Ikutaro Kakehashi
Creator of the synthesisers used in hip hop and 1980s pop music
IKUTARO KAKEHASHI, who has died aged 87, was an engineer and entrepreneur and the founder of Roland Corporation, the company behind the synthesisers and drum machines which have influenced the sound of hip hop and pop music since the 1980s.
Music fans who have danced in clubs or jogged with headphones to the percussive sound of the likes of Whitney Houston’s 1987 classic I Wanna Dance With Somebody are largely unaware that the father of the gadgetry behind the music was a quietly determined engineer who created a business empire from a small repair workshop in the austerity of post-war Japan.
Kakehashi’s most famous product was the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, a drum machine whose influence in popular music has been compared to that of the Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. Launched in 1980, it featured on Marvin Gaye’s 1982 hit Sexual Healing and became a must-have for hip-hop artists such as the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy, as well as mainstream performers such as Madonna and Phil Collins. In 2008 the rapper Kanye West saluted the drum machine with an entire album, 808s & Heartbreak.
Kakehashi, however, was a firm believer in the fundamental importance of live performance. “Play on stage,” he instructed. “One or a thousand in the audience, it doesn’t matter. Live music is the key.”
Ikutaro Kakehashi was born in Osaka on February 7 1930; his parents died while he was a small child, leaving him to be brought up by grandparents. As a teenager after the end of the war he left for Kyushu island, to the south, where he opened a watch repair shop.
He returned to Osaka to study mechanical engineering, but contracted tuberculosis. During a long sanatorium stay, he became a test patient for the antibiotic streptomycin.
From an early age Kakehashi loved music, though to his regret he never learnt to play an instrument. In the 1950s he was making and mending radios and televisions, and turned his attention to electric organs, beginning with his brother-in-law’s Lowrey Organo model.
In 1959 Kakehashi built his own simple 49-key organ, and in the early 1960s he founded his first company, Ace Electronics, to make the Rhythm Ace box, designed to fit on top of the popular Hammond organ and pre-programmed with waltz, samba and swing rhythms.
On a first trip to a US trade show in Chicago, he sold eight samples and struck a deal to import Hammond instruments to Japan; he subsequently worked with Hammond to design the Piper Autochord organ, which produced harmonic chords from single keys.
In 1972, after selling Ace Electronics, Kakehashi founded Roland Corporation to produce a new generation of rhythm boxes and synthesisers designed for the amateur musician at home.
Kakehashi also continued to build partnerships with designers in the US and instrument makers in Japan. He worked with an American engineer, Dave Smith, to create the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), which connects devices regardless of brand. Launched in 1983, it became the industry standard, winning technical Grammy awards for Kakehashi and Smith in 2013.
Known to his admirers as “Mr K”, Kakehashi was a man of gentle demeanour who strove constantly for improvements. Among his early collaborators were the jazz players Oscar Peterson and Duke Ellington, who tested Roland prototypes.
After retiring to an advisory role with Roland in 2001, Kakehashi went on to found another company, Atelier Vision Corporation, which developed advanced electronic percussion as well as audiovisual systems and mixers to meet the music industry’s growing appetite for video.
He is survived by his wife Masako.