Asia

亞洲

Electronic music

電子音樂

The sonic outernationalist

聲音的外部民族主義者

Sakamoto Ryuichi heard how the world sounds—and changed it

坂本龍一聽到了這個(gè)世界的聲音，并改變了它

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SAKAMOTO RYUICHI, who died on March 28th after a long battle with cancer, once described his musical method thus: “I open my ears to the world.” But what Mr Sakamoto heard, few others could. As a member of the Japanese techno-pop band Yellow Magic Orchestra, he helped pioneer modern electronic music. As a composer of epic film scores he enlivened the work of directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci and Alejandro I?árritu. In his later solo work, he grappled with mortality in haunting ambient soundscapes. His passing elicited tributes from musical luminaries around the world, testimony to the influence of his genre-spanning career.

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坂本龍一在與癌癥長(zhǎng)期斗爭(zhēng)后于3月28日去世，他曾這樣描述自己的音樂方法:“我向世界敞開耳朵?！钡啾鞠壬牭降?，很少有人能聽到。作為日本電子流行樂隊(duì)黃色魔術(shù)交響樂團(tuán)的成員，他幫助開創(chuàng)了現(xiàn)代電子音樂。作為史詩(shī)電影配樂的作曲家，他為貝納爾多·貝托魯奇和亞利桑德羅·伊納里圖等導(dǎo)演的作品注入了活力。在他后來的獨(dú)奏作品中，他在縈繞不去的聲音環(huán)境中與死亡搏斗。他的去世引起了世界各地音樂名人的悼念，證明了他跨流派的音樂生涯影響力。

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Mr Sakamoto was born in Tokyo in 1952 and took to music early. He graduated from one of Tokyo’s top conservatories, where he studied Western classical music, becoming especially enamoured with Claude Debussy. There, he also explored an interest in the traditional music of Japan’s Okinawa prefecture as well as in that of India and Africa.

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坂本先生1952年出生于東京，很早就喜歡上了音樂。他畢業(yè)于東京一所頂級(jí)音樂學(xué)院，在那里他學(xué)習(xí)西方古典音樂，并特別迷戀克洛德·德彪西。在那里，他還建立了對(duì)日本沖繩以及印度和非洲傳統(tǒng)音樂的興趣。

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Early in his career, Mr Sakamoto trained his ears on the sound of technology. Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), a group he formed in 1978 alongside Hosono Haruomi and Takahashi Yukihiro, used synthesisers in instrumental songs intended for dancing—a novel combination at the time. “Errors or noises absorb me and I wonder if new cultural currents could emerge from this deficiency,” Mr Sakamoto said in “Tokyo Melody”, a 1984 documentary about his experiments. That was exactly what happened: Mr Sakamoto’s music helped inspire what would later become techno and hip-hop. His early work also presaged the bleeps and boops that became the soundscape of the modern digital world. (He would take a turn at composing some of those too, including ringtones for early Nokia mobile phones.)

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在音樂生涯的早期，坂本先生訓(xùn)練自己的耳朵去聽電子音。他在1978年與細(xì)野晴臣和高橋幸宏一起組建的樂隊(duì)“黃色魔術(shù)交響樂團(tuán)”(YMO)，在舞蹈器樂歌曲中使用電子合成器——這在當(dāng)時(shí)是一種新穎的組合。坂本先生在1984年關(guān)于他實(shí)驗(yàn)的紀(jì)錄片《東京旋律：一部關(guān)于坂本龍一的電影》中說:“錯(cuò)誤或噪音吸引著我，我想知道新的文化潮流是否會(huì)從這種缺陷中產(chǎn)生?！笔聦?shí)正是如此：坂本先生的音樂激發(fā)了后來的電子音樂和嘻哈音樂。他的早期作品也預(yù)示著嗶嗶聲和嘭嘭聲成為現(xiàn)代數(shù)字世界的聲音環(huán)境。(他也會(huì)輪流創(chuàng)作其中的一些，包括早期的諾基亞手機(jī)鈴聲。)

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YMO’s success made Mr Sakamoto a star in Japan, leading to a role opposite David Bowie in Oshima Nagisa’s 1983 film “Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence”. Mr Sakamoto agreed to act in the movie on the condition that he could score it. His compositions, which blended melodic piano chords, sweeping synthesisers and Javanese gamelan, propelled him to global fame—and established his bona fides as an artist who could bridge east and west.

