“Wherever I’ve been and gone, wherever I have gone, the blues are all the same…”, truer words could not exist to place Lee Jung-Sun’s music somewhere under the sun. Over a decade removed from his debut, it’s what drove his most unlikely masterpiece 9집 雨 (which roughly (?) translates to: A House Rain “Rain” — editor’s note: thanks to a reader for pointing this out), one created long after many felt his vision crested. A titan of the Korean blues finding a new shade of blue.
Lee Jung-Sun was born in Daegu, Korea right at the start of the Korean War in 1950. It was however in Yongsan, near an American Air Force base, during post-war South Korea, that Lee would develop his first taste for “Western” music.
While others were buying into an early anti-American fervor, driven by the presence of U.S. troops and their support for the prevailing South Korean dictatorship, Lee would be listening to American radio picking up a liking to the early rock groups of the day. Once that kind of censorship eased up, somewhere, near his high school, a particularly well-stocked record store introduced him to albums by The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, CSN&Y, and the Moody Blues (who he particularly liked) which he consumed whole-heartedly.
At that moment in time, Lee began to pick up his first guitar, to the scorn of his unapproving parents who hated his attempt to teach himself such an instrument. Inspired by early Korean rock groups like the 에드훠 (The Add 4). By his count, he’d end up buying up to three guitars before being able to hide one to stop it being broken by his father.
In 1969, forced conscription presented one benefit: an excuse to join the military band and flesh out his performance chops. Although, eventually, his other love, that of early Korean “Trot” music, left him aware of what he wasn’t cut out to do, pop for “Pop’s” sake. Not quite a rocker, either, he kept searching for a sound. Eventually, he felt something in his voice and his songs that was important, and his other influences were missing. It was then that he fell in love with the music of Neil Young and Leonard Cohen.
It was in their unique, less-polished, voice and ‘freer’ style that Lee saw that one could explore all sorts of styles in music. Now, rather than spurn the “black” music of America, Lee began an earnest journey to understand jazz, to explore the blues, to reimagine himself with music that spoke truer to his voice. In the end, he thought, blues ran all the game. In 1971, after his dischargement, he’d begun to hear the music of Kim Min-ki who had stuck his head out to move Korean folk music into a new direction (and saw his struggle with Korean censorship), and Lee understood the road ahead wouldn’t be easy but writing his own music is what he wanted to do.
On his 1973 debut, a totem of Korean blues music, 이정선 노래모음 / 이리저리 (or Back and Forth), Lee moved past the prevailing winds of “singles” music. Here he devoted himself to creating a complete record that could show a new kind of Korean folk music, one influenced by new ideas from rock, soul, country music and jazz. In the age of cookie-cutter singers, as a singer-songwriter he appeared (to the chagrin of his label) with long hair on all the photos he took, with music far more rebellious than any in the new folk scene. And as quick as it was released, it was removed by South Korea’s imposing censors who deemed them too “cynical”.
No matter how many times he’d go on to battle censors while trying out interesting, new things, like Lee would when fronting Korean folk-rock supergroup, 한영애 (Sunflower) or on his solo recordings, each new album moved the needle of South Korea’s modern music scene. By the late ‘80s he’d gone from misunderstood, shunned, musician’s musician to wonderfully, influential and popular singer with songs like “Island Boy” becoming new Korean standards. All of which makes 1990’s 9집 雨 (A House Rain) that much more impressive.
For all practical purposes, Lee’s time in the limelight had passed by the time the ‘80s came around. For Lee, every year passed and every year yielded less and less recordings. Other things – like becoming an influential guitar lesson writer and teaching – had brought him just as much holistic wealth. If, and when, Lee would pick up the guitar, it would be to play things that brought him some sort of ease. His “Shinchon Blues” outfit had already been an outlet for those heavier, rocking ways. It appeared now his age had shifted his focus, elsewhere.
As Lee would relate in 9집 雨 ‘s liner notes, the pain of old age had come swift. One day when he saw it rain outside, at his mid-age, he felt that atmospheric feeling translate to physical pain. In an attempt to deal with the emotions that rose up, Lee realized that playing more “comfortable” music eased his mind. It was these songs that he experimented with on instrumentals a year earlier in his 제8집 (Ballads) record that came to their own on this one.
Part nostalgia, part a loving tribute to the more esoteric, dreamy influences of his youth, 9집 雨 seemed captivated by the airs of the seaside, by the easy-going, age-appropriate music he would putter about at home. By luxuriating in his age, Lee (unsurprisingly) created his most forward-thinking album yet. Joining up with a younger group of backing musicians – one that actually understood the sound he was going after – together they nailed his kind of sun-kissed melancholia in the age of a burgeoning alternative scene.
If ever you’ve heard the music of the late, great Steve Hiett, or some of the more “panoramic” easiest-going work of some like Jimmy Buffett (think “Come Monday”) or something from early Dire Straits, and then you’ve probably hit that golden-hour of peak “lost-weekend”, middle-aged, “okay, boomer”, musical glory found here…I mean, if you’re in that bubble, you know how this kind of music hits (as it does me). And 9집 雨 does it in Lee’s unique way.
Songs, like the opening track, “떠나는 새벽”, gently unfurl with the kind of unplaceable sonic nostalgia that is gifted to one who actually had to live through a past. In it a plaintive guitar strum builds and builds, to a gorgeous mini crescendo, like a crest lapping up over a quiet wind on a sandy beach. Lee’s simple songs gain this magnificent grace that is its own atmospheric rain falling in various tracks.
You hear this “atmospheric rain” in the first of two versions of the album’s theme “며칠째 비는 내리고 (연주)” (Rain Falling For A Few Days), a beautiful, serene, guitar-led instrumental that places you instantly in a special kind of plaintive island paradise. And for some reason, at least personally-speaking, Lee’s album puts me in that rarefied territory of Dylan’s own Oh Mercy – one of those forgotten minor masterpieces, released just a year prior. Both seem to be albums that employ open sonic spaces and vibrating, resonating, unbusy atmosphere as a way to set new stakes for their artistry in this new generation. How can one deny that spirit when one hears it in something like “상처” (Wounds) or “바람부는 날엔” (On A Windy Day)?
It’s that laissez-faire feeling, that makes 9집 雨 such an easy album to pick up and to fall in love with. Wherever Lee’s warm and gentle personality shines through, whether it’s through his voice or his guitar, it feels like a joyful pick me up for that day. Whenever the blues settle in, as they will on tracks like “테마1 (연주)”, “항구의 밤” (Harbor Night) and “며칠째 비는 내리고 (노래)” the moonlit atmosphere makes those feelings transcend in a different, universal kind of way. And as they say, the rain falls on everyone, somehow making Lee’s elegiac songs still perfectly linger just the same.
2 responses
thank you so much!
My pleasure, Lana.