Church Music

Korea has been kind to me since I arrived here, nearly five months ago, but this weekend has taken it to another level: Good people, lots of live music, alcohol, and even a faint whiff of that stuff they call ‘fame’. It feels like the Gods Of Korea are smiling on me at the moment, I don’t know why. I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve it. But anyway, wow.

Okay, re-wind... Children, our Korean word for today is ‘Hagwon’. There is no real equivalent of Hagwons in Western countries, as far as I’m aware. People variously call them ‘academies’, ‘night-schools’, ‘cram schools’, or ‘institutes’. They are essentially private schools which teach people a range of different subjects from English to Korean to Music to Computing to Cooking. If you can think of it, there will probably be some enterprising Korean (of which there are many) who will have created a Hagwon for it. They will charge you a monthly fee and you will attend for a few hours a day or a few days a week (class times completely vary,,of course), to fit in around your work or study schedule.

As for me, I work in a Language Hagwon which is mainly directed at adults, who want to study English or Japanese, at a variety of skill levels. Many, if not most English teachers who come to work in Korea, will work in Hagwons. It’s creates a lot of jobs and can be highly lucrative, as something like two-thirds of Korean education is conducted outside the government-run state schools, i.e. in Hagwons. So Hagwons are a pretty interesting, and rather unique aspect of Korea’s society and economy, and for me, they are the reason I have a job here!

Enough background, back to the fun stuff... Recently I had the incredible fortune to meet a great guy called Jae Woo. As well as being one of the most friendly and helpful people I have ever met, he also has the advantages of firstly owning a Music Hagwon (called ‘The Jazz and Pop Academy’) in a city called Shiheung, and secondly, of being a very skilled Saxophone player and Sax teacher himself.

Me and Jae Woo. Debut gig @ Ta, Hongdae, Seoul

As well as being lucky enough to meet Jae Woo, in the last month I also accumulated an English drummer, Mike, and an American Bass player called Hoho, who have both become good friends and drinking partners too.  Jae Woo offered to let us practise, gratis, at his Hagwon, and also brought a very talented (and, I may as well add, beautiful) piano teacher, called Yu Mi, into the band. So, to recap: one month ago, I was a washed-up wannabe-singer in a foreign land, with no-one to play with. Now, I have a five-piece band, representing 3 different countries, and with a whole heap of talent among them. Jammy.

IAMTHESUN - Farewell Korea gig @ Ta.

We had our first concert, after only three rehearsals, in Hongdae in Seoul, last Friday, which, despite a few inevitable bum notes, went pretty damn well. We supported the excellent IAMTHESUN (for whom It was their last Korean gig, before singer Matt returns to the UK - sad face!). I was satisfied with the gig, but the next day we would play again and it would be a completely different, crazy, random experience.

The day after the Hongdae gig, I wake up at a friend’s in Itaewon, confused and terribly hungover. Quelle Surprise. After a taxi ride, subway ride, bus ride and a slightly-lost-wander-around Shiheung city, I find the church, the venue for our concert. This concert (full name: the "Jazz and Pop Academy's 2nd Music Festival" )was organised by Jae Woo, for the students at his Hagwon to each come and play a song or two to their parents and friends. Many Hagwons hold these kind of events once or twice a year: to showcase what their students have learnt, and, moreover, to impress the parents (who invariably are the ones who pay for the classes!).

Dan. AKA "Jazz History Teacher" @ Jazz and Pop Hagwon. 

Ahem.

So the parents (a couple of hundred, I reckon) file in, and after a few words from Jae Wu and some of the staff at the Hagwon, the music begins. There are about 20 performances in total, ranging from vocal duos to full rock and blues bands to sax soloists. Some of the songs are in English (“Play That Funky Music White Boy” – amazing!) but even the Korean songs are interesting to hear, and it’s cute to see some young aspiring musicians do their stuff on a big stage in front of a big audience. Bless!

My band is due to play last, by which time my hangover has merged with nerves and mutated into Parkinson’s-esque shakes. I’ve never played to an all-Korean crowd before, I can’t speak Korean and I have no idea how they will react to our songs. There is an added comedy factor (for me, at least): knowing that the words to our second song “History Deletes Itself” (which I co-wrote last year with Dave Robertshaw, my old buddy back in the UK) are actually about Internet Pornography, and here I am, belting it out to hundreds of teenagers, mums and dads, in a church in Korea. Random Factor - 100.

