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Introducing ReFolkUs, a new podcast by Folk Music Ontario, where we talk to artists and music industry professionals about building sustainable careers as creative workers, with a focus on folk.
[00:00:00] Rosalyn: Hello, and welcome to season two of ReFolkUs, where we talk to artists and music industry professionals about building sustainable careers as creative workers with a focus on folk. I'm your host, Rosalyn Dennett.
[00:00:20] . Hello, folky [00:00:30] friends! Janice Jo Lee, aka E Sing Hey, is an award winning Korean Canadian folk artist based in Toronto, Ontario. She's a singer, songwriter, composer, sound designer, spoken word poet, actor, clown, and educator. She has released three albums of music, two poetry chapbooks, and has composed music and sound for two musicals and five stage plays.
[00:00:53] Rosalyn: Janice is a leader on conversations around equity and access. Her artwork is immersed in issues of gender empowerment, [00:01:00] community, climate change, the environment, and anti racism. Offstage, she conducts workshops on equity, performance, and poetry. On stage, she performs with a guitar, trumpet, and Korean drum, and tours solo, with a trio, or with a six piece band of women and non binary musicians.
[00:01:16] Rosalyn: Here's our conversation with Janice Jo Lee. Hello Janice, so in our, [00:01:30] preamble, just before we pressed record on here, we were talking a little bit about introductions and how we introduce ourselves. and I'm wondering if you can, for the listeners who aren't familiar or haven't had the pleasure of seeing you perform live, would you start by, telling us the introduction that you would, normally give on the stage?
[00:01:52] Janice: I’m Janice Jo Lee. My Korean name is E Sing Hey, she and they. So [00:02:00] happy to be here. Something like that…
[00:02:02] Rosalyn: Thank you for being here and thank you for sharing that introduction. I think one of the things that I was really excited to talk to you about today, is the idea of sharing your, your identity through music and through song and, you know, the way that we, tell our stories and, our family stories and our own.
[00:02:18] Rosalyn: I think it's, it's really neat that you do that introduction and that, you start off by immediately wanting to communicate with your audience who you ard and you know, is that something that you've always felt comfortable [00:02:30] doing?
[00:02:30] Janice: I think so. In general, I'm often in art spaces, like a visible minority, let's say, and I know how important it has been for me to see other people like me, doing art, so I'm happy to kind of raise my hand and identify myself because I, have been approached by like the one young Asian girl in this classroom or this [00:03:00] entire high school who comes up to me after and is like, I loved your songs, or you're the first Asian feminist I've ever met, things like this.
[00:03:08] Janice: I'm like, wow, it's so important that I make myself known. And I mean, visibly I'm an East Asian person. I think identifying myself as a Korean person is helpful for audiences to learn the differences between, Asian cultures and people, and then it also informs some of the artwork that I'm going to share, whether that's going to be a [00:03:30] Korean language song or some of rhythms coming from traditional Korean music that are
[00:03:33] Janice: a part of some of my songs because it's just a part of who I am.
[00:03:37] Rosalyn: Did you grow up around a lot of Korean traditional or Korean folk music?
[00:03:42] Janice: A little. I grew up speaking Korean at home. It was my first language. My grandma lived with us and she didn't really speak English and my parents spoke Korean. I went to Korean school on Sundays and through Korean school, I did some traditional Korean dance and drumming. So that was like [00:04:00] the presence of the culture in my life.
[00:04:01] Janice: And my family had a lot of like traditional cultures, like on Korean Thanksgiving, on Chuseok, and on New Year's Day, on Seollal, to have, that we would do, like bowing ceremonies where we'd make food and, bow to the memory of our elders who have passed. So, and like playing even traditional Korean folk games.
[00:04:20] Janice: And like my dad's family is from a small island off the East coast of South Korea, called Ulleungdo. So, traditional Korean culture is present [00:04:30] in my family. So I am grateful I had those things growing up. So I don't have the same kind of disconnect that a lot of children of diaspora feel growing up in Canada.
