Plenty of musical artists create music for anime, but in 1998, Yoko Kanno took it a step further and formed a band herself for the sole purpose of creating the soundtrack toCowboy Bebop. What resulted was one of the most legendary names in the history of anime music, and all that for just one of the approximate 60 projects her name has been attached to in anime alone.
The creation of The Seatbelts, their music, and the name recognition of the group alone - despitethem only existing through the lens ofCowboy Bebop, is a testament to Kanno’s composing. Since her earliest works in 1993, she has created a wide breadth of sounds that never lack in soul, thanks to the collaborative spirit of her style, bringing together the best she can find.
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Kanno’s Upbringing
Some fans will listen to Kanno’s work for years without having ever heard a word from the woman herself, and such a thing is a loss because hearing her describe her past is ever so enlightening. For starters, it’s funny to think that she almost wasn’t a musician. There was always music, from practicing piano to participating in contests,but she actually pursued literature.
In an interview with Red Bull Music Academy in 2014, she described her attraction to literature as a byproduct of her adolescent feelings. “It was not obvious deviance like coloring my hair or things like that, but I thought with earnestness and passion about how I wanted the world to end,” she told. She put her complicated thoughts into writing and contemplated becoming a novelist.
She majored in Literature at Waseda University, andyet still found herself writing music for school electivesor as favors to other students. As she was going to school for literature, her endeavors in music were educational in themselves. She described hearing her friend - a drummer - play for her, and how it opened her eyes.
You begin to learn musical mannerisms doing things like that. I had only known classical up until then, so I had zero understanding of rhythm. Like “Rhythm, huh? What is that?” It was really that bad. So after seeing a friend’s drum set for the first time, I was like, “Woooow! What is that?!” “Hold on, what are you doing? What is this? How do you play it?” I was shocked, so I ended up joining the friend’s band elective. I later found out that drums aren’t things which are extremely rare. [laughs]
-Yoko Kanno, 2014
It was one thing to hear drums on the radio as she had, but as she put it, “it was like I had never really noticed them.” Through her elective, she would play popular music that - at first - she couldn’t understand the appeal of. Over time, she began to pick upa deeper understanding of pop musicand its impact on listeners.
Several of Kanno’s first soundtrack works were for video games, such asNobunaga’s Ambition, a role-playing game set in the warring states period. Kanno cites the expediency with which she produced music as the cause of her being brought on. Even at so early a time in her career, the pieces carry a similar power as many of her later works.
Tapping into “Primitive Expression”
Her game soundtracks andher early anime works likeEscaflowneorMacrossare full of appropriately classical tracks teamed with genre-appropriate accouterment. Heroic horn and drum accompaniment forMacrossor a more dramatic chorus inEscaflownegive these soundtracks a grandiosity that elevates the tension.
Some describe good music as a “religious experience” and in Kanno’s case, it’s especially appropriate given her upbringing. Having been raised Catholic, Kanno has pondered how religious music, its power, andits association with ideas of god and death, have impacted her music.
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People say my music sounds “vast” or “religious,” so I wonder sometimes if maybe my childhood experiences have permeated my music, but it’s not like I go out of my way all the time to create a sound that makes people feel that way.
Even if unintentional, the connection alone puts to words exactly what it is about Kanno’s music that can often elicit strong emotions. While this exact kind of “primitive expression” that she associates with religious hymns might be felt more in her classical, orchestral arrangements, it’s an attitude that extends across genres.
Queen of All Genres
As one of her biggest successes,Cowboy Bebopis what many associates with Yoko Kanno’s styling, and even then there is a wide mix of genres at play and artists brought in to help. The music ofBebopwas created with talent from around the globe and so the music feels international. There’s jazz of course, but also rock and pop music ranging from folksy to somber.
There are so many genres that one can hear in Kanno’s music that it seems as if she is a Jack of all trades. While her soundtracks tend to be centered around a particular genre, she will often play around with several in service of broadening the sound of a given media’s world.
InGhost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, she followed the footsteps of Kenji Kawai’s chorus-heavy, ethereal tracks that were very traditional, but gave the series a more varied spy genre feel through fun rock and pop tracks. And in the more dramatic moments, her music was at a level of a Hollywood blockbuster, dripping with tension.
InWolf’s Rain, the jazz and rock motifs combined to create melodies contemplating life through emotional rock tracks. A discussion of Kanno’s resume isn’t complete without mention of vocal tracks, and voices like Steve Conte or Scott Matthew permeate much of her discography. There’s also the curious case of Gabriela Robin, a frequent sight on track lists, who Kanno revealed to be none other than a pseudonym for herself.
She doesn’t shy away from unconventionalsounds not often heard in anime and frequently pulls in singers of different origins. The late Origa, a half-Japanese, half-Russian singer, contributed several notable tracks acrossStand Alone Complex’s numerous albums.
When listening to a lot of Kanno’s music, it isn’t as if there is a consistent theme that is distinctly “her style” in the same way that Hiroyuki Sawano’s music, for example, is distinct. Rather, her music goes to so many places, yet she seems to understand fundamentally what draws people’s ears.
There is a sense that the conventional is never satisfying, nor is the expected enough to guide her pen. Kanno not only has an eye for what works commercially, but she also has an active imagination.Her music alone has to elicit imagery in the mindif it will appropriately accompany the visuals she is creating it for.
There is so much that can be said about Kanno and so much that she has said herself which offers a such sincere and intriguing insight into her process. If it is possible to sum her up, then it would be by her imagination, her versatility, and her capacity to truly hear the world in ways few can. In return, she creates tracks that transcend culture and speak to the heart’s most primordial chords.
