(Jazz Pianist)
“The names of the notes Ray Charles plays can be copied by anyone who has studied scales. But Ray's soul, his touch, his feel, is powerful beyond the notes, and not as clearly identifiable as the scale. What is it about the sound of the Ray that shakes the current space and takes me somewhere else?”
- Ray Charles performs in Clint Eastwood's documentary film <Piano Blues> (2003).
What kind of music do you listen to these days?
My musical tastes are omnivorous. I used to read a book and someone's name comes up, and I'll just look up their album, and then suddenly curiousity about early jazz is aroused, I'll look up Scott Joplin and listen to that, It’s like that.
Broadening the scope a bit. Can you share some unforgettable sonic experiences you've had in your life?
There are certain albums that you listen to and end up going back to. For me, it's Thelonious Monk and Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder's “Power Flower” in particular. I don't know why but I always go back to it.
What specifically makes that music special to you? The melody, the harmonies, the texture of how it was recorded? There could be many things.
For me, it's the echoes of sound. The sound of a song itself. I keep going back and wondering what that is. One of the songs on my second album, “She's Gotta Have it,” is named after the title of the hollywood movie. There's a kind of homesickness in the soundtrack of that movie, and I thought, “What is the source of that sound that keeps resonating with me? I want people to feel that way when they listen to my music.
When did you first start playing an instrument?
My mom ran a piano school, so naturally I was introduced to the piano at the age of four. I would climb up on the little upright piano, jump on it, jump over it, and just play with It. That's how I got to know the instrument.
Playing with instrument, It sounds like learning to play an instrument hasn't been too stressful for you. I remember when I was a kid and I went to piano lessons. I hated it, kicking the instrument.
I was beaten by my mom with a ruler, but in hindsight, I'm grateful for that. I couldn't play until I finished the piano practice. I remember often crying when practicing because I wanted to play.
That can make you really hate the instrument, can't it? Can you remember a moment when you fell in love with an instrument?
I switched from piano to another instrument once, and I think that was the trigger. I switched to the violin, because I hate to play piano at that time. I didn't play piano about three years. Strangely, I've fallen in love with the piano again and find the joy of playing the piano. I was lucky enough to get into a music college where I was able to take quality lessons. It was so different and fun to learn piano from a college after only learning it in my small town. I think that's when I really started practicing hard.
You switched from classica musicl to jazz. How did you discover jazz?
I have small hands, so it was hard for me to play classical music. Holding an octave is easy for others, but it was hard for me. I think that's why I eventually stopped playing classical music. After that, I was a church accompanist, and I wanted to get better at it, so I went to a applied music school. I had to take an hour and a half bus ride into the city, and that's where I learned the blues. That's how it started.
What was it about blues and jazz that appealed to you differently than the classical piano you had previously studied?
Again, the answer is sound. The sound of chords. If it's a major, the sound of the major, if it's a dominant, the sound of the dominant. Even the blue note, I thought to myself, what is it about this sound that makes it so mysterious? In fact, I still do.
Do you have your favorite chords?
Dominant seventh. I love an honest dominant chord with just the 1, 3, 5, and 7 notes.
It's been said that the music theory used in jazz eventually came from classical music. What differences did you notice when you switched from classical to jazz?
I think it's fundamentally the same language. I think the difference is the rhythm. It’s the same notes, but how you handle the spaces between the notes determines the genre. There are also differences in the history of each genre.
You studied piano in the United States. I saw in another interview that you used to play in an African-American church. It sounds like you had an extraordinary experience in America. I'd love to hear about it.
When I was a student abroad, I needed to earn some money, so I was introduced to church accompaniment, and it was a Nigerian church. When I went to play, there was just me and the drummer. We didn't even have any score. The singer would sing something and I would have to compose and play it. It's not a jazz song, it's a simple harmony, and I learned a lot about rhythm while playing there. In that kind of performance, the score is secondary. When it was someone's birthday, the whole congregation would come out and dance in a circle, and it would go on for over three hours. Dancing and singing came really naturally to these people and I learned a lot from that.
Do you have any other memorable sound experiences from your time abroad?
I've always been interested in black music, so I used to play gigs outside of school with some black guys in my neighborhood, and their setlists were all 1960s and 1970s music that I'd never heard and only they knew, and it was really cool to play along with them and follow along.
When I’m listening to your music, I feel a strong vibe of black music. Do you consider black music to be your musical roots, or do you think it's inappropriate to try to put an ethnicity into music?
I think there's a part of it because jazz itself is the music of black people in America. I think I'm ambivalent about it, because I'm concerned about if I'm really doing my own blues or if I'm one of those people who's just imitating. Anyway I'm trying to figure out how to do it naturally, because I'm not doing traditional Korean music and just studying with what I've heard. But you knows Miles Davis was born rich, and he is heard a lot of people say that rich people can't do the blues, but he did it really cool. I took courage from that story. I'm Korean and Asian, but I'm trying to see if there's something I can do within this genre.
You released many blues songs. Some people consider Nam Meari is the best blues pianist in Korea. Do you agree?
Do you think I would agree?
Blues in a music theory, we can find that it's a 12-bar composition using dominant chords of 1, 4, and 5 degrees, but in real life, the term ‘blues’ is much broader than that. Sometimes we often find the term ‘blues’ in a movie title or somethins. I wonder what the blues means to you.