Considering I only met most of the people in this band a matter of weeks ago, and today most of us are pretty knackered and bleary, we played pretty much faultlessly, and I must consider it a success. The main thing is that the crowd reaction is great, and after our show I am accosted by groups of teenagers, male and female, wanting photos with me. I’m both flattered and completely bemused as I am told repeatedly that I am “Handsome Guy” and “Singer Good”. Fifteen minutes of Koreann fame are mine. Hahaha!

 

As the evening progresses into dinner-afterparty-jam session-noraebang blur (NB. English readers, Noraebang = Karaoke!!), I dwell on the  possibilities I can see for us as musicians in Korea. Maybe it was just a one-off random event, and the novelty of a western singer with girly hair won’t earn me much more than the curiosity of teenagers. Who knows. For now anyway, I’ll just settle on one word, Wow. Yep, that'll do.

Beijing Part 2

At about 8am the following morning, a rather uncomfortable minibus, packed with American backpackers, and with the heating up far too high, took us to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China. A cable-car (which did feel a bit rickety, and Lisa didn’t like at all) took us up to the actual wall. The sun eventually came out and we started to appreciate where we actually were. Like many things in China, it is the scale of the thing which is pretty breath-taking, and it is one of the ‘wonders of the world’ after all – but also, it is just a very long wall, and you can only be so impressed. Perhaps the real highlight was the toboggan slide which we used to get down to the bottom. Inevitably we were accosted by market traders who tried (successfully, I might add) to flog us some souvenir t-shirts and silk robes and hats we didn’t realise we needed. Ha.

That evening back in Beijing we hit the famous outdoor market at Donghuamen to see some crazy Chinese food. We weren’t disappointed. Scorpions, stag beetles, spiders, sea urchins, snakes – as long as you can fry it, you could eat it. I warmed up with a simple spring roll and some fish balls before hitting the snake meat (nice – similar to squid) and snake skin (I can’t be sure, but it seemed reminiscent of trying to eat a foreskin – chewy and rank). Martin took it one step further and tried a fried scorpion – he seemed to quite like it, and I was a bit disappointed I couldn’t bring myself to join him. I felt truly out-manned. 

Sanlitun, Beijing’s western district, was our location for the evening’s drinking. Cue: more Tsing Tao, Tequila, and Long Island Ice Teas (the expat’s favourite tipple, it would seem – perhaps because in Asia they make them so ludicrously strong). We hopped between three or four places before ending at a decent place called ‘Tree’ – a nice expat bar (located with help from the Lonely Planet book), with a Blues Trio sat in the corner playing Doors covers (props to the dope harmonica player!), and watched Martin get quite impressively drunk. Me and Lisa found some excellent post-booze street food (some kind of bacon and lettuce wrapped in egg-fried bread), before heading back to our hostels, nicely-pickled English tourists.

 

So, our last day started quite late, and after brunch - where me and Lisa embarrassed ourselves buying far too many dishes in a Chinese Cafe - we headed to the Temple of Heaven. This was every bit as impressive as the Forbidden City but with a far more spacious, laid-back feel: the Temple of Heaven is actually about half a dozen temples, some of which are mostly ‘outdoors’, spread across a huge park covered in trees and lots of little paths – it used to be the place where Emperors would pray to God for good harvests. 

Its spiritual vibe certainly lingers on: we saw some older people doing some kind of Tai Chi crossed with drunk-uncle dancing – I don’t think it was meant to be funny, but we certainly all watched, bemused, laughing at this weird spectacle for a good ten minutes. 

“My mother thinks you are handsome, can I take a picture of you please?” said one girl to me as we wandered round. A similar thing happened a few times that day. Strange. You’d they didn’t often see effeminate Englishmen in Beijing, or something. So I politely obliged, of course.

Before I left Beijing I was eager to do some shopping. I need more clothes (as my co-workers in Korea often remind me), and I had heard there were some markets in Beijng where you could pick up some bargains, if you knew how to haggle. The most famous place, Silk Street, was closed due to the New Year holiday, so we got a cab to Yashow Clothes Market, and within an hour I had two pairs of (designer/imitation: delete as appropriate) jeans and two pairs of (branded/fake: ditto) trainers, for about £50. I probably could have paid less than that even, but the market traders really know how to squeeze money out of guilt-ridden westerners (“You are so handsome, English gentleman” “Pleeeease...A few more Yuan, because it is New Year, sir” “You drive a hard bargain, clever handsome man” etc. etc.). And what the hell, even if I did pay too much, and these clothes all fall apart within a week, at least I alleviated some of my middle class shame.

