INDEX
To find the answer to why I continue to play traditional music in this day and age
– I think you became a professional through days of training, but you must have had a lot of difficulties in the world of folk music, where women are the main performers.
Heemoon: Since the base of folk music is a woman’s voice, it is all I can do to reach the right pitch with a man’s voice. I can’t even use my own singing technique freely. It was also very difficult to sing in a performance with only female singers, so I decided to try it alone. Since I wanted to sing at my own pitch, I decided to do a solo performance once a year.
– At that time, were you singing traditional folk songs instead of the multi-genre music style you are using now?
Heemoon: Yes, I did. But I wanted to make it new little by little. I arranged my own traditional costumes, and for the performance, I had a Korean dance artist direct me and I danced with a Korean dance team. I thought it would be more fun to make the stage a comprehensive art form, not just a song.
Especially with folk songs, there are many old words that cannot be understood only by singing, so we added another way of expression to convey the content. After meeting with this Butoh team, we changed the arrangement and performance of the songs a little bit in a modern way, making traditional music new. It seems that people who are not specialists in this field thought, “That’s no change,” but it was a very big change for me.
– So that’s how you built the base of your current expression.
Heemoon: Also, meeting contemporary dance teacher Ahn Eun-Me (Ahn Eun-Me) was a big deal. I auditioned for his stage and was invited to participate in his contemporary dance productions in 2006, touring Europe once a year for 10 years. The musician in charge of music for those performances was Jang Young-gyu (張領gyu), who later worked with me in SsingSsing. It was around this time that the foundation for my own musical activities was laid, and I started producing my own works and later SsingSsing in 2015.
– SsingSsing became the first Asian singer to appear on NPR’s “Tiny Desk Concert,” a well-known YouTube program, which drew worldwide attention. How is your motivation to evolve your expression based on traditional culture and folk songs rooted in your mind, Heemoon?
Heemoon: I have a great desire to sing folk songs and to have many people listen to them. While I was working on my own activities, somewhere in the back of my mind I was thinking, “This is not going to happen,” and I think I was looking for ways to get more people to come and see my performances. On the other hand, when I started to add modern musical arrangements and a wider range of expression in this way, I felt that it was wonderful to sing songs that have been passed down from generation to generation without changing them in any way, and I also think that this is the real folk music.
– What made you feel that way?
Heemoon: While I was working on SsingSsing, I also continued to make works in which I sang folk songs in order to find an answer to the question of why I continue to do traditional music in this day and age. I think I was able to realize this because I was balancing two opposing forms of expression.
Later, I created a trilogy called “Kipunsarang” (‘Deep Temple Hall Love’ Series) with an art artist. I made this work while researching the roots of the folk songs I was singing again, and I created each part of the trilogy in a different era, and I included a song about my mother, a folk singer. I wanted to know what kind of life my mother led after she started singing folk songs. I thought that if I told the story of my mother, the history of female minyo singers would be revealed. It may be natural, but it is not easy to talk about other people’s stories. But I can tell my own story with confidence. Confidence that I know my own story best.
