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Ryuichi Sakamoto, a trailblazing composer and producer who was one of the first musicians to incorporate electronic production into popular songcraft, has died at the age of 71.
Sakamoto died on March 28 after a multi-year battle with cancer, according to a statement published on his website Sunday. “We would like to share one of Sakamoto’s favorite quotes,” the statement read. “‘Ars longa, vita brevis.’ Art is long, life is short.”
The Japanese composer had an exceptionally wide-ranging career: he was by turns a synth-pop idol, the composer of both sweeping film scores and quiet, gentle sound environments, and a collaborator of such artists as David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Bernardo Bertolucci.
As a member of Japan’s hugely influential band Yellow Magic Orchestra and as a solo artist, he was a grandfather of electronic pop music, making songs that influenced early hip-hop and techno.
Born on January 17, 1952, Sakamoto enjoyed a culturally rich childhood; his father was the editor for such postwar Japanese novelists as Kenzaburo Oe and Yukio Mishima. He began taking piano lessons when he was 6 years old, and later started writing his own music. As a teenager, he became enamored of the work of Claude Debussy — a composer who himself had been inspired by Asian musical aesthetics, including that of Japan.
As Sakamoto told Weekend Edition in 1988, “I think my music is based on a very Western system, because there’s a beat, there’s a melody, there’s harmony. So this is Western music. But you know, some feeling, some atmosphere, or sense of sound is a little bit Asian, maybe 25, 30 percent.”
By the time Sakamoto reached university to study composition, his musical life was already following multiple paths simultaneously.
