The most controversial Zelda song

this is the fire temple theme from Ocarina of Time and it's become somewhat Infamous that's because it includes audio of some real Islamic chanting in the background The Story Goes that when Muslim players heard this chanting in the game they complained to Nintendo and in later versions that chanting was removed except the truth of the story is a little bit more complicated so in this video I'm going to tell the true story of why Nintendo's developers included this out of place religious chanting in their game and the actual reason Nintendo got rid of it in later versions this is the story behind the most controversial Zelda song so this here is Koji kondo he's the man responsible for Ocarina of time's phenomenal soundtrack in 1995 he was given a huge job Zelda's Creator Shigeru Miyamoto said this at the time what I'd like to do is to create a totally realistic atmosphere for example if you went to a dungeon you could almost smell it which sounded cool sure but how was Koji kondo meant to go about achieving that well he tried asking some of the people who were working on this new Zelda game for any ideas but he didn't get very much in return condo thought that maybe because those developers were younger and he was older they were intimidated by him and so didn't want to give him advice about how to do his job but as condo explained without that direction it does make it hard for me to write however at the time kojikondo had an interest in what's known as were World music music featuring traditional instruments from non-western locations like Asia Africa or Latin America and in Kyoto the city where Nintendo is based there was a shop that sold CDs of all different varieties including this world music according to Koji kondo I recently found a CD shop where you can try out and listen to the CDs before buying and I've been spending a lot of time in their folk music Corner I've been able to hear tons of things I've never heard before I go there a lot now while some of those CDs had actual songs on them others had simple audio samples for instance a recording of some African drumming or of some traditional folk singing oh how about this Islamic chanting so that chanting sound comes from a CD that Koji kondo discovered called best service voice spectral volume 1. now this CD is absolutely full of interesting voice sounds beatboxing shouting and unusual singing but there's one sound on the CD which seems completely out of place the Islamic chanting sound now if you listen to the Arabic words that are being said here it sounds like this audio sample was probably created by chopping up a few different Islamic religious chants and throwing them together in a way which sounds totally strange and messy to actual members of the religion it starts with a phrase which translates to in the name of God most gracious most merciful then it recites two verses from the 112th chapter of the Quran but it only gets halfway through that before it cuts to a totally different phrase Allahu Akbar which means means god is the greatest so in other words this recording Cuts between a couple of different mostly unrelated phrases in Arabic and so to most Muslims this audio sample sounds well a little bit silly but to Koji kondo it was just foreign chanting and he liked the sound of this for enchanting a lot so much so that he decided to use it as a part of Ocarina of Time condo said in an interview that he'd actually been wanting to do a song with some kind of chanting in it for a long time so it worked out perfectly when he came to create the music for Ocarina of time's Fire temple he decided to write a whole piece of music around this Islamic chanting sample and the final result was this and so during November of 1998 Ocarina of Time was released for the Nintendo 64 and when players entered the fire temple they heard Koji kondo's composition chanting and all at least they did if they bought the game as soon as it was released however if they waited any longer to buy it then they would hear a slightly different version of the fire temple theme which sounded like this [Music] the real recording of Arabic chanting was replaced by a synthesized choir sound instead so what's going on here well you see there were actually five slightly different versions of Ocarina of Time released for the N64 these different ROMs as they're called can be split into two regions ntsc which covers Japan and North America and pow which covers Europe and Australia each subsequent version of the ROM contains fixes for bugs that Nintendo found in the game along with other minor changes so how does this affect the fire temple well if we put the different versions of Ocarina of time's ROM in the order that they were built then we can draw a definitive line here where Nintendo decided to change the music of the fire temple ntsc 1.0 and 1.1 both feature the recording of the Islamic chant while pal 1.0 and all versions follow following it instead feature the synthesized choir and re-releases of the game for GameCube virtual console and 3DS are also all based on later versions of the ROM so none of them feature the Islamic chanting either so why'd Nintendo get rid of it well the obvious answer is this the chanting was offensive to Muslims I asked a few of my Muslim viewers for more details on that so there's a few reasons why featuring this chant in the game is kind of offensive or at least pretty distasteful the obvious one is that the Quran is a sacred book using its words as set dressing essentially to set a creepy mood for the game is just in poor taste but there's other reasons the recording cuts off a chapter of the Quran halfway through which is seen as inappropriate plus many Muslims believe