When the parents of Korean jazz singer Youn Sun Nah realized that the COVID-19 pandemic had begun, they called and urged her to return to Seoul from New York, where she was based at the time.
“They said buy
the ticket immediately,” the singer recalls. “There’ll be a total lockdown and
you might never be able to come home. When I watched television and heard that
borders would be closed, I packed my bags and I got the last ticket. I thought
I would come back in three months, but not a year.”
Born in Seoul
to musician parents (and named Na Yoon-sun), Youn Sun Nah learned to play the piano as a child but grew up
focusing on the usual curriculum at school. She graduated from university in
1992 with an arts degree, having studied literature, and she thought this would
be her career direction. She didn’t want to pursue music, she says, because she
had seen her parents - a choir director and a musical actress - work too hard.
Still, when the
Korean Symphony Orchestra invited her to sing gospel songs in 1993, she began
taking her first steps in the world of performing and recording, eventually moving
to France to study music, as she relates. In Paris, she followed courses in
traditional French chanson and enrolled at the prestigious CIM
School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, where she had to overcome certain
artistic challenges.
In the years since
then, she has performed worldwide, sung at the closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter
Olympics in 2014, contributed to a Nina Simone tribute album, and taken part in
the 2017 International Jazz Day concert which was held in Havana, Cuba.
(International Jazz Day is an initiative of legendary jazz pianist Herbie
Hancock and the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO.) In addition, she has
received the Officier des Arts et des Lettres award from the French Ministry of
Culture, the Sejong Culture Award from Korea, and a host of other music prizes
and accolades.
In an interview
with SWAN before a recent concert in Brussels, Youn Sun Nah spoke of her
career with self-deprecating humour, discussing the effects of the pandemic on her
art and the meanings behind the songs on Waking World. She shed light,
too, on the experience of being a jazz singer amidst the global Korean pop
music phenomenon. The edited interview follows.
Youn Sun Nah: I’m a jazz singer from Korea. I studied jazz in France, and I travel around the world, and I’m kind of all
mixed up, but I’m very happy with that.
SWAN: Are
you now based in France?
YSN: No, I used to live in Paris for a long
time, but actually, I don’t have a place to stay in France now. Every time I go
there, it’s just for the tour, so I go to different places. I could say I live
in Korea, but it’s a nomadic life.
SWAN: Let’s
speak about Waking World, which was released last January. You’re doing
a tour to promote it now, as that wasn’t possible earlier, during the pandemic.
YSN: Yes, we couldn’t really do the
promotion thing, but c’est la vie. My manager called in 2021 to say: now
you can come, you can take the plane now. So, I quickly bought the ticket, came
back to France and recorded the album in Paris, and then I did some shows.
SWAN: A lot
of artists have had to find ways to keep going during the pandemic, and it’s
been especially difficult for many musicians who couldn’t tour, couldn’t be on
the road. Has that been the case for you too?
YSN: As you know, jazz is really live music,
and I think most jazz musicians feel the same way. You want to do as many gigs
as possible. I don’t know if people listen to my music on platforms like
Spotify or iTunes, but I feel very lucky to perform live music. More than 400
jazz festivals exist in France, so it’s a privilege.
SWAN: How
did Waking World come about, and what does it mean for your fans, for
you?
YSN: When I went back to Korea at the start of the pandemic, I was kind of optimistic that things wouldn’t last long. Everyone was wearing masks, but we could move around, just not take the plane. Then … six months, seven months, eight months. From that moment, I got really depressed, and I thought that maybe I should change my job, that maybe I would never be able to go back to Europe and perform. What can I do, I thought. All the musicians I played with were in Europe because I studied jazz in France, and I don’t know that many jazz musicians in Korea. So, I had a kind of homesickness even though I was home. But in Korea, we never lose hope, so I think that’s in my DNA. I told myself: you should wake up, and you should do something else; you can’t disappoint the people who’ve supported you for a long time, you should have something to present to your audience. So, I started writing some new tunes. Without the musicians I usually work with, I had to do it all by myself.
YSN: Actually, I watched YouTube a lot, and
I learned many music tools. I learned how to play the guitar just by watching
tutorials, and I learned how to compose with the laptop.
SWAN: And you
wrote the lyrics too?
YSN: Yes, I’m not so good at English, but I
just wanted to be honest, so even if it doesn’t sound quite right, I just
wanted to express myself.
SWAN: But
you’re used to singing in English?
YSN: Yes, after I started studying jazz. You
know, when I came to France, I didn’t know what jazz was. If I’d known, I would
definitely have gone to the States. I was so naïve … and maybe stupid? One day
I’d asked one of my musician friends in Korea what kind of music I should study
to become a good singer, and he’d said: do jazz. What is jazz, I asked him. And
he said: jazz is original pop music, so if you learn how to sing jazz, you can
sing anything. And I said: oh, it sounds great!
