The Legend of Zelda is everywhere in modern music

Whether it’s sound effects from Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter popping up Charlie XCX And Flying Lotus songs, or hip-hop producers flipping samples Donkey Kong And Chrono trigger to make beats for Drake And Wiz Khalifa, the influence of video games on modern music is hard to escape. Few series have had such an impact on a generation of musicians as The Legend of Zelda, thanks in large part to the musical magic of series composer Koji Kondo.

As Nintendo’s in-house composer since 1984, Kondo is responsible for nearly every major tune you’d associate with Nintendo, whether that’s the iconic Super Mario Bros. theme or the legendary overture that accompanies Link’s adventures through Hyrule. If you grew up playing video games in the ’80s and ’90s, it’s possible that you spent more time listening to Koji Kondo than any other band or artist.

“It’s hard for me to imagine how different my life as a musician would have been without the influence of Koji Kondo,” composer and orchestrator Eric Buchholz tells Polygon.

While Kondo’s melodies mainly function as background music in Super Mario Bros., they serve a real purpose in The Legend of Zelda, where music solves your biggest problems. Need to change time of day Ocarina of Time? Play ‘The Sun’s Song’. Need to stop an ominous moon from crashing into Clock Town and destroying Termina Majora’s mask? Play ‘The Song of Time’. Need to escape from a nightmare in Link’s awakening? Collect eight musical instruments and play ‘Ballad of the Wind Fish’.

It’s this connection between music and the Legend of Zelda games that resonated with a generation of young players, like Buchholz, who went on to become a musician. Buchholz was introduced to the series when he was digging through the carts at a local flea market and came across a copy of Link’s awakening.

“At that age I also developed an interest in music, so you can imagine how happy I was to find a game where the primary goal is to collect different musical instruments to play a melody that ends the world on the top of a mountain,” says Buchholz. “Of course, the score for Link’s awakening was not composed by Koji Kondo, but drew inspiration from the musical foundation he laid A link to the past – a legacy that has been drawn on and built on since it was written.

Like many musicians, Buchholz has played a part in building on Zelda’s musical legacy with his own arrangements, most notably his Hero of time album. It’s what Buchholz describes as his “love letter” to Kondo — an orchestrated retelling of the music from Ocarina of Time, with 21 songs performed by the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra. It includes a variety of musical themes in the game, and the series is large, from “Zelda’s Lullaby” to “Gerudo Valley”.

“These themes can now be used to imply deep knowledge connections between games in a franchise, or simply to evoke feelings of nostalgia in players of past games,” says Buchholz.

Dan Reynolds, lead singer of the pop-rock band Imagine Dragons, grew up playing the Legend of Zelda games. He believes it’s the interactive and repetitive nature of video game music that makes music in the medium so powerful, especially when you’re actually playing it as Link. So it was a dream come true for him and the rest of the band when they got the chance to join Koji Kondo on stage in The Game Awards in 2014 and play a nostalgic homage to the games.

“Koji Kondo wrote the soundtrack to our childhood, so when Geoff Keighley suggested the idea of ​​a collaboration, it was an instant yes for all of us,” Reynolds said via email.

For many people, hearing someone play “The Song of Storms,” ​​”Zelda’s Lullaby,” or “Dragon Roost Island” can transport them back to their childhood. This sense of nostalgia is incredibly powerful, and it’s the same emotion Dutch DJ Hardwell evokes to get people moving at electronic music festivals around the world.

Hardwell managed to get his hands on his favorite Zelda song after being asked by Nintendo to remix a song of his choice for The Game Awards in 2015. Most of his fans play video games, he says, so they feel immediately connected to the song when he plays it live.

Of course, it helps that there is also a huge link between EDM and video game music. Some of the biggest names in the genre have remixed Zelda songs, whether that’s Deadmau5’s “You need a ladderor Zedd’s The Legend of Zelda mixwhile others, like Steve Aoki, collaborate with game companies to create music for trailers and give virtual concerts in the Green Hill Zone.

“It’s like a perfect marriage,” Hardwell explains. ‘There’s no doubt about that [The Legend of Zelda] subtly influenced my early creative process without my even realizing it at the time.”

You only have to listen to the first seconds of the album by the electronic music duo Sweet Valley Eternal champion to hear how much influence it has Ocarina of Time has had on member Joel Williams. The album begins in exactly the same way as the game, with the sounds of Epona galloping across Hyrule Field and building to a hip-hop beat using samples from the file select theme.

“I played that game religiously as a kid, and every now and then I’ll revisit it as an adult; the opening horse SFX gallops and strummed chords teleport me back to my childhood every time,” says Williams.

That may be right Ocarina of Time has been sampled and remixed so extensively. It’s a game that’s largely about nostalgia, with Link using music – most of which was introduced in previous Zelda games, such as Link to the past – to navigate two worlds: the dark of his adulthood and the innocent surroundings of his childhood.

If you’ve ever recognized a video game sample in a song before, you’ll appreciate how it can create an instant sense of affinity and familiarity with an artist, even if you’ve never listened to their music before. As Williams says, there’s something “really cool” about hearing Skull Kid’s menacing laugh Majora’s mask in Funeral And ASAP Mobile tunes, or the flutter of Navi’s wings about stubbornly Hishame Rejjie Snow And Chance on the Rapper tracks.

“It’s music that crosses reality,” says Tim Summers, lecturer in music at Royal Holloway University of London and author of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: A Game Music Companion, say. “It adds another level of meaning to what you do and a whole new way to experience music in the games.”

Summers points to the music creation in Ocarina of Time (which allows you to improvise songs with the titular instrument) and Majora’s mask (which does the same with a handful of different instruments) as examples, explaining how not being limited to the specific notes within the game’s melodies allows players to experiment.

“The fact that you can pitch and have access to a full chromatic set of notes – there’s no reason for that,” says Summers. “In fact, it’s all the better because it has no purpose. It’s there for you to play with.” And plenty has been played, from the arrangements of Toto’s “Africa” ​​on Deku pipes to Ocarina renditions of Howard Shore’s “About hobbitsfrom The Lord of the Rings.

Outside of the game, arrangements such as the epic of Dr. Pez Ocarina of Time prog rock concept albumRo Panuganti’s Bollywood Spin On “Gerudo Valley,” And August Burns Red’s metalcore medley of NES-inspired blast beats and breakdowns prove that the adaptive and versatile nature of the music in The Legend of Zelda is another big part of its charm.

“It transcends so many different styles,” says August Burns Red bassist Dustin Davidson. “If you look at the evolution of music in the [Zelda] games, you see it go through different instruments, and then you look at how it’s transcribed, whether it’s a metal song, acoustic guitar, or piano – there are arrangements for all these different instruments.

Overclocked remix is a video game music fan community founded in 1999 that releases remixes and arrangements of video game music. The community manager, Larry Oji, says the arrangements of the Zelda series make up 7.6% of the total catalog of 4,200 songs. Some of the most popular are a “Song of Storms” interpretation by Big Giant Circles and the Legend of Zelda Rabbit Joint Sleeve that everyone gets mistaken for a System of a Down song at some point. (Thanks, Napster and Limewire!)

As of today, the two most arranged themes on the site are Zelda – the original title theme and then ‘Zelda’s [Lullaby]’ by Ocarina of Timesays OverClocked ReMix founder David Lloyd. “Both appear in multiple Zelda games, so it makes sense that they’ll appear more often, but it also speaks to the music’s enduring popularity.”

It’s impossible to pin down the infectious appeal and success of Koji Kondo’s music in The Legend of Zelda to a single factor. This music means so much to so many people, who have interpreted and experienced it in so many different ways.

For some, like Davidson, the enduring appeal of Zelda’s music is that it will always remind them of family. “It played such a big part in my upbringing because it was a way of bonding with my mom and my brother. That’s why I ended up getting Zelda tattoos.”

To others, such as Hero of time composer Buchholz laid the foundation for a successful career in music.

“It’s amazing to think about all the different directions my life could have taken without the influence Kondo’s music had on me growing up.”