INDEX
Expressing difficult things in “an easy way” and “having the courage” to accept difficult things as they are
What was Ryuichi Sakamoto, who passed away the other day, like to you?
Ezaki: He was definitely one of the people I grew up watching behind me. I remember when I was in high school, I came across his autobiographical book, “Music Makes Us Free,” and was drawn into reading it. I think it is very rare for a musician to have friendships with people from various fields and to be able to delve deeply into each area. I am attracted to musicians who are like translators of various genres.
From Brazilian music to club music to contemporary music.
Ezaki: And not only music, but you can also talk about philosophy. I get the impression that you can express very difficult things in an easy way, and perhaps that overlaps with my impression of you as a “translator. You have a great sense of balance between using technically academic and experimental techniques while at the same time producing output with melodies that can be sung to anyone’s lips.
That is exactly what you are aiming for, isn’t it?
Ezaki: That’s right. I hope to be able to do a kind of translation, and I also hope to do that in the area of “education. Sharing what I know with many people is a valuable act. It is one of the “things that must be done,” and I would like to create a society in which everyone can understand the joy of expressing oneself through sound.
I wonder if our stance of “expressing difficult things in an easy way” has something in common.
Ezaki: Yes, that’s right. But I also think that conveying difficult things in easy terms is always a risk. I think there are times when we need to be a little more conscious of conveying difficult things in difficult ways.
I think that’s true. In many cases, the conflict and division caused by the Corona disaster was due to the act of trying to make everything black and white, or jumping to easy-to-understand answers. I also think that there are times when we need to have the “courage” to accept difficult things as they are, and difficult things as they are.
Ezaki: I think it’s very important to think about various things when you don’t understand something. I think it’s an act that goes against the grain in today’s world, where words like “typa” are so highly praised (laughs). I want to be careful not to make everything easy to understand.