I’m a huge fan
of French chanson, so he said one of the oldest jazz schools in Europe
is located in Paris, so go there. Oh, great! I arrived there, and what you
learn at school is American standards, and everything was in English. I
actually studied in four different schools at the same time because, well, I’m
Asian, and I’m used to that education system where you don’t have to have any
free time for yourself! When I had only six hours of lessons, I thought: what
am I gonna do with the other eighteen hours? (Laughter.)
SWAN: That
kind of approach must have helped with the album?
YSN: Well, I didn’t know when I could record
this album, so I just kept writing and composing. And arranging by myself, as I
had a lot of time. But, as you know, jazz is like … we should gather together
and arrange in the moment. When I could finally fly to France, I just gave all
the material to the musicians. And they said, oh, we’ll respect your scores.
And I said, no, no, do what you want. But they played exactly what I wrote,
every single note. I’m embarrassed.
SWAN: Tell
us about the inspiration behind some of tracks, such as Bird On The Ground,
the first song, which has the refrain “I want to fly. I want to fly. I want to
fly.”
YSN: Well, “bird on the ground” - that’s me
during the pandemic.
SWAN: Don’t
Get Me Wrong, the second track, has an infectious melody, but the message
is clear: the world “has no chance with those who lie and lie”. Tell us more.
YSN: During the pandemic, I could only watch
TV or go on the internet to know what was happening. But sometimes the information
wasn’t true, and even though it’s a lie you end up believing everything. Yeah,
so I thought the world has no chance with people who lie.
SWAN: The sixth
track has an intriguing title - My Mother. (Lyrics include the line: “How
can you keep drying my eyes every time, my mother?”) What’s the story behind
it?
YSN: With the touring, I usually don’t spend
that much time at home. But with the pandemic, I was home for a whole year, and
I spent a lot of time with my mother, and I really had the chance to talk about
everything, about her life and what she experienced. She’s my best friend, and
we became even closer.
YSN: I wanted
this to be a dream and not real, but at the same time this is the reality, so
it was kind of ambiguous for me. Where am I? Am I dreaming? No, you’re wide
awake.
SWAN: Tangled
Soul, track eight?
YSN: My soul was completely tangled.
(Laughter.) And then one day, I felt: it’s okay, everything will be all right.
SWAN: Speaking
about music in general, K-pop has become a global phenomenon. Are you in
the wrong field? (Laughter.) More to the point, are you affected by the huge
interest?
YSN: At every show, I’m really shocked or surprised
because the audience says “hello” and “thank you” in Korean. Unbelievable!
There are many people who’ve told me about their experience in Korea, too,
saying they’ve spent a month or six months there. It’s something that my
parents’ generation couldn’t have expected because the country was destroyed
during the war - it’s not that long ago - and they had to build a completely
new country. They worked so hard, and because of them, we have this era. People
know Korea through K-pop, through Netflix.
SWAN: Then
there’s this Korean jazz singer - you. When listeners hear your work, the “soul”
comes through. Can you talk about that?
YSN: When I arrived in Paris, not knowing
what jazz was, as I mentioned, I told my parents: Oh, I’m gonna study jazz for
three years, and I think I can master it, and then I’ll come back to Korea and
maybe teach. And afterwards, I felt so stupid, and so bad because I can’t
swing, and I don’t have a voice like Ella Fitzgerald, and I could barely learn
one standard song. So, I tried everything. On Honeysuckle Rose, I think
I wrote down every moment that Ella breathed in, breathed out. But … I couldn’t
sing like her, it sounded so fake. So, I said: No, I’ll never be able to sing
jazz, this is not for me. After a year, I told my professors that, sorry, I
made a wrong choice, I’m going to go back home. And they laughed at me. They
said: What? Youn, you can do your own jazz with your own voice. And I said, no,
I can’t. Then they recommended some jazz albums of European jazz singers, such
as Norma Winstone, who’s an English singer, and my idol. She has a kind of
soprano voice like me, and when she interprets, it’s like a whole new tune. And
I said, oh, we can call this jazz too? I didn’t know.
So, I learned
to try with my own voice and my own soul, with my Korean background, and the
more I used my own voice, the more I did things my own way, the more I felt
accepted.
SWAN: What
is next for you?
YSN: Well, everyone has told me that this
album is not jazz, but that’s what I wanted to do. Herbie Hancock always said
that jazz is the human soul, it’s not appearances, so you can do whatever you
want to do. We’ll see. It’s been a while that I’ve wanted to do an album of
jazz standards, so we’ll continue this tour in 2023 and then we’ll see. -
A.M. / SWAN
Photos (top to bottom): the front cover of Waking World; Youn Sun Nah in Brussels (photo by A.M.); the back cover of Waking World; Youn Sun Nah and statue (photo by A.M.)
Youn Sun Nah’s Spring Tour runs March 9 to May 26, 2023, and includes concerts in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Follow SWAN on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale
