It's
all about the music, you know?
It's a
pretty exciting opening. The blaring trumpets, the rapid-fire cuts
and bursts of colour, the drum fill and then a moment of silence
before a groovy bass line kicks in and everyone is ready to go.
Cowboy Bebop's score
is renowned for good reason but it goes deeper than simply having
great tunes. Take the score away from The Melancholy of
Haruhi Suzimiya and it'll be of
a little consequence. Take the score away from Cowboy Bebop
and everything changes. The
soundtrack of Cowboy Bebop informs
every aspect of its storytelling.
Cowboy Bebop is
not some happy accident. Shinichiro Watanabe understands – really
gets – how to use music as
something more than cool window dressing. Samurai Champloo
was released five years later to
critical acclaim and garnered the same gushy reaction to its music,
despite being of a completely different musical genre. And, from an
outsider's perspective, Cowboy Bebop and
Samurai Champloo feel
wildly different to each other both in plot and setting. Samurai
Champloo takes place in Edo
Period Japan and follows the adventures of three travellers in search
of the “samurai who smells of sunflowers”, while Cowboy
Bebop is set years in the future
and focuses on a group of bounty hunters.
With
its improvisational and, at times, sombre jazz soundtrack, it's
almost natural that Cowboy Bebop tells
the tale of a group of “losers” haunted by their pasts, out of
cash, and barely scraping together a living. The cast of Cowboy
Bebop are really a bunch of
musicians themselves, skirting from place to place performing (or in
their case catching bounties), living off their meagre winnings until
they run dry, and then doing the same thing all over again. There's
real romanticism at work here. The impoverished artist, the freedom
to be tied to no one, and, of course, the indulgence. To devote
yourself to your work entirely and break free from the concerns of
reality.
It's
all bullshit, naturally. Spike, Jet, and Faye all know this. The
Bebop, the crew's ship, is a transformed husk of a fishing boat now
flying through space. A literal fish out of water. Spike's blasé
dickishness is really hiding his misery over losing Julia, Jet ends
up becoming the paternal figure of the group as a result of his
failure to protect Alicia, and Faye, behind all the sex and allure,
is painfully alone. After the smoke is settled and the haze of the
performance is over, all three of them are left wringing their hands
in the spotlight.
And
what's jazz now except a shadow of its former self? How do you feel
about Giant Steps?
Fuck that shit, everyone's played it, it's fifty-years old, it sounds
like crap, write a new song, and stop playing that god damn song. I
don't care if you can fuckin' modulate it and change it up. You can
play in seven, you can play in nine? It's boring.
Ultimately,
the crew of Cowboy Bebop can't
let go of their past no matter how hard they try. Jazz is the music
of an era long since past and yet it still clings, lifelessly. Bebop
was a flash of brilliance before it quickly fell into its face. A
good idea, a great idea. Let's go out into space and catch bounties
for a living. Free from the man, man. A romantic life and a lonely
one.
In the
world of Cowboy Bebop,
if you have a past, you have a death wish. A history is a heavy
burden. It doesn't lead to bigger and better things, it leads to
stagnation and paper-thin “cool”. And it's intoxicating and
rotten and miserable and lovely.
Maybe
that's what makes jazz so wonderful. It sounds defeatist in its
familiarity. It's pleasing to see and hear such characters and music
start off so confidently and quickly spiral out of control. Despite
all the improvisation, we all come back to crushing repetition.
