Ryuichi Sakamoto -- Riot in Lagos（ライオット・イン・ラゴス）

(1952-2023)

 

I first read about it from Naika Video's tweet earlier this morning. My reaction was "Oh, man, really?!". I knew that Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）had been in pretty bad health after the announcement of his second bout with Stage 4 rectal cancer last June, and subsequent comments from him hinted that things were in the endgame. Still, my first Sunday in April 2023 has been given a sore dent on the news that The Professor finally succumbed to the disease last Tuesday on March 28th at the age of 71, and this was just a few months after his YMO bandmate Yukihiro Takahashi's（高橋幸宏）passing on January 11th.

Yellow Magic Orchestra was a band that I had known about since around 1979, the year following their official debut but I really didn't get my first impression of Sakamoto until I saw him in close-up on my "Best One '82 YMO Daizenshuu"（大全集）which I got as a present from my brother after he'd come back home from his Japan trip that year. Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）looked like a New Wave rocker, Takahashi looked dapper as always but Sakamoto in the right corner of that triangle appeared as a weird spectacle-wearing nerd. Perfect as an eccentric Professor! I can get along with Sakamoto, I proclaimed.

Of course, I would always associate Sakamoto with YMO and their brand of catchy and happy technopop but going into the 1980s, I also knew him as someone who had been once called "the world's most beautiful man" starring alongside another world's most beautiful man in the form of David Bowie in "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence", whose theme song had been created by Sakamoto himself and has become a Xmas staple on store speakers.

Further going beyond those YMO days, Sakamoto would win an Oscar alongside Talking Heads' David Byrne and Chinese composer Cong Su for their joint work on the soundtrack for "The Last Emperor" in 1987. When I was back in Japan from the mid-1990s, I got to know Sakamoto again for his pop classical and healing music. And of course, all throughout that time, he was also contributing compositions and arrangements for other singers ranging from Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）to Mari Iijima（飯島真理）to Miki Imai（今井美樹）. I'm not sure if there had ever been anything called a Sakamoto sound but on hearing those creations, I could only say "Ah, naruhodo!". The best that I can offer is that he left a good amount of cool elegance in those.

Seeing photos of Sakamoto, knowing that his nickname was "kyouju"（教授...professor） and according to the wide variety of music he composed, I had assumed that for all of that genius talent on display, the one thing he lacked was a sense of humour. Luckily, I was wrong there. I will always remember that scene on comedy duo Downtown's Sunday night variety show where Sakamoto was beaten soundly for humour's sake, and yup, I saw that one live.

I'd been wondering what to do on the blog when I read about Sakamoto's death. Back in 2021, I had already written a couple of articles on my favourite songs by him along with some of his other intriguing works, so that was one option used. I'd also thought about revisiting a couple of his famous YMO songs, "Behind the Mask" and "Technopolis", but in the end, I felt that I couldn't really add anything further to them.

So instead, I've opted to write about a song whose title I've heard quite a lot but whose actual song I never really paid much attention to. Sakamoto came up with "Riot in Lagos" which was a track on his September 1980 2nd album, "B-2 Unit" and then a 1981 single released only in West Germany. Actually Jacob Braybrooke on his "One Track at a Time" blog gave a very thorough review of the song almost three years ago like a proper music expert. I can only give my thoughts as a listener and a currently sad fan.

Braybrooke mentioned that "Riot in Lagos" was a Sakamoto tangent from the happy package that YMO produced. Indeed, compared to "Behind the Mask" and "Technopolis", "Riot in Lagos" has more of an avant-garde vibe in that technopop almost to the extent that I'd actually considered not even putting in the Pop into Labels. From the title, I had expected something rather raucous and perhaps even danceable, but instead, the song comes across as an intrepid and mysterious adventure through chrome seas and forests whose trees consist of computer code; there's even some alien nattering somewhere in the song. It might have been ideal as part of the soundtrack for the original "Matrix". Included in the technopop is some of that Asian and African rhythm, something that Sakamoto had a great interest in as a student at university.

In the J-Wiki article for "Riot in Lagos" with the original source being an interview in a 2011 issue of "SWITCH" magazine, Sakamoto's old bandmate Hosono complimented the song thusly: "Rather than just a song, I thought it was amazing as a work of art that included the structure of sound. A subtle ethnic sensibility of the time was included which made for an exquisite balance".

When I found out about Sakamoto's passing, the news had been barely fifteen minutes old so there was very little mention of it elsewhere. But by around the lunch hour, the announcements and tributes were beginning to pile up quickly on social media such as YouTube and Twitter. The next several hours to few days will be filled with stories on The Professor. My condolences go out to Sakamoto's family, friends and fans, and especially Haruomi Hosono who has now lost a couple of his YMO bandmates in the last few months.

I leave you with a YouTube video uploaded by Raymond Larrett.