Cowboy Bebop Music Featurette Spotlights Yoko Kanno’s Jazzy Score

One of the most memorable and iconic aspects of Cowboy Bebop is its music, its jazz-inspired score that evokes a sense of urgency and adventure when coupled with beautiful animation. And with Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the hit anime arriving on November 19, the streamer is well aware of that fact, having released a new featurette highlighting the way their series tackled incorporating its predecessor’s iconic sound.

The new featurette focuses on Yoko Kanno, the creative mind behind Cowboy Bebop’s iconic music — including its jazzy theme, repurposed for the new Netflix adaptation. Featuring a live, in-studio performance of the theme as its background, the video pays tribute to Kanno’s original score and reveals her involvement with the new series, returning to inspire the series tone and direction with her musical skills, as opposed to the other way around.

“What made things very easy this time around,” Kanno told Netflix, “was that the same musicians [from a band] named Seatbelts from twenty years ago were willing to help me. I feel as if I’ve known them all my life. They could take a single melody line and elaborate it into something really cool. They are jazz musicians. All I needed to do was convey the ambiance and they would come up with amazing results. It was much easier than the times I’ve had to write every note.”

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cowboy-bebop-featurette-yoko-kanno — Image via Netflix

John Cho, starring in the upcoming series as Spike, described Kanno’s involvement as a “deal sealer” for him, wanting to be associated with the music that sets Cowboy Bebop apart from its anime contemporaries. However, despite their standing as some of the most recognizable songs to come out of anime history, according to showrunner Andre Nemec, Kanno took it upon herself to reinvent some of Bebop’s most memorable tunes, with a new version of the series “[warranting] a bit of reinvention.”

Kanno used only about “one-tenth” of the music she originally composed for Cowboy Bebop, instead choosing to create fresh melodies to welcome in new audiences. No theme or suites exist for specific characters or scenes, with Kanno choosing instead to let her score evolve with Bebop’s characters, flowing and changing as they grow over the course of the upcoming series.

“I’m honored that my music and my thoughts can reach beyond my thoughts,” she says, “and reach the lives of others. I feel overjoyed with it.”

Cowboy Bebop, also starring Daniella Pineda and Mustafa Shakir, premieres exclusively on Netflix on November 19. The digital version of the show’s new soundtrack will also be released on that date, available on all major music platforms (including Apple, Spotify, Deezer, Amazon, and Tidal). Check out the new featurette below: