Comparing Japanese Anime Theme Music and Cuban Beats

- By Nguyen Dinh Hung

The two pieces I’m going to review for this blog are Swordland and Nengon.

Swordland, composed by Yuki Kajiura in 2014, is one of the main theme song for the TV- Anime series “Sword Art Online II.” It takes the setting of a virtual-world that is constructed to simulate a world before modern technology, which is similar to Baroque or Renaissance era (hence the piece's style). The composer, Yuki Kajiura is a new-age electronic Japanese composer. Her works are well-known in Japan, as she has written the OST for popular anime series such as Fate/Stay Night, Sword Art Online, Noir. Ms. Kajiura composes in many different genres, evidently Anison (theme music for animated films) and orchestral. According to her own website, Ms. Kajiura also does "baroque pop" and "contemporary classical" music. From there, we can conclude that her style might be influenced heavily by non-modern music.

Nengon , performed and composed by La Familia Miranda, is very satisfying to listen to, and dance to. There is not much complexity, yet it represents the most basic of all African and South American musical culture: the syncopated and polyrhythmic patterns in its music. I chose such a simple piece to reduce the amount of unnecessary effort to over-analyze very polyrhythmic music, and because of its form. The form brings no significance to the analysis, but it shows how close this kind of music is to the locals. There’s no real form though. It feels more like improvisation, or a gathering of cultural sense.

As you may have known, things happened back in the old days of racial discrimination. The Slave-trade lead to the widespread of native-Africans, bringing with them the cultural beats over to Europe and America (the continent). We can still evidently see these beats in the present in South American Latino music. Some variations include Reggaeton, Tresillo, Clave. All of them share what I’m going to present below: Syncopation and Rhythmic Ostinato.

The music of Cuba, influenced mainly by this event, is close to its rhythmic root in Africa, yet somewhat melodically closer to Europeans. One of the most prominent elements in African music is syncopation. Its main companion is a stubborn Italian one, called Ostinato. It insists on repeating itself. Through the analysis below, you will also observe that modern Japanese film music possesses the syncopation and the stubborn Italian.

In La Familia Miranda’s version of Nengon, there were 3 groups of instruments: the tres guitar (a typical Cuban, the percussions, and the voice. For this piece, the guitar ostinato has a very specific name: Guajeo. Guajeo is a typical ostinato pattern in Cuban music. The guitarist starts with a simple tune, as a way to introduce the guajeo from the start. The rhythm consists of 5 main notes and is very similar to the basic 2-3 Clave rhythm. Clave rhythm is used quite a lot generally in Cuban music as well. Here’s a visual:

The difference is that the 1st note is shorter, making the 2nd note longer. This modification is applied to the 3rd and 4th notes as well. The latter 3 notes of the Clave rhythm are a triplet, with a minor change. We can hear the dotted rhythm; the first note of the triplet is shorter, making the second one longer, while the third note has no change. This is then repeatedly played throughout the whole piece. On top of that, the congas partake another syncopated rhythmic line from 00:20, and lasted till 01:55. The clapping replaces it afterward, and, guess what, it is steadily played on off-beats (beats 2 and 4 of a measure). The voice comes in afterward and uses a slightly different rhythmic pattern used for the guitar. Everything is syncopated!!! Why?

It is a signature technique called polyrhythm, where different independent rhythms are played at the same time. In this case, polyrhythm is formed using the 3 different instruments: guitar, congas, and voice. Additionally, each line of music is an ostinato, or it repeats itself multiple times for a whole section.

The seemingly different rhythmic Ostinato all come together nicely, even though they're all off-beat. Syncopation and Rhythmic ostinato are also present in Swordland, but since the piece's focus is more on the melodic progression, the syncopation and ostinato are used a little bit differently.

Starting off with syncopation, Yuki Kajiura uses consecutive dotted notes for the melody, making it seems like triplets. This is quite a common technique in anison music. The cropped picture below shows the different syncopated rhythm it uses:

Yuki Kajiura repeats the rhythm designated for each theme for the melody. The melody is simply moving up and down a scale. Ms. Kajiura then install these rhythmic patterns over and over again, and yet, it is SO GOOD. Also, hence "Rhythmic Ostinato."

Conclusion:

For both genres, the syncopated rhythm and the technique for tone color are prominent. Cuban music has all of its natural roots from the far off land of polyrhythm, Africa. Contrasting to that, the Japanese Anison has its modern influence from European music, then adding to that the syncopated style of the 21st-century music.

The main difference between these two cultures, however, is that the music is owned by everyone and is part of daily life for Cubans, while European men prefer ownership and privacy over their own production, to dedicate music to a meaning, which is what we do now in modern day music. As I would prefer music to be part of daily life, I don't think that music could have developed to be as fascinating as today. But, who knows?