Japanese-born American Yoko Ono, whom we know as 'John Lennon's wife', is actually an artist. There is a general criticism of her music: She shouts a lot. Is she really yelling a lot or is she doing something else entirely?
Yoko Ono started making music before she met John Lennon. She took piano lessons at the age of four and vocal lessons at the age of 14. She spent her childhood holding her mother's hand and attending concerts of traditional Japanese musicians. After moving to the USA, she studied atonal music, influenced by John Cage, Arnold Schoenberg, and Alban Berg.
There is a general criticism of her music: She shouts a lot. Is she really yelling a lot or is she doing something else entirely? Can we just call it yelling? Art critics think that Yoko Ono's trademark disturbing shouts are inseparable from her art form, parts of the whole. It is impossible for Yoko Ono to perform music with a clear voice and without rejecting classical song forms such as melody and chorus.
Yoko Ono (born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
However, her musical partnership with Lennon led her to make more 'song-like songs'. The album "Unfinished Music No:1 Two Wirgins", released in 1968, the album where Lennon's solo career also started, was the first album that made Yoko Ono more known in the musical field. After that, they made seven albums together.
Childhood under the bombs
Yoko Ono was born in 1933. She spent her childhood between Japan and the United States due to her father's position at Yokohama Bank. Shortly before the US entered the war, they made a definite return to Japan and were perceived as the 'other' in their home country, due to the fact that they came from the USA. Yoko Ono, whose mother is Buddhist and whose father is Christian, was called by her friends the nickname 'bata kusai', meaning 'smell like butter'. This term, which was used as a derogatory definition for Westernized and Americanized Japanese by Japanese society during the war, upset Yoko Ono and caused her to withdraw. During the war years, she experienced such great difficulties that these nicknames lost their importance.
She has been hungry for days. She waited days for a bite to eat. She was so weakened that she thought the most appropriate nickname for her at the time was actually 'ghost'. She grew up with terrible childhood traumas, such as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her family moved back to New York, USA in 1952, and Yoko Ono studied Contemporary Literature and Music at Sarah Lawrence College, which stands out with its innovative education approach. Ono, who attended school until 1955, met Japanese musician Toshi Ichiyanagi, who was living in New York at the time and whom she would later marry, and left school and started living in Manhattan with Ichiyanagi. Manhattan was the first place where Ono began her career as an avant-garde artist.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono planted an acorn in the garden of Coventry Cathedral in England in June 1968. The couple, who will get married a year later, believed that these seeds represent wishes for world peace. After their marriage, they sent an acorn to the heads of states of countries including Cambodia, Argentina, Israel, and Canada, and asked them to plant these seeds, which they described as "living statues" of peace. The King of Malaysia replied to the couple and planted the seed of the acorn in the garden of the palace.
Using this meaningful peace movement they made before marrying John Lennon as the title of their 80th birthday book, each of Ono's haiku in the book is described as an acorn.
John Lennon loved Yoko Ono. He thought he was more liberated with her. He has become quite a feminist, taking Ono's surname. He is at peace with his sexuality, his body, and his nudity. On the morning of the day he was killed, he lay naked on Ono and posed in that famous pose.
The most memorable performance of the duo was the "act of staying in bed for world peace", known as "Bed Peace". The couple, who decided not to get out of bed at the hotel where they spent their honeymoon to protest the Vietnam War, later implemented this action in other places.
It should not be said that the fight is prevented by not getting out of bed. The couple, who tried this method because they knew that their marriage would attract the attention of the public, indeed, in the spring of 1969, brought the question 'I wonder' to thousands of pro-war Americans.
John Lennon's statement on the subject is also memorable: "What we want to do is send a message to the world, especially to youth and anyone interested in protesting for peace or for nonviolence. We want everyone to see that this is either being too harsh or too intellectual. Everyone is talking about peace, but no one is really trying to do anything except a few people."