Music Sets You Free

A genre-defying artist who had acquired the status of a musical giant by the time of his death in 2023, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s long career spanned electronic, hip-hop, modern classical and pop music, inspiring artists as diverse as Questlove, Massive Attack, David Sylvian, Alva Noto and Caetano Veloso.

A pivotal figure in the synthpop group Yellow Magic Orchestra during the late 70s and early 80s, Sakamoto went on to pioneer the development of ambient and electronic music in ever more experimental forms. Perhaps best known for his film scores, he won an Oscar for Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, written with David Byrne, and found global fame with music for Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (in which he starred alongside David Bowie) and, later, The Revenant. Sakamoto’s career was also marked by social activism, including campaigning for more recognition of the effects of global warming, which he witnessed first-hand during a visit to Greenland.

Music Sets You Free combines the translations of Sakamoto’s two memoirs published in Japanese – Music Makes You Free and How Many More Times Will I Watch the Full Moon Rise? It offers an intimate, contemplative account of his life, from his first encounter with a piano, to his rise as a global pop star, and his later reflections on mortality and music in the wake of multiple cancer treatments and surgeries.

An affirming, beautifully written testament to art, life and sound, Music Sets You Free is a lasting gift from a true musical great.

Reviews

‘Arguably the best-known and most successful Japanese musician in the world’ The New Yorker

‘An elegant and timeless artist’ Johnny Marr, co-creator and lead guitarist of The Smiths

About the author

Ryuichi Sakamoto (1952-2023) lived many musical lives over his 71 years. As a keyboardist and songwriter in Haruomi Hosono’s Yellow Magic Orchestra, he helped set the stage for synthpop. His solo experiments in fusing global genres and close studies of classical impressionism led to him scoring over 30 films in as many years, including Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and The Sheltering Sky, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant. He also wrote a multimedia opera, turned a glass building into an instrument, and travelled to the Arctic to record the sound of melting snow. ‘Music, work, and life all have a beginning and an ending,’ said Sakamoto in early 2019. ‘What I want to make now is music freed from the constraints of time.’