One last meal back in the hutongs and the food was really good (and cheap!), but don’t ask me what we ate because with all-chinese menus, it was a case of pointing to the pictures, which caused some amusement when I accidently ordered Dog – sparking a philosophical debate with Lisa about whether it’s any different eating Dog to eating Pig or Cow, blah blah blah. Anyway, Rover, Max, Buddy, whatever your name was, if it’s any consolation, you tasted good.

We said our goodbyes to Jo and Martin, which was a wee bit sad - we had had been a pretty damn good tourist-posse over the last four days, and it will be a long time til we meet again. After another week in China, Martin was to go back to Leeds and Jo to Taiwan to teach English for a year. Oh Well. I was thankful for a great time in China’s Capital with some good friends – there were many, many things we didn’t have time to see, but what we did see really was impressive and truly memorable. 

Beijing is a cool place, and, forgive the cliché, but it really is full of paradoxes – in some ways it is accessible, modern and open, and at other times it feels dirty, backward and almost dangerous. Like the rest of China, it will never be truly westernised, because it doesn’t have to – Beijing doesn’t need western tourists, but if you ever get the chance to check out Beijing, do it, you need it!

(Oh yeah, I lied about the few hundred words thing didn't I - Sorry. Sue me.)

Beijing Part 1

This is really a city that deserves a few words written about it. Although like my trip (which was only for 4 nights), this blog will be (too) brief. I hereby promise not to detain you for more than a couple of hundred words.

The first thing that struck me and Lisa as we took our taxi from the airport was how quiet the streets were. This is a huge sprawling city with a population of over 17 million, which is renowned for its  perpetual bustle of bikes, cars, tuk-tuks and people. But this was Chinese New Year – a time when people leave the city to head to their families in their hometowns – and so the streets resembled the UK on Christmas day: shops were shuttered, traffic was sparse, and the atmosphere was almost disappointingly calm. 

In contrast to Seoul, the architecture is broadly low-rise, especially in the old parts of the city which are made up of traditional hutongs -  small, narrow alleyways, flanked by one or two-storey buildings (Apparently this is a relic of imperial rule – Beijing’s old emperors used to forbid anyone from building anything  that might rival their palace as the tallest thing in the city). There are few advertising boards, and at night, the neon glare for which Seoul and other big Asian cities like Shanghai or Tokyo are famous, is replaced by an eerie darkness in much of the city. Beijing appears dark, slightly old-fashioned and possessing an undercurrent of potential danger.

But even at night, I couldn’t describe Beijing as sleepy. Fireworks are, of course, one of China’s most famous national inventions, and around Chinese New Year they can be seen, and heard, everywhere and all the time. Men, women, young and old, can be found in alleys, on any stretch of pavement, even in the middle of main roads (with traffic passing only yards away) - setting off fire-crackers, burning sparklers or firing a myriad of colours into the night sky. COOL!

The lack of people in the city turned out to be a blessing.  We never had to queue for the subways (which at 2 yuan a trip – 20p – are fantastically cheap), and a taxi ride (that is, if you could find a taxi) were quick (and, mostly, very cheap – we generally paid just over £1 for a ten-minute ride).

Our first night was spent meeting our friends Jo and Martin, and trawling the restaurants and bars around the hutongs, enjoying nice Chinese beer like Yanjing or Tsing Tao– such a pleasure to drink some decent brews after the recurring disappointment of Korean piss-lager like Cass or Hite. We also took in some cocktails and I bought a bottle of Baijiu from a corner shop – Chinese rice wine which tastes and smells really fucking strong BECAUSE IT IS! It certainly helped keep me warm as we wandered the streets watching the craziness of Chinese New Year unfold. We decided we ought to go to Tiananmen Square for midnight, thinking that as the centre of the city that would be the best place to see the fireworks, but actually the best place was outside a hotel just around the corner from Tiananmen Square, where we chanced upon a hotel whose staff seemed to supply an endless number of fireworks onto the street and kept us coo-ing and ah-ing for half an hour or more as we watched the sky dissolve into explosions.

Chinese New Year’s day we went back to Tiananmen Square, and you could really appreciate the beauty and scale of the place by daylight (and a very nice day it was too!). For the first time we were accompanied by real crowds of people, almost exclusively Chinese, checking out their capital’s most famous public space. Surrounded by grand government buildings, huge, identical red flags, and thousands of people taking posing for photos, the place felt huge, full of history and importance. It was also probably the only part of Beijing that reminded you that you’re in a communist country – security was tight (our bags were scanned on entry, and CCTV cameras were everywhere) and Mao’s body is buried here in a huge, overbearing Mausoleum (you can still go and see his corpse if you want to, but sadly it closed when we were there), whilst his huge portrait stares across the whole scene.

