Live from Sajik World Folk Festival

A Talk with Damon and Naomi

Written By Ana Traynin

On a warm weekend under the trees, historical Sajik Park set the stage for the 2nd Gwangju International Folk Festival, Sept. 5-6. Sunday night’s Korean showcase included prominent long-time singer-songwriter Kim Doo Soo backed by Czech musicians, as well as some of Korea’s other veteran and rising folk stars. Two Japanese folk acts and an American dream pop/folk duo Damon and Naomi represented the international side.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts based duo Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang, former members of the seminal indie rock band Galaxie 500, which was active from 1987-1991. During their first tour of Korea in 2005, Damon and Naomi discovered Kim Doo Soo’s 1991 song “Bohemian.” They included it on their first compilation of world music called “International Sad Hits,” produced by their 20-20-20 label. Ten years later, Kim’s sixth album, “Dance of Hunchback,” brought the duo back to Korea to open for Kim’s record release in Seoul, following their own separate performances in Gwangju and Hongdae’s Veloso.

Before the start of the folk festival, in a quiet café near Sajik Park, Gwangju News sat down with Krukowski, Yang and their Tokyo-based tour organizer Koki Yohata to discuss their return to Korea and their first performance in Gwangju.

Gwangju News: This is your first tour in Korea in ten years. How did you first come here?

Krukowski: Some of our records were licensed by [Korean music label] Pastel. We were going to Japan to play and I think I suggested it to them: “If you could bring us from Japan, would you want us to play?” It was not very hard for them to do. I think it was very unusual for a US band to come and play at the time. We brought two of the Japanese musicians that we played with called Ghost. We played as a quartet in Seoul. It was really wonderful. We’ve said yes a lot of times before a lot of other bands.

Krukowski recounted their recent tour in Istanbul, where the promoters who brought them to Turkey years ago admitted that the duo was their first show booking experience.

Krukowski: After us, a lot of American bands started coming to Istanbul so I feel like we’ve done this a couple of times. We said yes when other bands would have said no because there was no track record. We came [to Korea] because we wanted to see it.

Yang: We were excited to be back again.

GN: What made you come back?

Krukowski: Kim Doo Soo has a new record. He is launching in Seoul. We found his music when we were here last time and took it home and liked it a lot. So we got in contact and he released a few songs with us in the US. That’s been a wonderful thing because he’s gotten to know one of the other singers on the compilation who is Japanese. They’ve gotten to be friends and have played together.

GN: How did you come to the Sajik Folk Festival?

Koki Yohata: It came about because they asked me to help with the booking of international artists. The first idea I came up with was Kim Doo Soo and the Czech musicians who collaborated with him on his new record which came out in January of this year. Then I thought about who else I could talk to. It was a good time to connect him and Damon and Naomi.

GN: What do you think of the Korean music scene, especially folk music?

Krukowski: It’s hard to get to know it from a distance. That’s why it’s really important to us to travel. Before streaming, you couldn’t really get the records from a non English-speaking band from another country. That’s why we started the International Sad Hits. We met a 4-year-old girl on the [KTX Seoul-Gwangju] train today who spoke English. The dominance of English in music can be really a little stifling because the only records that are exported and sold in the English-speaking world are in English. There are always bands in the native tongue, but people don’t tend to recommend them to outsiders.

Yang: So whenever we travel, we tend to ask the local musicians whatever they like to listen to that maybe wouldn’t be popular overseas. Both in Japan and Turkey and here too.

Krukowski: Sometimes it takes someone from the outside to cross the line.

The day after performing at the folk festival, the duo headed to Seoul to play their 2015 release “Fortune” at the Hongdae venue Veloso, named after a famous Brazilian musician.

GN: Your latest record, Fortune, is based on a short film. Can you talk about that?

Yang: I’ve been making music videos for other bands. I always did photography. Because I was doing that, I thought I would make imagery behind our live show. So when I started, I would collect different imagery and randomly screen it while we played our sets. But I started working with this friend of mine who I knew since college and it became really intense and semi-biographical about his life. All of a sudden it didn’t seem like it would just work to put our music behind it. It seemed like it needed its own soundtrack. So I finished that as a silent film and I wrote a soundtrack for that and that’s what “Fortune” is.

GN: Is there anything else you want to add about your experience in Korea?

Krukowski: I make my own kimchi now. I learned from a book. I do my best to cook Korean food at home. I love the food.

During the folk festival, Damon and Naomi performed Tim Buckley’s classic “Song to the Siren” and two of their own songs.

Sajik World Folk Festival: gswff.gitct.or.kr/

Damonandnaomi.com

20-20-20.com