that music itself is Haram or forbidden in the Islamic faith now religious char hunting isn't necessarily considered music which is why it's okay but setting those chants to a musical beat is definitely music and therefore it breaks this pretty fundamental Rule and now the question of whether music is or is not Haram is a hotly debated one and it's not one that every Muslim will agree upon but I think it's pretty clear now that the chanting in the fire temple is at best going to be uncomfortable to hear for a lot of Muslim Gamers except none of that matters I don't mean it doesn't matter that the chanting is offensive I think it's bad obviously to use passages from a sacred religious book in a way that will upset people of that religion no what I mean is that backlash from Muslim players is not the reason Nintendo changed the chanting if I bring back the different versions of Ocarina of time's ROM take a closer look at the date that these different ROMs were built or finalized every single one of those dates is from before the game was even released in other words Nintendo printed those early batches of Ocarina of Time cartridges then they decided to change the chanting and then printed another batch of cartridges all before the game was released at all so backlash from Islamic Gamers can have nothing to do with it so what was the real reason well an old copy of the official Nintendo magazine Nintendo Power might hold a clue to the answer a reader wrote in with the following question something's bothering me I recently bought Ocarina of Time and the music in the fire temple is different in my friend's version there's a choir in his version but in mine it's not there it's really freaking me out and here's what the magazine replied with the original release of Ocarina of Time did have choir music in the fire temple but it was removed from later versions The Mysterious Fire temple choir music resembled a holy Muslim can't and while of course the game's creators didn't intend for that to happen it was similar enough that Nintendo changed the music and then years later in 2013 game News website game trailers received a more detailed response from Nintendo of America in regard to your question the background sound effects originally used in the fire temple section of the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time were originally chosen from a library of commercially available Musical and sound effect programs our game developers did not know that the sounds used in the game had Islamic references once we were informed that there were Islamic musical references in this section of the game the music was removed from all subsequent production runs of The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time so in other words Koji kondo likely had no idea what the meaning of the chanting on his sample CD actually was when he included it in the fire Temple's music he just liked the sound of it and presumably as Nintendo was going through the testing phase before Ocarina of time's release someone inside the company or someone who play tested the game noticed that this chanting wasn't just some generic vocal music but instead an Islamic religious chant and So to avoid causing offense to players condo rewropes the fire temple theme replacing the real vocal recording with a synthesized vocal line instead however this change was made close enough to the game's release that early copies of the game were printed before that music was changed except there's one last wrinkle to the story because the Islamic chant recording is actually still included within Ocarina of time's soundtrack even in the game's modern re-releases it's just very very difficult to hear you might have to take my word for this next part a little so this is the Shadow Temple theme another temple theme that features choir-like singing however it's not this singing sound we have to pay attention to instead just around the one minute Mark of the song There's a strange background noise which plays a few times I'll highlight when the sound is playing so hopefully you'll be able to pick out the sound I'm talking about foreign now that sound doesn't really sound like anything in particular it's just a strange discordant noise but if you dig through Ocarina of time's files it turns out this strange noise is actually that very same Islamic chant recording just chopped up and played in a few close clashing chord formations here's a recreation of the sound isolated from the backing track so because that strange noise isn't recognizable as religious chanting Nintendo never removed it from the Shadow Temple theme either Koji kondo forgot to remove it or more likely he just decided it didn't matter since no one on earth could recognize this that is religious chanting and so because of that the Islamic chant sound is still included within Ocarina of time's soundtrack in one form or another even in the most modern re-releases so next time you're playing Ocarina of Time take a close listen to the music from these two temples the fire temple and the Shadow Temple because now you know the interesting history behind the music featured inside them hey thanks for watching and thanks so much to all of the very kind Muslim viewers on Twitter who helped fill me in on the significance of this particular chanting if you're interested in more Zelda videos check out a video I made called who are Link's parents exploring a very mysterious part of Link's backstory I think you'll enjoy it

Channel: Thomas Game Docs

Views: 238,509

Keywords: Thomas Game Docs, gaming, Zelda, The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo, Ocarina of Time

Id: YF6x1WxykaM

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 28 2023