Music Monday: Yoko Kanno and The Seatbelts

Yoko Kanno is a Japanese musician and composer, who, in a word, is a musical genius.

If you’re an anime fan, or have even had a glimpse of one, you’ve probably heard something of hers, from the iconic brass lines of the song “Tank!”, the theme song for Cowboy Bebop- with only one line of spoken word: “I think it’s time to blow this scene, get everybody and their stuff together, okay, 3,2,1, let’s jam”, at which point, the jam does indeed begin.

Brass is not Kanno’s only talent, however, she’s done exquisite orchestrated compositions for Escaflowne, not to mention the music she’s written and performed for other shows like Ghost in the Shell, Jin-Roh, Earth Maiden Arjuna, and many others. She’s also done pieces for video games, from 1985 until now.

She has also been commissioned by a plethora of companies to do the music for their advertisements, of these, Microsoft, 7/11, Nintendo, Avon, Sharp and Toyota are the most popular in the US. Many more pieces are played in her native Japan’s commercials.

What makes her music so good? Is it the complicated yet absolutely beautiful brass items that whisk you away to another planet? Is it the mind blowing talent of the band, the sultry saxophonists, the tantalizing trumpets, or the dazzling drummers? Kanno’s so good she can mold her music to the requirements, and can even incorporate other sounds like gunshots and screams and car alarms into it, and it would still sound fantastic (like she did in “24 Hours Open”).

The Seatbelts are the other part of the team, the bold brassists backing Kanno. If money was talent, these guys could pay for tuition for everybody in every school everywhere, with change to spare. Their name itself is clever, stemming from the fictional description given in Cowboy Bebop, because they needed to wear seatbelts to stay in one piece during their incredible jam sessions.
They play mostly big band jazz numbers (a perfect fit for the tone of Bebop), but also dabble in blues, country, hip hop and experimental elements.

The band produced Cowboy Bebop’s music in its entirety, making 7 CDs and one live DVD during the course of the show (and the movie).

The Seatbelts has members worldwide, with groups of members in Japan, New York, Paris and Oslo. There are also a slew of guest vocalists like Franco Sansalone, Maaya Sakamoto, Raj Ramayya, Tim Jensen, and many others.

Sadly, The Seatbelts unfastened in 2004, only reuniting briefly to record another soundtrack for another video game based off Cowboy Bebop. Still, their music is still incredible and largely unknown outside of the anime fanbase and Japan.

I love pretty much all of Kanno’s music, so to pick just a few personal favorites is rather difficult.

The most played songs on my iTunes are “What Planet is This?”, “Rush”, “Ride on Technology”, “Enka”, and “Yo Pumpkin Head”.  Their music is definitely worth checking out, and available for free listening at http://www.imeem.com/artists/yoko_kanno/