was indeed a wooden framed piano, it was probably more of an antique than a practical instrument, and so, maybe with ivory keys, though again I doubt it.
They used to, but once cast iron frames could be made that's how it was done, initially in several pieces, and later in one piece. The story of how this came to pass is quite interesting, making such large casts isn't simple.
Yes, in fact that's how it started. The 'upright' was a way to sell pianos to lower income families because it's cheaper to manufacture and easier to situate in a small home. Prior to 1825 all pianos were made of just wood, and played reasonably soft, usually with just one or at most two strings per note (that's where the term Una Corda originally comes from, now it denotes a pedal that (on grand pianos) causes the action to shift a bit to the right so it will miss a string in the higher register).
That also made them pretty finicky, changing moisture and temperature would have a significant effect on the pitch of the piano. At that time 'standard pitch' was about A4@423 Hz, considerably below what it is today (A4@440), which lessened the problems somewhat but if you wanted to have your instrument well tuned you had better learn how to tune it yourself.
For harpsichord players (the predecessor to the piano) today self tuning is still the standard.
Piano history is fascinating, if you are interested in the subject I'd recommend reading 'Of men, women and pianos' by Arthur Loesser. It's an old book but a fantastic source of historical information about the development of the piano/grand piano.
Ivory is no longer used for piano keys for obvious reasons, that's why in marketing materials you will usually see descriptions like "ivory-feel keys".
“Nature” and “natural” are normative terms that commonly distinguish the world altered and created by humans from the world that isn’t altered or created by humans. It’s clear in context that Sakamoto is using the term accurately in a normative sense, not making a semantic error.
Pollution goes on because it's the convenient path of least resistance, has short term benefits (e.g. we keep indulging in consumptiona as usual) and there are huge profit interests. That simple.
How we see nature plays little role, in after-the-fact justifications or condemnations. In fact pollution could be justified under either view:
Humanity is different than nature: all we do is pollution, in the sense that is outside of nature. So why single any specific act out? Or other potential arguments: "We are better than nature, and we'll eventually just sort pollution out with our technology".
Humanitity is "just" nature: so what we do is natural, including pollution. No need to do something else, we just keep doing what comes natural to us, including polluting. Why consider huge heaps of human garbage any worse that we consider other animals creating their own waste?
If you yourself can cut a tree down and do whatever else to make a piano, there's no world created by humans. It'll take you a while but in the end there's only you and your shiny new piano and nature.
If there is a distributed process with countless people and organizations using intricate mechanisms to build components of mechanisms that build mechanisms that extract natural resources for building mechanisms for preparing different parts that are eventually put together as a piano (which itself is almost a side effect, a minor detail almost no participant of the process sees or even knows about)... that's a world. If you click a button and have this thing show up at your house and not know a bit about what goes into it much less do it yourself... that's a world.
>If there is a distributed process with countless people and organizations using intricate mechanisms to build components of mechanisms that
And then someone will go on being pedantic and bring forward bees and ant colonies and the like. Let's call it "a matter of degree/scale/breadth" this might shut them up!
I was going to point out that it is kind of a spectrum but decided to try and see what I can make of binary differentiation. You're right it's not great, too vague, writing doesn't like that and favors black and white thinking and neat causality chains, but few are able to see it as a limitation of writing as medium instead of how things "actually" are.
The whole nature vs civilization narrative, is a story told by happy regressors, who want to return to a ilusionary before time, were all things were harmony and civilization was not. It is of course, a call for mass murder on billions of humans with the rumbling instincts from the brain stem and guts as justification. Were it justified with any other argument, civilized society would tear them to shreds, but in the robe of the shaman, they are exempt from the duty of reasoning.
None the less, his music is great and can be enjoyed, like any other artists, without listening to the political and culture drivel that artists sadly often produce. They are easily captured and swayed by instinct tautological ideologies.
Just because it feels right does not mean it to be true.
My favorite rendition of his "My love wears forbidden colors"
"The whole nature vs civilization narrative, is a story told by happy regressors, who want to return to a ilusionary before time"
Or maybe it is a bit more complex. And the story maybe begins with civilized people who explicitly wanted to conquer nature. To make it bow to mens will. And quite some still want to exactly this. They were the ones creating that artificial distinction.
