Until recently, traditional Korean music, or gugak, had never been something close to the heart of Seoul-born, Paris-honed jazz vocalist Nah Youn-sun.

Born to a conductor father and a musical actress mother, she was exposed to various genres of western music from early on, and later found her own musical idiom in jazz. 

With her crystal-clear voice, flawless intonation and phrasing and chameleonic flair to express emotions, she has risen to fame in France, her adopted country for the past 20 years. There, she discovered a circle of like-minded musicians and built her repertoire around a wide spectrum of jazz, classical, pop, folk, world music and even heavy metal.

Oddly though, something inside held her back from dabbling in gugak, the indigenous music of her native country.

“I had been invited to numerous gugak performances, but declined them all,” Nah said in an interview in Seoul. “It just didn’t feel right. I knew nothing about gugak.”

Such was the relation that Nah had with gugak until last year.

This year, the jazz star is finally crossing over.

Now back in Korea, she is studying jeongga, a genre of Korean vocal music which historically accompanied court music, and is directing a monthlong festival of modern gugak set to kick off in Seoul on July 1.

“After finishing my concert in France this March, I packed everything and moved back here,” said Nah, who now resides in Gapyeong, northeast of Seoul, with her Korean husband.

“I am pausing now from the hectic life that I had as a jazz singer,” she continued, adding that at one point she had about 250 concert appearances a year ― all at different venues.

“Returning home, I had no plan for the future. Only some ideas about what I want to do. One of them was studying gugak.”

Although it was intended to be a no-work year, she decided to take the job as a creative director of Yeowoorak Festival.

“The timing was right. I was going to study gugak and then this offer came in. I also have fond memories from my childhood of the venue, the National Theater of Korea,” she explained. Her father served as the first music director of the National Chorus of Korea, which had its office, and mostly performed, at the NTOK.

Now directing her first festival and first gugak performances, Nah feels her fascination with the genre deepening. She also finds areas she hopes to play a role in developing.

“I have discovered so many great gugak musicians. I want to help them go overseas and collaborate with foreign artists, using my international network.”

Jazz and gugak share common ground in that improvisation was essential in both genres, Nah continued.

“Any attempt to mix jazz and gugak can be inspirational for both jazz and gugak musicians,” she said. “It may or may not work. But you don’t know unless you try.”

The world music scene now is brimming with opportunities for gugak musicians, she added.

“The global music festival business is booming right now. New festivals are being planned around the world and organizers are actively searching for new talent to fill their stage. Now is the time for gugak musicians to venture overseas.”

As for her own future, Nah seems directionless. And it doesn’t seem to concern her.

“Right now, I don’t know which direction to pursue,” said the singer, who added with a disarming honesty, “I never really lived my life with a clear direction or a goal in the first place though.”

In fact, for someone who’s at the top of her own game, Nah is surprisingly unassuming, down-to-earth and lacks pretensions.

In her own humble words, she is a singer who stepped into the domain of jazz “by accident” and has just managed to make herself known there, not because she was great, but because she was different.

“Growing up, I never thought I would become a professional singer,” she said. She studied French literature at a local university and got into a fashion company as an administrator, only to quit after less than a year. In 1985, at 25 years of age, Nah decided to study jazz in France, a genre she had never listened to, on the advice of a musician friend. “Jazz is the root of all popular music,” the friend had told her.

“I didn’t know a thing about jazz back then. Had I known, I wouldn’t have dared to try it,” she said, recalling her encounter with the musical genre, which later became her lifelong passion.

Nah’s humble words belie the accolades she has accumulated since then.

Among many, she received the prestigious Chevalier des Arts et Lettres medal from France in 2009, becoming the first Korean artist to receive a national medal from a foreign government. She has performed sold-out concerts at the world’s most coveted venues and music festivals, including Theatre du Chatelet in Paris and Blue Note in New York. Last year, she performed Korean folksong “Arirang” at the closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics.

“Looking back, I thank France and the French people for all the opportunities they have given me. It was because of their acceptance of cultural diversity that jazz singer Nah Youn-sun was discovered,” she said.

Neither her latest love affair with gugak nor her self-imposed lull from the globe-trotting concert tours mean a waning passion for jazz.

On the contrary, Nah believes whatever life entails it will provide her with new inspirations to dig deeper and wider in her accidental love affair with jazz.

“To create something new, you just have to try something new.”

By Lee Sun-young (milaya@heraldcorp.com)