[00:04:41] Rosalyn: Was it conscious then to embed that into your original song making.
[00:04:48] Janice: Yes, for sure. In my university days, I went to Wilfrid Laurier in Waterloo. And I talk about those years as when I was a white person. Like when you grew up in Canada in a white [00:05:00] dominant culture, you assimilate, right? So especially if you are from a culture that is. So casually othered like, racialized people.
[00:05:10] Janice: And while you are being there's a shame that comes with that, right? So if you're speaking your language at school and the kids make fun of you, or you're bringing your food to school, and the kids make fun of you and they say, your noodles look like worms, it, it comes with shame that you internalized, right?
[00:05:27] Janice: And that's internalized racism. So I had that. For [00:05:30] sure. Um, when I was in university and it was only kind of after my university years, when I started noticing patterns of harm, patterns of racism that I had just been ignoring because it's a survival mechanism, right? You can cope easier by not naming it as racism, especially when it's between your friends, you and your friends, people who are supposed to love each other. So When I was identifying patterns of harm that are, were rooted in, internalized [00:06:00] racism, we call it now like unconscious bias is like a nice way to put it, but really it's an internalized, white supremacy. That's what it is. Right. That's an alarmist kind of language. It makes people scared when you use that language.
[00:06:15] Janice: And sometimes I'll use the words white privilege or white dominance. But truly with a culture that we grew up in is like where white people are at the top and everything else is other and everything else is less than. And going through that process, I had realized I [00:06:30] had purposefully, perhaps unconsciously though, hid or pushed aside the parts of myself that were Korean. And that was the language as well, the music. And so it was definitely a very intentional process. It was like, I'm going to go back and relearn these Korean rhythms I knew as a child. And I'm going to learn to play the Korean drum that I always wanted to play. And I sought out a teacher.
[00:06:57] Janice: And it was so interesting, Rosalyn, because when [00:07:00] she taught me the rhythms, like I'm a musician, so I have a natural rhythm. I have natural musicality. It wasn't hard for me to learn them. And she's like, these are really difficult melodies and rhythms. But there is a kind of physical and visceral alignment in my body that happened when I played the rhythms where my body's like, ah, we know these beats.
[00:07:18] Janice: You know, and the way that you groove to the music, uh, it felt so different and the Western Classical 4/4 or 3/4 that I like grew up in, you know, and I, and I have some Western [00:07:30] Classical training. It's kind of stiff, right? And a lot of Korean rhythms, if I was to explain it in Western Classical terms, the time signatures are constantly changing and the grooves are much more like a triplet kind of feel.
[00:07:44] Janice: So you really have to feel it out as opposed to count it out. So that was probably the most eye opening revolutionary thing for my music was to allow this part of myself to exist in my music.
[00:07:58] Rosalyn: Did your family folks in [00:08:00] your community have a reaction to hearing, start to incorporate those traditional sounds into your songwriting. Is that something that they had heard before?
[00:08:07] Janice: It was new for everybody.
[00:08:09] Rosalyn: Hmm.
[00:08:10] Janice: You just a couple of weeks ago, I performed for a group of Korean Canadians at a conference called Our Place and Beyond. It was, um, run by the Korean Canadian Scholarship Foundation and it was a conference on leadership and anti racism and like, racism against Asian people and talking about that.
[00:08:29] Janice: And Roslyn, it was the first time in my life that I played to a hundred Korean Canadians. So people who had the same life experience as me, growing up in Canada as people of diaspora, being this kind of bicultural person, having Korean culture, Canadian culture, and then, you know, being kind of a model minority, everybody in the room was like, if not a lawyer or a professor, was an accomplished filmmaker [00:09:00] or a principal or, you know, and I'm there as like an artist and I had 15 minutes and I'm like, what songs am I going to do? Because I want to like play my tunes that I am the most proud of poetically, but I also know that this is very special opportunity.
