The Music of the 1930s Modern Boy Revisited... The Tune 'Coordinates of the Old Song'

Performance at Munhwa Seoul Station 284 RTO Theater
Reinterpreting 1930s Cultural Trend Sinminyo

The gugak crossover band The Tune is bringing back the 1930s modern folk song concert 'Neulgeun Noraeui Jwapyo' (Coordinates of Old Songs), which received acclaim last year.

Traditional Korean music band The Tune 'Coordinates of Old Songs'.
Photo by The Tune

'Neulgeun Noraeui Jwapyo,' selected for the 2022 Arts Creation Support Project and praised by audiences, has been chosen for the Korea Traditional Performing Arts Foundation's '2023 D'Art Spot Series' this year, and will be performed four times at the Culture Seoul Station 284 RTO Theater on June 28-29 and August 25-26.

The Tune created the 'Neulgeun Noraeui Jwapyo' repertoire inspired by sinminyo (new folk songs), a new cultural trend that emerged in the 1930s.

This time, the band will meet audiences with a stage featuring outstanding video, installation art, and spatial direction. Through the organic combination of audience participation, video, and art, they plan to express the narrative of time synesthetically, maximizing audience immersion.

Notably, this performance attempts a three-dimensional spatial design to show how 1930s music can be reborn as today's music, which is a point worth attention.

The Tune is a gugak crossover band that adds modern imagery and sensibility to traditional music motifs such as Korean shamanism, labor songs, and traditional jangdan rhythms. The band consists of Lee Seongsun (traditional percussion, haegeum), Go Hyun-kyung (vocal), Lee Yujin (keyboard), Tamura Ryo (percussion), and Nam Jeonghun (piri, taepyeongso, saenghwang).

With vocals that sing intuitively and percussion, keyboard, piri, and taepyeongso that have a strong primal nature at the core, they deliver intense energy.

Since winning the Sound Frontier Grand Prize at the 2014 Jeonju International Sori Festival, they have been actively working domestically and internationally through continuous creation and album releases. Since 2019, they have expanded their activities through tours in 15 cities across 13 countries, including the J.F. Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.