The romanticism of nature that you are criticize, is more of a counter movement to that philosophy, that we are in fact part of nature and we have to find our balance within the greater cycles.
I see this even within ideas like “AI alignment”, make a machine that could potentially think, then smash it over the head with wokeness and values so we don’t destroy ourselves with it.
The reasoning would be, as civilization advances, things become more complex, to the point of us not even understanding the complexity. Same arguments applied to AI for example. With greater complexity, the potential for harm increases. As an historic example, can be seen with technology used in wars, that caused increased devastation to the point of a mutual destruction scenario.
My mom was the babysitter of his son (with Norika) for a few years in the 90s. I was around 6-7 years old. I remember Norika as being incredibly kind. She would let my mom bring me to their home often while babysitting their toddler. We had just immigrated from China, so I was decked out in very fobby clothing. Norika took me to The Gap one day and bought a whole new wardrobe for me. I'm still grateful for her kind gesture 30 years later. I never spoke with Ryuichi. To me, he was just this mysterious man who occasionally showed up at the apartment and would go straight to his studio.
Is this the same "Miss Sakamoto" who as the wife of Ryuchi, peripherally involved in the production of Thomas Dolby's She Blinded Me With Science, inspired the quote from the scientist in that song?
No, if anyone, that would have been his first wife Akiko Yano, who is a jazz piano player and singer. She can be seen in footage from live YMO performances, as an additional band member.
"An artist's initial broad stroke is always most impactful, and obsessively adding layer upon layer of paint to fill in details often diminishes the painting's aura. When an aura is lost, it is impossible to get back." - Ryuichi Sakamoto
Sad news. I love his work with Alva Noto, the blend of experimental piano with raw electronic sounds and glitches is really something special: https://spotify.link/2LzLYmBKFyb.
I was lucky enough to see them play together a couple of times and it was spellbinding. His album “async” is a favourite too. I’ll have to dig more into his back catalogue.
Same. I'm a big fan. I caught their performance once in Hong Kong many years ago. Very captivating. Good reminder to celebrate a life well lived by rediscovering his beautiful artwork.
oooooh... mentioning Alva Noto did the trick for me and I remembered who the guy is. contemplated a lot regarding to what folks around those lands mean by a negative space. brilliant music
I saw a Sakamoto quote along the lines of negative space on Twitter, not sure of the source or context exactly but I liked it.
—
After the concert, we started talking, and he complained that I played much slower than the original songs or pieces. He asked, "Why?" That made me think, "Why do I
want to play much slower than before?"
Because I wanted to hear the resonance. want to have less notes and more spaces.
Spaces, not silence. Space is resonant, is still ringing. I want to enjoy that resonance, to hear it growing, then the next sound, and the next note or harmony can come. That's exactly what I want
I had heard him here and there, but the first time I really started paying attention to him was the Zero Landmine[1] project. After that I watched him alongside David Bowie in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence[2] and realized he was the creator of that famous melody. After that I was hooked. Like others in this thread I really love his collaborations with Alva Noto, especially By This River[3]. I'm sad he's gone, but I'm happy we will always have the great things he created.
Just want to share a couple great works by Sakamoto. I'm a big fan. One of my favorite bossa nova albums is A Day In New York by Morelenbaum/Sakamoto. Here's Desafinado from that album:
"After the concert, we started talking, and he complained that I played much slower than the original songs or pieces. He asked, “Why?” That made me think, “Why do I want to play much slower than before?” Because I wanted to hear the resonance. I want to have less notes and more spaces. Spaces, not silence. Space is resonant, is still ringing. I want to enjoy that resonance, to hear it growing, then the next sound, and the next note or harmony can come. That’s exactly what I want."
Gabriel Fauré's Pavane Op. 50 is an example of a song that really turns into something drastically different when played much slower than the prescribed tempo. To me it sounds much better that way. In the case of this rendition of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, it's a bit more subtle though. It really does allow you to hear the strings resonate more like you quoted, and to me, it makes the entire piece sound even more contemplative than it already did.
And Sakamoto would end up being involved in some of those Sylvian solo records.
A fly on the wall video of the 1st album [1] recording sessions was posted couple of years ago [2] which includes bits where you can see Sylvian/Sakamoto working together.
