Jazzing up Korea

Inspired by Ella Fitzgerald, vocalist Malo has learned how to approach singing with her mind.

By BARRY DAVIS
Korean musician Malo (photo credit: Courtesy)
Korean musician Malo
(photo credit: Courtesy)
The next installment of this year’s Hot Jazz series offers a breath of foreign fresh air in the shape of Korean-born vocalist Malo and her compatriot harmonica player Jeon Jeduk. The duo will perform four concerts around the country between November 24 and November 29.
Malo (nee Soowol Cheong) came across jazz by chance. “When I was 22, I heard a saxophone tune playing in some coffee shop near my university [in Korea] and I couldn’t understand what they were doing,” she recalls.
It was love and intrigue at first earful. “I decided to find out what this ‘jazz’ music was all about. After I graduated from university, with a physics major, I flew to the States and enrolled at the Berklee College of Music [in Boston].”
Malo had grown up with a mixed musical bag. “My dad had an old song book that has hundreds songs of classic arias, world traditional songs, tunes of classic composers and black spiritual songs. I loved to sing those tunes, reading the scores and playing piano by myself. I sometimes also listened to classical, since my sister was studying classical composition.”
Naturally, Malo was drawn to vocalists. Her primary sources of inspiration were divas Dinah Washington and Ella Fitzgerald. “Ella showed me how to approach jazz singing with my mind,” notes Malo.
But the artist who drew her most strongly into the jazz idiom was iconic saxophonist John Coltrane. It was an inspired and natural choice, as he was one of the first jazz musicians to explore ethnic and cultural areas outside the Western world, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Kabbala and the teachings of Indian philosopher and spiritual leader Jiddu Krishnamurti.
Malo has gained renown for her jazz work in Korean, and the third and fourth of her five albums to date – Cherry Blossoms Are Gone and Now To You, released in 2003 and 2007, respectively – have Korean lyrics, with most of the numbers written by Malo. Despite her education at Berklee and her love for jazz, Malo does not try to come across as an American jazz singer. “I can’t be a ‘pure’ jazz singer because I have a different musical background and as a child I listened to Korean traditional music. They are influences that have remained with me all my life.”
In the last half century or so, jazz has increasingly taken on musical influences from around the world and Malo has followed suit, while taking the fundamental differences between English and Korean into account. “We have different structures and pronunciations of language. I’ve tried to put Korean words to my original melodies and to use Korean traditional rhythms. Recently, I’ve been working with old Korean pop songs, trying to bring them into the language of jazz.”
Malo’s cross-cultural endeavor also incorporates the use of traditional Korean instruments, such as the daegum (transverse flute), haegum (violin) and samulnori (drum).
Malo sings in Korean and English, as she will on her Israeli gigs, even though she says she prefers her mother tongue, temporal logistics notwithstanding.
“I feel very comfortable when I sing in both English and Korean. But I find I achieve greater emotional depth in the music when I sing in Korean,” she says. “I think it’s not the same in the two languages. When I write music in Korean, I don’t use swing rhythm that much. That’s because Korean diction has a segmental structure to it, so it’s kind of hard to pronounce the liquid, flowing aspect of the words.”
Malo and Jeon Jeduk’s slot in the Hot Jazz series is entitled “Jazz Meets The Great American Songbook,” and the duo will perform some favored perennials plus a surprising item. “I was attracted to Cole Porter’s works,” says Malo. “In Israel I will sing standards like ‘Devil May Care,’ ‘Blues in the Night,’ ‘Charade’ and ‘Black Orpheus’ and ‘Hatikva’ in Korean.”
Malo will perform at the Tel Aviv Museum on November 25 and 26 (9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m,. respectively). Abba Hushi House in Haifa on November 27 (9 p.m.). The Gerard Behar Center in Jerusalem on November 29 (9 p.m.).