That's too hard a question for me to answer. It's like I think I have it now and then it slips away again....... It's actually not hard to write blues scales, but it's hard because I keep thinking that's not natural. I think there are environmental factors that I can't catch up with because I'm not born there, I didn't learn it from the street, I didn't grow up singing the blues. Sometimes the unnaturalness that comes from that is hard for me to tolerate. When I monitor my performance, there are obviously many good parts, but I always wonder how to solve the unnaturalness that only I know.
If you keep thinking about it, you might realize, “This is not for me,” and maybe you could find another path. But you keep doing the blues. Is it purely due to the affection for blues?
Yes, I do. I'm happy when I practice and I think that's why I do it.
How are the blues you recorded on your first album and the blues from recently released Nam Meari Band's Second album different?
Definitely gotten more comfortable. For the songs I recorded on the first album, I practiced for a year and a half to two years for one song. I was afraid because I always thought I wasn't ready. Now I can play anytime I have a piano next to me. That means a lot to me.
In some ways, listening to the improvisation of a musician's unique interpretation is the reason to listen to jazz. What is the most important thing for you in improvisation?
I think the most important thing is to play like you're singing, and because songs are basically words, it's important to have soul in those words. Each musician has his or her own well-traveled and comfortable path, and if you go down that path without soul, I think you could fall into mannerisms. Even if you went down that path yesterday, you have to walk carefully again today, and it's not easy because you're human. You have to cherish each one.
Do you tend to keep thinking in your head while you're improvising?
It depends on the situation - recording, gig, solo, band - but I think I play best when I'm not thinking, and I tend to think too much if I'm not prepared.
There's a famous saying that there's no wrong note in jazz, do you agree?
There are no wrong notes, but there will be proper notes.
Usually, a wrong note is a note that is out of tonal system, but there have been many attempts to go beyond the traditional tonality in the history of Western classical music. Listening to your “Dusk” series, I felt that it was pointless to analyze it in terms of tonality. There seems to be a lot of shared territory between contemporary music and avant-garde jazz. Is tonality important to you?
I do think it's important to have a tonal center to go back to when you're doing an outside solo. I've seen a few free jazz or contemporary music performances where the tonality really doesn't matter, and I'm not sure I want to do that. However, when I recorded the 'Dusk' series, I didn't think about tonality at all. But once i did that, the path was created. It was like winning the lottery. If you win once, it doesn't work the next time, because I’m trying to copy a previously successful, mindless performance, and I got stuck. And then I try to break it again, and I think that's how I grow up.
My next question is about the sound of a piano. It's hard to understand what it means to make a tone or timber of a piano because it's an instrument that produces sound as soon as you press the keys and there are no any electrical circuits. As a player, what do you think a good piano tone is?
If multiple people play the same song with the same piano, the differences in tone will be clearly revealed. To me, a good piano sound in my standard is a sound that is warm, solid, and thick, , and capable of expressing all the dynamics. As you said, the piano is an instrument where you just press the keys to make a sound, so we often don't think about what happens in the process of making the sound, and I always emphasize this in my lessons.
Is there any exercise to get a good sound on the piano?
The classical approach is right. And then try different things to make it sound good. Trying to use facial muscles, squeeze everything what I can out of my body, and see what helps.
Is that approach equivalent to a real acoustic piano, not a digital one?
It's a very important question, because maybe it's because the practice room environment has changed, but nowadays it's all digital and you just hit a sound that someone has already made, so you can miss the process of creating the tone, and you can become desensitized to using sustain pedals, so I think you need to start with an acoustic piano and feel the sound for yourself, and there's a big difference when you use sustain pedals. I've heard recently that some players are so intimidated by acoustic pianos that they record on digital keyboards, even if they have a good piano next to them.
The piano is actually a very old instrument, and its limitations are obvious. The 12 notes of the octave are clearly tuned and you can't slide from note to note like you can on a string instrument. Is there something about the piano, in its classical form, that is so appealing to you?
Actually, for me it's more about the music than the piano, because when I see a really good performance, I forget myself and I follow the melody and it takes me somewhere, and I love those moments, and I love watching performances because of the euphoria I feel when I get lost in the melody and my mind goes somewhere else, and I want to create those moments in my own playing, and I think that's why I keep practicing.
Is there a sound you really hate?
I hate the sound of a chalkboard scratching, car brakes, and anything else that tires my ears. I also avoid talking on my cell phone because it's annoying to my ears.
The next question is about time periods. By the very nature of genre music, we are trained to learn and reproduce music from specific eras in the past, but the act of recreating the sounds of the past seems to mean different things to different performers today. To say that someone's playing sounds like 1930s or 1940s jazz is a great compliment to one person, but can be a great insult to another. What does the music of the past, or heritage, mean to you?
Like they say there's nothing new under the sun, the music I do is borrowed anyway, and I do it because I like it. If I can feel the naturalness of the blues for once in my life, I wouldn't want anything else. In terms of musical style, I think it's important to study the music of the past to define your own style, for example, if you don't want to use the language of bebop, you have to experience the language of bebop first.
Is there a time or place in the past that is particularly important to you?
There's a musician from New Orleans named James Booker. He was born in 1939 and I love the sound of his piano. I actually emulate his style a lot, and if I had a time machine, I would definitely go to New Orleans when he was active.
The last question is one that requires imagination: If you had a microphone that could record the most important sound from someone's subconscious, what do you think it would be?
I hope it would be the sound of singing on a big stage outdoors. A sound that is so beautiful on its own, even without a microphone or speakers.