RIP to a very talented guy. I haven’t listen to much of his solo work, but Yellow Magic Orchestra was something very special, I saw it as “out of this world” music.
This is as surprising to me as it is sad. 2 of 3 YMO members now gone at 70 and 71 which seems very young given the renown of Japanese longevity. Anyway, Beauty is a favorite album from my childhood so probably time for a re-listen.
> seems very young given the renown of Japanese longevity
Well, Sakamoto-san didn't exactly live a traditional Japanese life. Three marriages, playing in a band in the '70s (so disreputable!), jet-setting around the world... Shit takes its toll (unless you're Mick Jagger, of course).
A number of prolific Japanese Jazz keyboardists/pianists have died relatively young. Hirotaka Izumi, who played keyboards for T-Square and Pyramid, died from acute heart failure at 62. The Japanese Jazz composer and pianist Jun Fukamachi, who released an average of over one album per year in his 39 years as a band leader, died from an aortic dissection at 64. Japanese jazz pianist and composer Hiromasa Suzuki, who has over a hundred album writing credits to his name, died at 61.
Do I spy a fellow T-Square fan? You have any other recommendations? I've found a few related bands in the Casiopea/T-Square family but I have a feeling there's a whole iceberg left to delve into if I can find it.
Other than the artists I mentioned, I also enjoy Masayoshi Takanaka, Kazumi Watanabe, Horii Katsumi Project, Dimension, Trix, Prism, and Fragile. Which reminds me that Fragile's drummer, Kozo Suganuma, also died relatively young a couple years back, at 62.
Sakamoto must have died with a bitter taste in his mouth, watching the government try to restart the nuclear plants under the pretext of power shortage. He had always been a vocal opponent of nuclear power, a rare voice in a country that seemed to have forgotten the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He had a sharp wit and a playful style, but also a deep sense of justice and compassion. He would have hated to see his beloved country go down this path of self-destruction.
People and admins here should stop downvoting everything, otherwise it turns into too much of censorship/taboo. I find nothing wrong with this comment, and find it informative. I didn't know this view of Sakamoto, and I'm glad to know it. Here's more information in an interview with Mr.Sakamoto on the topic of Fukushima-
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14222706
I downvoted because I feel it's abusing Sakamoto's passing for the personal agenda of the poster. This is far from neutral information, especially the way it is presented.
Nuclear reactors produce plutonium. A world without any nuclear reactors or uranium enrichment facilities, is a world without nuclear weapons.
It's perhaps particularly relevant with Japan; they are the nation probably most often used as an example of a country that could develop nuclear weapons almost overnight, should the political will materialize. They have the know-how, industry, missiles, and because of the nuclear power program, both stockpiles of, and the ability to produce, both enriched uranium and plutonium.
Edit: Did I hit a nerve or something folks?
For the record I personally strongly support nuclear power. Parent asked a question. It's obvious to me why anti-nuclear activists link weapons and power reactors. It's not (necessarily) lack of scientific understanding -- power reactors produce the material for nuclear bombs. Some people think that is unacceptable as a proliferation risk. Don't shoot the messenger? Was just trying to contribute to the discussion positively.
... and so? The death toll due to to nuclear weapons is a small fraction of people killed since them by either small arms or fossil fuel pollution.
If one attributes the U.S. stepping back from nuclear power to the anti-proliferation scare of the mid-1970s (good heavens, brown people are making plutonium!) you might then consider the alternate path where the U.S. had stayed the course, built the 500 reactors it had planned to build by 2000, and we'd be talking about some other crisis than the "climate crisis."
The constant drumbeat about Hiroshima and Nagasaki is part of a larger syndrome where Japan never reconciled with its neighbors after WWII the way Germany did and now is stuck with a pacifist constitution that seems more of a problem than a solution year after year as that part of the word becomes increasingly dangerous.
While nuclear power came before nuclear weapons, nuclear power was developed with the express purpose of producing weapons (Manhattan Project). Only in the 50s did nuclear power find civilian (i.e. non-violent) application.
While nuclear power and weapons use similar technology, their purpose is diametrically opposed.
> Only in the 50s did nuclear power find civilian (i.e. non-violent) application.
Many of the early designs like Magnox and RBMK were for producing plutonium first, and power second. Nuclear power was a public relations project more than anything else, at least initially. The UK and Russia continue dual use with their power reactors today.
