*Image credit: Live Music Lives

It’s been a year living with the pandemic. Any chance of recovering our normal daily lives has become a distant memory, and many things that had once been considered unusual have since become routine. Though many countries hope to restore the old way of living with vaccinations, recovering the past is still somewhere out in the future. And as we wait for that time, we have lost some things as people continue to struggle through this new world. The musician Oh Jieun sent us the following letter. —Editor

Hello,

My name is Oh Jieun and I make music. I started performing in a club in Hongdae, Seoul in 2005 and released my first album in 2007. I’ve been lucky in life so far to be able to play the music I like.

There was this club called Salon Badabie. I’m already a bit torn up that I have to write that in past tense. The place was really small. When there were 20 people there, I’d think, Wow, full much? That’s how small it was. Hongdae was full of small clubs, but even for Hongdae it was small.

To be honest, I don’t really care for small venues. More specifically, I’m afraid of all the things that can easily go wrong on a small stage. And there are several. First, when everyone is that close together, it has an effect on the rhythm of the performance (for example, if someone coughs even slightly, everyone can hear it), and if it’s somewhere that isn’t meant for performances (like an indie book store or exhibit hall), there’s a good chance the sound balance will be off. So you have to have guts to perform in that kind of place. I doubt people watching the shows would be aware, but that’s the truth of the matter.

But Badabie was different. The sound at Badabie was always tops. It wasn’t laid out in any special way, nor was it even stocked with very good equipment. The owner, Teolbo, managed the sound himself. He’s a poet, though, not an audio expert. Yet strangely enough, the sound at Badabie was always awesome. I think it was a combination of a good heart and a happy accident that made that miracle happen. It’s childish to say, but it was a magical moment in time. When I think back to being on stage at Badabie, I think of the audience’s expressions telling me they would always be there to cheer me on, the smile on Teolbo’s face as he stood in front of the console, the blue lights, and the humid air. And also, when I closed my eyes, sang, and was struck with the thought that, today, I might go far. I loved it so much that I thought, if I could record a whole concert sometime and put out an album, I would want to do it at Badabie. But that’s no longer possible. Salon Badabie closed in 2015.

In 2007, two years after Salon Badabie first opened, the owner said this in an interview: “Badabie is a place of constant flow. The people are always flowing in and out. Neither artists nor audience can stay tied down to this place.” I, too, flowed away. Once I released an album, more people were listening to my music and I went on to play bigger venues. Twenty people became 200, which became 400, then 800, and before I knew it I was up on the Olympic Park waterside stage. I was the closing act at their festival. But once every year, I went back to perform at Badabie. Because I wanted to relive that feeling of being ready to go far. Like the audience and the space itself were pushing at my back.

Some musicians develop their craft in their bedrooms, some in the practice studio, and some in the concert hall. For some musicians, it’s all of the above. No one instinctively knows how to write up a set list, make small talk between songs, or play their music in deep concentration and snap out of it again. Many Hongdae musicians train for all that in the clubs. And we end up learning how it feels when our own music reverberates throughout that space, how to sing and arrange songs, and how to communicate with the audience. The best part is being able to look straight into the eyes of the people who are welcoming my music into their hearts at that very moment. The atmosphere of any given day varies wildly depending on the audience. I can’t put into words what it feels like to get up in front of an audience full of people who love my music, and sing. It’s very hard, but also amazing.

Lots of musicians got their start in Hongdae. Jaurim, Crying Nut, and No Brain are already legends. Kiha & The Faces, Broccoli, you too?, and 9 and the Numbers were all performing in clubs around the same time I was. Some lucky concertgoers got to see Kiha & The Faces when they were new and full of energy for just 20,000 won. That’s the kind of place Hongdae clubs are. The kind of place where very interesting things sprout up and grow.

And now, Covid is upon us, and it’s given a lot of people a hard time. Although the arts can be a source of strength in times of difficulty, in some cases it’s the very first thing to be put on hold. It doesn’t affect your life directly, after all. You can survive without it. Slowly, more and more activities have become permitted, but performances are very restricted, especially pop music concerts. That’s without a single case of infection reported at a performance venue. I was wondering why that was, and then I saw this one comment.

“Are you seriously performing in a situation like this?”

I suddenly saw a whole new side to things. Are you serious? That’s all my work meant to this person. Those words hurt me far more than anything I’d felt from worrying about how to push forward during the pandemic while performances and events were cut down. I began to feel drained.

