Yoko Kanno was born on March 18th, 1963, in Sendai—the capital city of Miyagi Prefecture in Japan, as well as the second largest city north of Tokyo. She began her interest in music whilst attending church with her parents. From then on she would go onto learning how to play keyboard—diving into both the piano and organ. Her start in composing music began soon after in elementary school where she took part in music composition contests. Her focus in music faltered in high school. Her parents had not allowed her to listen to more than classical music while she lived with them, but this changed when Yoko Kanno started university.
While at Waseda University, Yoko Kanno met up with a friend who introduced her to different concepts of rhythm, as well as new ways to look at music. This re-sparked Yoko Kanno’s love for music and with this, she joined one of universities band elective. It was here when Yoko Kanno began studying more pop music. Yoko Kanno also took part in her first ever composition for a video game. The game company Koei had asked her to compose music for their game Nobunaga’s Ambition. This was only the beginning of Kanno’s fantastic work.
Once deep into her professional career, she composed many soundtracks and themes for video games, TV shows, movies, and even jingles for commercials. In many of these works, Yoko Kanno strives to imbue each with real world themes and specific philosophies. A good example of this is her work for the anime Ghost in the Shell.
The music within this series comprises a wide variety of different sounding themes, from rock to trance electronic, to big choral pieces. Some of Kanno’s reasoning for certain choices of “less masculine” and more vocal sounding music was to juxtapose the original manga. Ghost in the Shell takes place in a cyberpunk future where the lines between human and machine are blurred frequently, and Kanno leans into that with a lot of vocal and intimate “human-like” music.
Another staple of Yoko Kanno’s work is the mass number of genres she works in. Listening to her discography you will find jazz, blues, pop, rock, J-pop, electronic and techno, eerie music, angry and energizing music, regal and gospel like music, as well as some of the chillest music you’ll ever hear—and this is barely scraping the full barrel! For an album that highlights many different styles of music that Kanno dives into, listen to her debut studio album titled Songs To Fly (1998). (Also check out my concert program of this album {here}, where I highlight the use of space and how it affects Yoko Kanno’s music, as well as show the wide range of her musical capabilities).
Gabriela Robin
A common creator that seems to have followed Yoko Kanno throughout her career, and one which had, for a time, confused and intrigued many fans of her work, is the one known as Gabriela Robin. She first started working with Kanno as early as 1986, shortly after Kanno started her professional career in 1985. Her music can be characterized as surreal, bubbly, innocent, or sometimes even eerie—similar to the widespread of styles Kanno herself composes in. Robin often writes lyrics to her music, but in a language that supposedly only she can understand and decipher, sounding like a mixture between English, French, and Japanese. She is credited with being a vocalist and lyricist in such songs as “Cats on Mars” as well as “Green Bird” from the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack, and “Atomic Bird” and “ABC Mouse Parade” among others.
In 2009, the mystery of who Gabriela Robin was, was to be revealed—as evident in an interview that resides in a brochure for Yoko Kanno’s concert Super Dimensional Star Festival Sonic. It was an interview with Gabriela Robin, who announced that she was going to reveal herself in the concert for the first time ever, saying that she has “began to feel the stars are set and the wheels of time are linked, which made me decide to sing in front of you, so we share the undulation.” Accompanying her interview was a picture of herself.
It wasn’t until near the end of the concert, after conducting the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra for the piece “End Title Nostalgia” that Yoko Kanno, herself, turned around and performed “Moon” from the show Turn A Gundam. This led many to believe that Gabriela Robin was simply a pseudonym for Yoko Kanno, but no other comments by either have been made since.
SEATBELTS
Another crucial project within Yoko Kanno’s life, occurred first with her spectacular work on the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack. The show itself revolves around bounty hunters in space, trying to make ends meet. The show also has a lot of influence including westerns as well as sci-fi and noir. These influences are only further attenuated through Kanno’s music, as she embraces her wide range of and refusal to stick to one genre to hit each of these points.
https://youtu.be/WKnVaDwUg5s (Space Lion, for space and noir) https://youtu.be/Qbip5oZVL94 (Waltz for Zizi, for western and folk) and https://youtu.be/wN7x4DlfuCY (Pot City, for… extra vibes).
Music is a huge theme within the entire show of Cowboy Bebop, the title of the show is even named after the style of jazz that focuses on rapid chord changes and the rejection of, at the time, modern trends and music. Even each episode is referred to as a “session”. So, in order to create the unique sound for Cowboy Bebop, and to support the themes and influences of the show itself, Yoko Kanno created the band SEATBELTS. The band had a main focus on jazz specifically for the show, but also did a lot of rock and roll, blues, folk, and electronic music, among many many other styles. Supposedly, the reason for their name “SEATBELTS” refers to how intense their jam sessions were: so intense that they would need seatbelts to literally strap themselves in to be safe, at least that’s how the first album of the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack describes it. This intensity is extremely evident in the first song you hear performed by SEATBELTS: “Tank!”, the intro theme to Cowboy Bebop.
Overall, Yoko Kanno is the name of someone who found her passion in music, and rejected the norms of modern day composers. She refused to stick to a singular genre of music, and imbued every single piece she composed with as much importance as the last.