> their purpose is diametrically opposed
The purpose is decided by those who control the reactors. For example, the power reactors used in Canada produce plutonium, from natural uranium. Canada built a small heavy water research reactor in India; the material for their first nuclear bomb was made in that reactor. This was expressly not the intent of Canada.
The thrust of my argument, just to make it explicit, is that I think it is unwise to jettison nuclear power as an abundant source of energy because of the nuclear weapon connection. Alas, these days this view is rather in the minority.
>A world without any nuclear reactors or uranium enrichment facilities, is a world without nuclear weapons.
But this is a plain naive argument to make. At this point saying "destroying all nuclear bombs means no more nuclear bombs" is also technically correct, but even if, let's say, civil nuclear energy was impossible to manage, there would still be uranium enrichment facilities designed with the sole purpose of creating nuclear weapons, because they give such a significant strategic advantage to superpowers; they just wouldn't allow not to have it when others can.
So even without nuclear power plants you would still have nuclear weapons, I really never understood the argument of causation civilian and military nuclear energy, on can exist without the other.
Incidentally ... the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were dramatic single events that unleashed great destruction, but the results for those cities were not worse than those in other cities in Japan facing bomb firestorms. The nuclear bombs didn't factor much into Japan's eventual surrender.
"There is general agreement that the bombing of Nagasaki did little in the way of changing the hearts and minds of the Japanese military. By blaming their surrender on the atomic bombs, Japan avoided the Soviet Union having a hand in the post-war reconstruction process. Japan was afraid that the Soviet Union might try to push a communist regime onto the country. It was also very convenient for the U.S. that Japan attributed their surrender to the atomic bombings."
So sad to hear this. One of my all time favorite artists. I discovered him years ago as Yellow Magic Orchestra were a crucial influence on electro and techno. As someone into the early roots of those genres, YMO became my gateway drug into Sakamoto's wider oeuvre.
I always identified with his taste, an eclectic mix of pop, art music, classical and electronic. A true original, I will miss him greatly.
tidbit: he had rather large hand with long fingers for someone who is 171cm. I went a museum that had a cast of his hands and I was surprised at how large they were.
I always managed to miss him live, to my regret. I have his COVID-era box set with a fragment of the plate that he hand painted, broke and recorded, but it feels so sad to never have been in the same room or crossed his path randomly in NYC (one can dream). Having never experienced a Morricone performance, either, and knowing that I'd probably never see Ryuichi on stage, is what drove me this year to see as many favorite musical acts live as possible, before it's too late.
Sakamoto had a way of doing and thinking through things better than many, but still with some sort of simplicity. I mean, he was in a class of his own even for something as mundane as washing hands: https://youtu.be/VnV4GGXIhfM (of course, this hits differently now than when it first came out)
Recently, he also streamed multiple times over a weekend this one hour "concert", actually a compilation of pieces he played with obvious difficulty in a Tokyo studio, over an entire week. There's supposed to be a release of that, too, at some point.
I just found out about YMO in January and have been slightly obsessed with them since then. Now another member dies, it's sad to read. Seeing this on the front page of HN is nice though, and I just am now realizing the massive breadth of Mr. Sakamoto's musical skills. There's still so much amazing music to discover out there, and I'm glad to see that his legacy will remain, and that his music will be listened to by many people who might have never heard it before!
Oh that sucks. Only 71... I was listening to Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence just yesterday in the car. Amazing music and a pretty good movie too, if you have the stomach for it.
The full track is not on Youtube or Spotify (believe me I tried) so I purchased the CD from Amazon just for that one track (I didn't care about the others)
Annoyed by Restaurant Playlists Ryuichi Sakamoto assembled the soundtrack for Kajitsu,(a Japanese restaurant) in Murray Hill (NYC), and what it says about the sounds we hear (or should) while we eat.
I only just this year discovered Yellow Magic Orchestra, such forward music for it's time and I feel hugely influenced a lot of the video game composers of later years.
It feels odd to upvote this type of post. Yet I don't really know what I want to say. It's saddening to say the least. Ever since I heard Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Mr Sakamoto has had a special place in my heart. What gifts he gave to the world.
- Ryuichi Sakamoto