When society seems to be sending you signals from all around that you’re not needed, you start to doubt your very reason for existing. That’s just what happened on February 27 this year. A club followed the social distancing and disinfection rules to the letter to get everything ready for a performance there. One of the staff members called the city district office two weeks ahead of time and was told that they were allowed to hold the concert. Saturday evening came, and the band scheduled to perform that night had finished their rehearsal and was waiting. The fans were all gathered in the club. Then suddenly, some people from the district office came over and put a stop to the whole thing. The organizers for the club, the musicians, and the people in the audience were completely disconcerted. Planning a concert isn’t like meeting friends for coffee. For me, I need two months to practice for a single performance, at minimum. That means the performers I work together with have to spend two months in preparation, too. And there are more people than just musicians and the audience at a performance. There are people in charge of sound and lighting, and someone has to take care of ticketing, too. The venue itself has to pay rent every month to hold onto the space. And then there’s all the fans who are looking forward to the show. The first thing I thought as soon as I heard the news was, What if some people came in from out of town for this? My head was swimming.

Then it got worse. An official from the Mapo District Office commented on the incident by saying, “A concert hall means a place like Sejong Center. Something like a 70th birthday party, at a restaurant? The time for that has passed. That’s not something you can do during COVID-19, now is it?” I was angry. There’s no difference between the musicians who perform in Hongdae clubs and the musicians who perform at Sejong Center for the Performing Arts. I was angry that they used such callous words with no understanding of the cultural ecosystem, and angry that those words came out of the mouth of a representative for Mapo, the district where Hongdae is located. I voiced my opinion on Twitter, then someone said this to me: “That’s funny. Do you think your performance is as important as someone’s 70th birthday party?”

Korean musicians, staff and crew have since started a campaign. (Many tweeted their support for the “Our Performance, Our Livelihood” movement with the hashtag #LiveMusicLives.) Many lovers of the performing arts signed the petition, and the Mapo District Office replied right away, telling us that we could go on stage again if we were to follow health and safety regulations. But we still have a long way to go. The law has held us back.

The performance venues in Hongdae are registered as restaurants, and you might wonder why. Well, it comes down to the law. The law that the live clubs are currently following was enacted in 1999. Up till that point, it was illegal to hold concerts in clubs. In ’98, musicians and venues petitioned for the legalization of live club performances, and the law was revised the following year. But it was a half-baked law, mainly permitting performances at restaurants. Under the Public Performance Act, in order to register as a performance hall, a venue must hold performances for a minimum of 90 days annually or 30 days consecutively. For the many clubs that hold concerts only on weekends, they can’t fulfill that requirement. So instead, they register as restaurants. On top of ticket sales, clubs registered as restaurants can earn more profit from selling drinks. And besides, watching a performance with a beer in hand is a selling point of the experience.

Lee So-ra had her performance canceled recently. The reason is, pop music concerts, unlike musicals or classical music performances, are being classified as gatherings. I’ve experienced that last-minute worry about whether or not I would have to cancel my performance because the guidelines keep changing as the Covid situation evolves. No matter how long you’ve been preparing, if the rules change, you have to cancel the performance. The weird thing is, even at the same venue, musicals and classical concerts are allowed to go on, while performances by pop musicians are not. What do these politicians think pop music is? Some kind of artless, uncultured nuisance?

Culture comes in many forms. It comes from many places, grows in different ways, has different uses, and leads to different outcomes. There are times you want to listen to super high energy K-pop, and other times when you want to listen to dreamy indie music. (Of course there are dreamy K-pop songs and energetic indie songs as well!) There’s a cafe/bar in Euljiro, Seoul, called Hotel Soosunhwa. They sometimes host performances. It’s very small, and very cool. Countless artists have done photoshoots there (the most well-known must be SHINee’s). There are people in this world who like the little things, things that are unique, interesting, that veer away a bit from the mainstream. When those people create a peculiar, strange, amazing space, word starts to spread, more interesting people show up, they hold performances, and just like that, some culture sprouts up out of the ground. And from that plant, grows distinctive fruit. That, I think, is the way culture keeps going round and round. No one part is superior to or more important than another.

I’m sure all of you reading this already know that music and performance are important. Let’s take a moment to think about exactly how important they are. Covid cases are on the rise again. I hope that everyone will strictly adhere to the disinfection guidelines so that we can put an end to the virus once and for all, and bring back the moments we once reveled in.

Thank you for reading,
Jieun Oh April 2021