A sensational debut at the top of the sales charts as soon as his new album was released. The South Korean singer Youn Sun Nah, well known to the French public, is back with “Waking World”, her latest album entirely filled with her compositions – a first – and carrying a sweet melancholy, like our era marked by the pandemic.
The one who shares her life between Korea and France, her adopted country, was able to take advantage of the difficult period of the pandemic to offer herself an introspective journey in eleven titles which she now delivers to the public. Forced to confine herself to the South Korean countryside, she found the energy to go all the way, twenty years after the release of her first album, “Reflets”, songs that had been in her head for so long. Finally back in France – for a new series of concerts – she explains to CNEWS how she finally assumed this new role of songwriter.
Did these pieces of your composition slumber in you for a long time or did it all come at the time of the creation of the album? Did the pandemic influence your decision?
It came over time. I had melodies floating around in my head, which I could have started composing a long time ago. Then a year or two ago, I started to really think about it. In my previous albums, I sometimes had a few of my compositions, but never a whole record. Then I started writing, without necessarily imagining definitive pieces, with the work of my musicians behind. In fact, I was already thinking about this new album in February 2020, when the world was not yet paralyzed. I was in France in February 2020, and I had started writing the album that I was supposed to record in the summer of 2020.
For a long time, I didn’t think I had the right to make an entire album with my compositions.
I went to the United States in March to meet the musicians. Then Trump declared the lockdown. I took the very last flight to join my parents in Korea, and I stayed there for a year and a half. Finally, by force of circumstance, I made an album on my own. Initially it was not planned like that at all. For a long time, I thought I was not legitimate to offer an album entirely composed of my works.
The topics covered are reminiscent of discussions, dialogues that you can have, with someone or with yourself. It’s quite different from what you have been able to offer before, with a great melancholy charge, and rather dark titles. The situation that the whole world is still going through has darkened your compositions?
This inevitably influenced my compositions, and at the same time I really like ballads, melancholy songs. I always write the lyrics last, so inevitably we find this melancholy, nostalgic aspect. On the one hand, I couldn’t see many people during this time, and on top of that, I live in the countryside in Korea.
I was in nature, with lots of time to myself. I could only be sincere, a bit like telling my diary. I described my inner world. We can also see these places in the clips for the songs “Don’t get me wrong” and “Waking World?”, where I walk in the forest which is right next to my house.
Did this form of retirement in the countryside that you experienced play a role in this result rather far removed from jazz? Would the album have been different if you had composed it in New York, as planned, with the energy associated with this city?
I think it would have been different. When I wrote albums or songs in New York, I was surrounded by instruments, musicians, the energy that surrounds you stimulates you. This time, it was much more difficult, I sometimes tortured myself, I had to go very far to draw the desire and the motivation to work, to compose. In the countryside, it was a bit like being with my mother, it represented something reassuring, like in a cocoon. In New York for example, on the contrary, I am there to be the receptacle of the energy of others. And then this album is different because as I couldn’t have the musicians next to me, I did a little, in the sound, with the means at the time, that is to say a computer!
The fact of offering styles closer to chanson than to jazz, even if it can be found in small touches, also comes from the desire not to be attached to a particular style?
In fact, my first album is the fruit of what I learned, but late. Before I turned 26 and arrived in France, I had never really learned jazz, I didn’t know what it was. Then at school, my teachers gave me access to this repertoire, familiarizing me with the more European tradition, which was so different from what I listened to when I was younger, like a Billie Holliday. I loved this music, without even asking myself the question of the label. I wondered if with my soprano voice, I could sing that, and my teachers pushed me to do it, telling me that jazz was not a question of tone of voice.
I thank the world of Jazz for welcoming me as I was.
I was also inevitably influenced by my youth in Korea, Korean pop, traditional music. I rather absorbed all these influences, like a sponge. So I never really asked myself the question of style. Anyway, there are always people who will say that I am not a jazz singer. But I continue to thank this environment which in its vast majority welcomed me as I was.
The booklet is written in your own handwriting. Is there a particular reason?
I did the booklet alone, the photos, in selfie mode, like writing. I didn’t know when I was going to be able to come back, record, so I did everything on my side, as if I was going to be able to have something to offer, to people I could see, to friends. So it’s really my most personal album, everything was done on site and by my own means!
It’s been more than twenty years since your first album was released, and the Covid period was for everyone a phase of self-reflection, of reflection. What would you like to remember from these twenty years of production?
Strangely, this album, the 11th for me, is a bit like the first. It took me twenty years to make an entire album with my own compositions! It’s like I’m starting from scratch. I’m not young anymore, and yet I’ve never had so much energy. I really want to work even harder, even better, as if every second counted.
The period gave me the opportunity to reflect, to ask myself as I had probably wanted for a long time. Now I want to go back, do my best until the next disaster! I also realized during this confinement how important the stage has been to me for all these years. I really record my albums to be able to sing them on stage, that’s my goal.
After all these albums, which touch on jazz, folk, pop,… Is there something that comes from Korea in your work, whether in the songs, the themes or the texts? ? Is this country, in one way or another, present in your work?
Some people have pointed out to me in the past that there are certain traditional colors or harmonies that can make me think of Asia in my music. But it remains very unconscious. It will be on a piano chord for example. So Korea is in me, with the legacy of what I heard when I was little. Even when I’m going to sing a traditional French song, the emotion I’m going to put into it will undoubtedly be Korean. We also have our own very expressive blues.
An album in French, that’s not for now.
So when I’m sad, when I want to express this feeling in music, I think I’m 10 times sadder! When I do an American blues, it’s also Korean, because I carry it with the emotions I’m used to hearing there.
Do you imagine it possible to make an album in Korean, or in French?
Ah, that’s not for now. But it’s the same for an album in French. My friends always ask me when I will finally make one. But it’s very difficult, because I don’t want to do anything. These two languages are probably too close for me, France is my second home. I don’t want to do this lightly, but really think about it again.
Waking World, Youn Sun Nah, Warner Music. In showcase at the Fnac des Ternes (Paris 17th) Friday 11, 6 p.m., on tour throughout France (March 31 at the Seine Musicale in Boulogne-Billancourt).