Breath of the Wild Music Analysis: Folk Music and Kass’s Theme
Breaking into one of the deepest tracks (Characters?) in the game! There’s quite a bit of historical context to unpack here, so let’s get to it.
Track 13: Kass’s Theme
Genre: Folk, Waltz
Featured Instruments: Accordion
Compositional Techniques: Historical Context
Truthfully, this track isn’t too complicated composition wise, so rather than covering the composition in depth, let’s delve a bit into ethnomusicology and how it’s implemented into Kass’s theme, and by extension the role of Kass himself. The applications are pretty neat and are very easy to gloss over. In identifying exactly what this track does let’s first set a preface, because this is an info rich post.
An accordion being performed is significant, the fact that Kass is a traveling musician is important, and lyrics play a role in understanding how Kass’s music works. All of these actually interact behind the scenes to create something awesome! So, let’s start by briefly talking about the style of music, because that’s what I’ve been doing. Best to knock it out now.
This track is a Viennese Waltz, or for all intents and purposes a waltz. If you’re even somewhat familiar with basic musical forms or dance, you’ll likely know what a waltz is. Waltzes are marked by a 3 beat pattern, often played at a tempo fast enough to make you feel only one beat at a time. The fact that we can trace this form of music historically to Austria’s capital Vienna will play a little bit of a role later on, but just keep that in the back of your mind for now. You’ll likely recollect that you can hear similar sounding accordion music in a lot of other media, and when you do, it’s often to accompany the performer singing. These vocals are generally easy to understand and will either explain part of a story, or describe a scene that’s going on. Vocals and accordion go pretty hand in hand in many types of music. Again, save that for later!
The melody is very memorable, and obviously is associated with Kass, which keeps us in the realm of more traditional Zelda music. But it’s important to realize that the waltz itself isn’t necessarily overly significant in this case. Waltzes exist in all forms of instrumentation. In fact, if you remember, I explained how the music in the large guardian battles is actually a waltz. Because of this, let’s look to how we could actually tie in the accordion to aspects in Breath of the Wild other than the music itself.
Accordion is often associated with a very wide, sweeping genre of music called folk music. Folk music in many ways might be the widest genre of music possible, as it simply refers to “traditional” music in the confines of western music history. By this association, every nationality has traditional folk music. Because of this, folk music can sometimes be associated with “World Music.” This is not an absolute generalization however, as world music definitely does exist outside of the realm of folk. The easiest way to think of traditional folk music, is as a type of music that is usually transmitted orally, across generations, and performed over long periods of time. Naturally because of this, having a good recognizable melody is everything.
However, transmitted orally is one of the most important things to understand in relation to traditional folk music. In general, the idea behind folk music is it’s a music representative of a traditional culture, music of the past if you would. It’s music that had no way to be recorded other than to be passed down with the intention of future generations remembering it. These are often songs associated with religion, custom, holidays or spirituality, but they’re all passed down by the idea of tradition. The interesting thing about where traditional folk music occurs today is in towns or areas that might be…let’s call it “Old fashioned.” Small, isolated villages are prime targets to find traditional folk music. The thing about Breath of the Wild though, is every village is pretty isolated and each one has a very strong visual and cultural representation in someway or another. Without the influence of many outside sources, this would make each village prime material for cultural folk music. And remember, the accordion is our symbol that relates to folk music itself. Which brings us to its performer Kass.
Kass is a Rito and a traveling minstrel, or musician. His purpose in the game is to learn the songs of the various lands in Hyrule, the songs that have been passed down over generations. Believe it or not, this is actually very similar to a profession called ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicologists generally study the traditional music of cultures or people, doing things like residencies, interviews, or recordings of performances. They’re people who are trying to retain a musical past, one that’s often only translated in person. They hold onto the music we don’t know about, so that one day we can hear it too. It’s often a behind the scenes job, and one that can go easily forgotten.
The neat thing is, because Kass travels to different lands, tribes, and locations to learn about their music, documenting them for future generations, he’s a sort of in game ethnomusicologist.
Kass’s songs tell stories, or provide riddles that help you solve puzzles, but the important thing is that they’re direct lore for Breath of the Wild because they contain lyrics, even if they’re only through text. If we think back to when I talked about Nier: Automata, I said lyrics allow us to provide literary meaning to music, something that you’ll often hear in folk music.
In addition to this, Kass plays a ton of music over the course of the game. You can hear a bunch of different versions of both new and familiar Zelda music. Which…since Nintendo says that Breath of the Wild takes place at the “end” of the Zelda timeline (Don’t get me started on this), it’s very evident that the music in question would also have been passed down through the ages similar to folk music. And for the songs that relate to the regions, those would be direct representations of the tribes’ folk music, passed down over time.
Because of the way he presents the music, both past, old and present. You could stretch it and say all of his renditions of music could be considered folk music. So naturally, let’s stretch this to the breaking point.
One of the songs that can be heard is the main Breath of the Wild theme. This is significant in a way, and although it can be chalked up to the fact that “it’s a different arrangement of the main theme end of story,” this places the song in the game’s world itself. You could then infer that the theme of the wild is actually music that has the potential to be passed down in game as well. It has a strong, memorable melody, and has important association for the game. It’s a direct representation of the soundtrack by our traveling Rito musicologist.
Again, more than likely this wasn’t intended, it most likely was simply “Man wouldn’t it be cool to have him play the main theme as well?” That doesn’t make it any less important though. The best ideas to find are the ones that might not be there.
However, something that does hold great significance is the ending to Kass’s storyline. If you complete all of his challenges, you can find him completing his wish in performing in front of his siblings in Rito village. He starts by playing his theme (with a few variations on articulation,) and eventually goes through some changes before he ends up on the familiar main theme for The Legend of Zelda
Historical contexts are important, and despite what Nintendo says about any timeline, music has always held kind of a historical Easter egg worth of information if you will. And honestly, this is the biggest, brightest egg of them all. We’ve known the main theme for the Legend of Zelda from the very beginning of the series, and it’s made an appearance at some point throughout all of the games. It’s a very important theme, but as you’ll notice it only plays at a few places in the soundtrack. Sometimes for seemingly no reason (Riding the horse,) and others for important locations (Hyrule Castle.)
Throughout our personal histories with the Zelda series, we’ve come to associate this track as one that transcends the games, the timelines etc. We’ve likely made assumptions (even if subconscious) that the theme is present in the world of Hyrule itself, even if it doesn’t always appear that way. But with Kass performing it, you could infer that this is now transmitted music of Hyrule, much like the music of the tribes, legends and history of the now broken Hyrule.
That’s cool.
This has been an overly long exposition, so let’s get into some quick meat of how we can apply this information to our own work.
Essentially what’s being done with Kass is creating lore through music. The songs Kass performs, whether shrine, divine beast, champion, city or whatever related, in someway or another build lore. If we think about the way the story is structured this makes complete sense. If you like, you can actually skip all of the story other than “The kingdom is broken Link. You must stop Ganon.” Or you can take the time to experience as much about about the world and the story as you choose to. Kass’s music is also a direct reflection of this. His purpose is to transmit the music to those that listen, allowing Link, you the player to learn more about the lore of the world. This is a unique way to not only provide more story, but also music that is relevant to the in-game world. Making the music itself a part of the lore.
So why not find ways to incorporate music into lore in our own projects? Admittedly, this isn’t easy, nor should it always be done. There are many ways that it could distract from player experience depending on the project, but if able to be accomplished it can provide a new way for music to be heard, experienced, and appreciated, even if not explicitly noticed. Breath of the Wild does it through a traveling character that develops overtime, but why not find other ways?
Truthfully, Zelda music has always done very well in incorporating music into lore. Playing music in Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask are the two most obvious ones, but you can find instances in Wind Waker, Twlight Princess, and the often forgotten Ballad of the Wind Fish in Link’s Awakening.
In these cases, playable music, music association, and direct story implications are three ways to accomplish this. But honestly the possibilities on how to include music into lore are endless. After all, what is music other than retelling a story?
Let’s break it down.
Summary: Kass’s theme is representative of his character who present a unique take on the idea of traditional folk music in the land of Hyrule. Our clues include his instrument of choice, his status as a traveling musician, and that he collects songs to pass on to future generations. This act of passing on songs is a direct representation of lore, as it interacts with gameplay, and can add key story segments to the overall plot. Kass’s theme itself is reflective musically of traditional folk music.
Takeaways for Developers: Consider possible ways that you can build lore through music. There are many ways to do this, and many ways to do this incorrectly. Think about ways that you could place music inside the game’s world itself, and how the music could be representative of your setting, characters or ideas.
Takeaways for Composers: Using influences of folk music is a powerful way to build lore through music. Find ways that music might be able to be directly representative of a group of people, kingdoms, or countries when applicable. Remember the connotations that are carried with folk music. To effectively translate lore through music, it might be easiest to include lyrics, even if only in text.
I’ll come out and say that this has been one of my favorite tracks to listen, research and write on. To be honest, I could unpack even more here if I really wanted to. But I don’t want to make this more of a novel than it already is. Please feel free to reach out with any questions to my DMs, or at [email protected]. I’d love to chat with you!
I’ll be back soon with the next entry in this series~