When your game series has an entry titled The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, it isn’t surprising to say that music plays a major part within that series. However, this aspect of the series is something that can be overlooked when remembering The Legend of Zelda. Some may instead remember the great hero of Hyrule not by the music he plays but by the tunic he wears and the weapons he wields. While those are all incredibly defining aspects of Link, another key feature that doesn’t always come to mind first is just how often Link uses music to succeed in his quests! Obviously, there was the Ocarina mentioned from the game above, but Link has used instruments to achieve a plethora of goals!
The first introduction of instruments within The Legend of Zelda actually came from the very first game with the title that the series is named after. In that game, released in 1986 on the Nintendo Entertainment System, Link can find a recorder. This recorder is used for the completion of a dungeon and for a few niche secrets, but otherwise, it does not have much use. Instruments and their musical capabilities were expanded greatly with the release of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. In that game, Link’s entire quest revolves around the acquisition of eight musical instruments to awaken the Wind Fish and exit the dream world of Koholint. Unfortunately in that game the instruments serve more of a role as quest items rather than usable tools. The use of instruments as tools that the player accesses themselves would not come until the release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
When the Nintendo 64 classic was released, there was an obvious focus on the ocarina. With the ocarina of time, Link could change the time of day, teleport to various locations in Hyrule, and even cause sporadic storms to occur! While I can’t say that music in our world can spontaneously cause it to rain (though the act of playing music to improve the chances of rain is something found in many cultures) I can say that the playing of music can have an effect on time similarly to how it works in the game. Music can enchant us in ways that make time feel different, and we can get lost in the sounds of the instruments as time passes around us.
Like with the rain, there is no way to say that music can physically teleport us to different places, but it can take us there mentally. Musical pieces can implant mental images into our minds of anywhere in the world, from the mysterious jungles to the lawless wild west to the serene locations of Asia. The Legend of Zelda simply takes these aspects and tweaks them with a small bit of fantasy to make them work better for the game. These elements of gameplay, while servicing the structure of the game first and foremost, do in fact have parallels to how music works in our own world. This is expanded even more through the direct sequel game, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.
While Ocarina of Time played in a manner that was very linear, Majora’s Mask instead chose to focus on the characters of the world a lot more, and this means many more opportunities to see how music impacts them. Multiple times throughout the game Link uses the “Song of Healing” to help ease the pains of those around him after the very song is used to cure him of the curse placed upon him by Skull Kid. This parallels with how music can help us to work through our troubling emotions, to heal after all the pain that life can bring us.
Also used within Majora’s Mask is various iterations of the “Song of Time.” This song was originally used in Ocarina of Time, but it was not nearly as important as it is in Majora’s Mask. In this game, the song is used to reset Link to the beginning of the three-day time loop that he is stuck in. On top of that, players can play two variations of the song that each have their own unique effect. The “Song of Double Time” will automatically advance Link to the next night or day (unless you play the 3DS remake in which case you can actually pick the hour Link stops at), and the “Inverted Song of Time” will allow Link to slow down the passage of time to 30% of the original value (or 50% in the 3DS remake) which gives him much more leeway to accomplish time-sensitive quests.
Both of these songs follow the previous theme of how music and time can go hand in hand with one another, having one affect the other. One extra aspect of Majora’s Mask is how important music can be to those living within the strange land of Termina. Link learns many of the songs from the people around him, and these songs can do things such as place individuals to sleep or wake someone up. These line up much more easily with how music can affect us in our world, even though in the game the songs work much more effectively than a lullaby might work for us.
One more instance of music being important in The Legend of Zelda series is found within an often overlooked game on the Nintendo 3DS: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. In this game, Link uses a spiritual pan flute to play the songs he learns, and the songs are often used in duets with individuals known as Lokomo. Spirit Tracks put more of an emphasis on Link’s performance with other musicians, and through the various duets he is able to power up the spirit tracks that the game is named after.
These train tracks unlock new areas for Link to travel and allow him to continue on his adventure. This could be seen as the game showing how the power of music can be amplified when performed with more than one person. Of course, there will always be an aspect of fantasy when it comes to talking about The Legend of Zelda, however, Link can’t power up the rails on his own, nor can the Lokomo power up the rails without Link. It is only when they unify as one and play the music together that they can summon the powers required to give life to the rails once again.
Looking back on the various entries into The Legend of Zelda, it is clear that it has a deep connection with music and the abilities it has to affect not just us but the world around us. While it would be easy to just look at the songs and dismiss them as a means to an end to progress gameplay and story, that would be overlooking the simple fact that they chose to make the abilities tied to songs instead of making it some other form. For example, it could have been easy to just make the songs as magical spells that Link could cast to progress, but instead, it was decided to make them tied to songs that Link would play.
This choice shows how important those at Nintendo who made the games think music is, and how impactful it has the ability to be. They made the deliberate choice to instead make it something that we can relate to and even replicate, and in some ways, the songs can even affect us similarly to how they work in the respectful games. The “Song of Healing” is very calm and peaceful, and no doubt helps to implant a serene emotion within the hearts of those who hear it. Music is all around us; it permeates our lives, and it can have effects on us that to this day seem almost magical in nature. In that way, music is the bridge between our world and the worlds of the Zelda universe, and that is why it is so important when looking at what makes the series so memorable and impactful towards the hundreds of thousands of those who play the games.
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