Nanako Sato: What a Beautiful Voice Radiates

2019/11/20

During my time as a Keio student, I debuted with Columbia Records in 1977 after participating in the "Female College Student Singer-Songwriter Contest" organized by an on-campus circle called the Entertainment Music Research Society.

I believe the beginning of my path to music was playing around with songwriting and composition with Motoharu Sano, whom I met during my first year of university. At that time, I never dreamed of becoming a singer, but fate is unpredictable. I made four solo albums. Those days were like a happy dream.

Around that time, a photographer friend mentioned that "photos are taken just by pressing a button." While looking at the smiling portrait of my late mother, I began to think photography was wonderful and became obsessed with it.

Word spread that the singer Nanako Sato had started taking photos, and before I knew it, I was being asked to do photography work. It was the peak of the bubble era, a time when people were eager to use anything interesting.

The first advertisement I shot was for Nissan's overseas calendar. That led to shooting various advertisements. However, I decided to live in Paris with my partner at the time, so I flew to Paris without hesitation and lived there for five years. During that time, I got married and had a child. After returning to Japan, I continued my photography work while resuming my musical activities for the first time in ten years. Currently, I perform live shows and tours, and I have also released a new album.

Now, in a life like this, there are people who have taught me important things about singing. One of them is a wonderful engineer I worked with during a recording when I resumed music. When I told him that I hadn't done any musical activities for ten years, he said to me:

"Speaking what you truly want to convey with a beautiful voice. This is the very origin of singing, and it is music."

Since then, these words have always been within me. They taught me that whether I am singing or not, I am constantly music. It also means that you, too, are music.

Greta's voice, appealing for the crisis of global warming, also resonates throughout the world like the singing voice of an archangel. I want to continue singing forever, never forgetting this.

I hope to see you at a live performance somewhere someday.