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YMO的成功使坂本先生成為日本的明星，并在大島渚1983年的電影《圣誕快樂，勞倫斯先生》中與大衛(wèi)·鮑伊演對(duì)手戲。坂本先生出演的條件是為這部電影配樂。他的作品融合了旋律優(yōu)美的鋼琴和弦、覆蓋全面的合成器和爪哇加美蘭音樂，使他享譽(yù)全球——并成為一名促進(jìn)東西方交流的藝術(shù)家。

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“I want to break down the walls between genres, categories or cultures,” he said many years later. He described his philosophy as “outernationalism”. “Being outernational is like Moses in the desert. There’s no country.”

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“我想打破流派、類別或文化之間的壁壘，”多年后他說。他將自己的人生哲學(xué)描述為“外部民族主義”。“堅(jiān)持“外部民族主義”就像沙漠中的摩西。無(wú)國(guó)界限制?！?/p>

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In the second half of his career he turned towards the sound of nature. “He listened to the wind blowing and the water falling, he listened to the rocks moving and to the leaves fluttering, and he introduced those sounds—consciously and subconsciously—into his music,” says Roger Pulvers, an author and film director.

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在他職業(yè)生涯的后半期，他轉(zhuǎn)向了自然之音。作家兼電影導(dǎo)演羅杰·普爾弗斯(Roger Pulvers)說:“他聽著風(fēng)吹過和水落下的聲音，巖石移動(dòng)和樹葉飄動(dòng)的聲音，他有意無(wú)意地將這些聲音融入到自己的音樂中。”

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His sonic interests dovetailed with his politics. Unusually for a Japanese musician, Mr Sakamoto used his fame to speak out on social and political issues, including environmental preservation and the oppression of Okinawans. Nuclear power was a particular bugbear. “They know nuclear power is unnecessary and dangerous,” he railed in an interview in 2006, five years before an earthquake and tsunami rocked north-east Japan and triggered a nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. In the wake of the disaster, Mr Sakamoto travelled often to the region to support local residents.

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他的音樂興趣與他的政治相吻合。不同尋常的是，坂本先生利用自己的名氣談?wù)撋鐣?huì)和政治問題，包括環(huán)境保護(hù)和對(duì)沖繩人的壓迫。核能尤其讓他擔(dān)憂。“他們知道核能是不必要的和危險(xiǎn)的，”他在2006年的一次采訪中抱怨道，那是在地震和海嘯襲擊日本東北部并引發(fā)福島核泄漏的五年前。在災(zāi)難發(fā)生后，坂本先生經(jīng)常前往該地區(qū)支援當(dāng)?shù)鼐用瘛?/p>

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In 2014 a first cancer diagnosis shook Mr Sakamoto’s life. But even that could not mute his longing to hear more. The next year he composed the score for Mr I?árritu’s “The Revenant”. Two years later he released “async”, an ambient album constructed around collages of poetry and music that was recorded partly on a water-damaged piano he found in a schoolhouse after the tsunami. In “Coda”, a documentary about Mr Sakamoto released the same year, he can be seen traversing the North Pole and dropping microphones underneath the ice. “I’m fishing the sound,” he says, grinning at the camera, before declaring his catch “the purest I’ve ever heard”.

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2014年，首例癌癥診斷震動(dòng)了坂本先生的生活。但即使這樣，也不能減弱他想聽到更多的渴望。第二年，他為伊納里圖先生的《荒野獵人》譜曲。兩年后，他發(fā)行了“async”專輯，這是一張圍繞詩(shī)歌和音樂拼接而成的作品，其中一部分音樂是在一架被水損壞的鋼琴上錄制的，它是由阪本先生在一所遭遇海嘯的校舍里發(fā)現(xiàn)。在同年發(fā)行的關(guān)于坂本先生的紀(jì)錄片《坂本龍一：終曲》中，可以看到他穿越北極，將麥克風(fēng)放在冰層下?！拔以诎崖曇翎炆蟻?，”他對(duì)著鏡頭咧嘴笑著說。隨后他宣布自己抓到的是“我聽過的最純凈的聲音”。