After haggling for a few tacky souvenirs from the mass of street hawkers, we passed into the Forbidden City, and compared to the distinctly Modernist grandeur of Tiananmen, it felt like stepping back in time. This vast complex was built by the Emperors about 600 years ago, and is remarkably still pretty much in one piece. For about £4, you can wander around the several gates, palaces, courtyards and gardens for hours. Amazing stuff, and again, photo-op heaven.

From The Forbidden City the flow of human traffic leads to Jangching Park, which is basically a man-made hill and pretty much the only high place in central Beijing (this city is very flat), from which we could review our day’s route, and, accompanied by a few cans of Tsing Tao, we saw the sunset over Chinese New year’s Day and see the start of yet another night of fireworks.

A short cab ride took us to a famous and very swanky restaurant for Peking Duck, and after gorging ourselves on the city’s famous dish (prepared and dished up by an expert waiter at the table – nice touch), we returned to our hostels by subway for a well-earned rest. Tomorrow would be an early start.

Obamalamadingdong

I came home from teaching at about 11.30am, and due to the time-difference, and the hi-quality stream I found on the CNN website, I sat down to watch Obama’s State of The Union address – apparently the most-watched 'political programme' on US Televison every year.

It’s a curious event. Being a politics-junky, I have seen it before of course, but I couldn’t stand to watch George W Bush’s SOTU speeches for more than five minutes without becoming incensed, so this was the first time I really gave it my full attention. Of course, Bush is an easy act to follow, in so many ways. Obama is, for a politician at least, a photogenic TV personality and is easy to watch, and he’s also blessed with a talent for making speeches (which he has obviously nurtured and honed during his time in the US presidential campaign - perhaps the ultimate speech-making academy), so, he was in his element. And for me ,he got the delivery, and the content, just right.

Firstly, the delivery of his speech was engaging and often pretty inspiring, even for a non-american. It reminded me of why he won the election in the first place – the energy and charm which so sparked the imagination back in 2008. Now actually in the White House, having to do the boring work of actually trying to run that  country, he is not so sparkling in his rhetoric, and policy-wise he has disappointed more than once (watering down health care reform, the lack of a decent Green Energy bill, caving in to the Republicans on tax cuts for the rich). And he has failed to impress me during recent Press conferences, where he has looked tired and frustrated (but then, in his job, wouldn’t you?). 

But the big set-pieces speeches like this, really are his forte. So he reassured the country that America still has the biggest economy in the world (even if he didn’t add “not for long!”), that the States are the most popular place “on Earth” for foreign students to come to, and his is the country with the most productive workers, and most inventive business leaders. Feelgood platitudes abounded, but during a recession, and war, (and amid the slow-realisation that “it’s China’s world now”), I guess that it’s the job of a leader to try and cheer people up. 

The best part for me was when he stressed the importance of the State to creating a decent economic environment – a point which seems obvious to many, but for hardline republicans, they need reminding that government can often be the solution, not ‘the problem’, as their hero Ronald Reagan used to argue. He cited the example of the Internet - which has of course, revolutionised, well, just about everything,- was initially created by the US Military with taxpayers’ money. He went on to argue that things like non-carbon energy, modernising america’s woeful rail system, and improving education will all require the government to intervene (and, horror of horrors, spend taxes – eek!). I liked the passage where he encouraged "any young person wanting to make a difference in the life of our nation, to become a teacher" and added “Your country needs you”. How refreshing to hear such patriotic prose employed in the context of teachers and education, rather than soldiers and war. 

Of course, it wasn’t all great. He failed to mention the words ‘climate change’ once, and perhaps the biggest cheer was for his promise to be tough on illegal immigrants. Yawn. And of course, it’s easy to be cynical and say that, like any politician, he is all words and no action. But words really do matter, words are the  very stuff of politics, and leadership. And after the drubbing his party got at the congressional elections last year, it would be easy for Obama to suck up to the Republicans and only tell them what they wanted to hear. He avoided the easy route, yet also managed to unite the congressmen and women before him who are so often bitterly partisan and contemptuous of each other (at least for an hour or so, before they revert to taking chunks our of each other).

And most of all, he reminded me of his greatest quality: for all his faults, he is not George W Bush and he never will be.