[00:09:15] Janice: So I played my two songs that have that Korean element of music embedded in it. So those are Crumpled Heart, Unfolding and Swim Forever. And Swim Forever is that Korean language song of mine, which is, a little bit dissonant, a little pentatonic feeling and is [00:09:30] inspired by traditional Korean pansori melody, which is a traditional Korean throat singing and the shift in the room.
[00:09:37] Janice: Because all morning we had, it was quite academic. It was like a lot of PowerPoint presentations. And then I went up and I was like, hello, I am here to bring the drama for the day, the drama and the feelings. And I'm in this kind of stale conference room at the Ontario Bar Association. And I just like brought my Changu and I'm wailing in this room talking about burnout and talking [00:10:00] about climate anxiety and people were crying.
[00:10:02] Janice: Everyone afterwards, it was, it really changed the feeling in the room because people are like, what is this? There's a Korean girl up here who looks like me, who is speaking English with a Canadian accent like me, singing in English, playing a Korean drum. Everyone's minds were blown because we were like, Oh, I am seeing myself. If I was an artist, you know, that's how I felt. And it was huge for me to, like, to have reflection [00:10:30] as a performer in the audience, that still affects me every time, every time. And, so that was a really affirming experience because most of the time, Rosalyn, in a folk music context, I'm performing to people who are not from my culture. So there is an extra bridge that I have to build, so that they can understand the context and like access, the language, like for example, I'll do a translation usually. Right. But in this case, I didn't have to do a translation. so [00:11:00] that kind of..
[00:11:00] Janice: ease of access to understanding each other was so special. And I was like, oh, this must be what it feels like when white people get to go play for white people and there's nothing to explain because you're already kind of on the same page culturally. And so I'm like, oh, that's why I'm always doing this like extra work of trying to explain myself or contextualize myself or explain that I'm not fusion, just whole.
[00:11:23] Rosalyn: I feel like that's poetry right there. Have you said that before? I'm not fusion, just whole?
[00:11:29] Janice: Yeah, that's how [00:11:30] I feel about so much of the multicultural music we have in Toronto. You've been to Drom Taberna and you know about Small World Music and meeting other musicians who are from, are children of diaspora, like many people, most people in Canada and then in their band, they might have like a Latin American percussionist, a guitarist from the Middle East.
[00:11:49] Janice: You know, they're singing In Arabic and all of these different cultures are mixing and the industry wants to call it multicultural or fusion. East meets [00:12:00] West. But if you're in that band, you know that it's just, we're not here trying to be like, okay, how can we make this incredible, mosaic of cultures?
[00:12:09] Janice: We're not thinking that way. We're just each being fully ourselves and it's music. So music speaks to each other. Rhythm speaks to each other. Melodies. It all works together. As long as you're doing that key thing we do in folk music, listening, right? Once the musicians are grooving, we're not thinking like, Oh, this [00:12:30] Latin American polyrhythm is working in conjunction with the Western, you know, we're just playing music together and being fully present, listening.
[00:12:39] Janice: And that's like the holistic way that we're collaborating. So I always think about that and how I really have valued being back in Toronto. I take it for granted I think in a good way, that we can be multicultural, be fully ourselves. And that's great.
[00:12:56] Rosalyn: You mentioned at the conference that you were performing and there was like [00:13:00] that, that focus on anti racism and anti Asian racism and when you're describing that, shift that, happened within you after university, what was it like to start, verbalizing, that work that you were doing? Were folks building up barriers around it or, did you find that, you know, in your, communities, people were open to, to listening about, you know, say like, even if it was a friend group or something.
[00:13:23] Janice: Asking the hard hitting questions. Let's go Roslyn. That process was [00:13:30] like a five year process, right? And I actually talk about it as the purge. There was a great purge because the question was, do you love me enough to have these very difficult conversations where we each have to face the ways that systemic oppression exists in our relationship?
[00:13:49] Janice: Deeply uncomfortable and Canadians, we don't like being uncomfortable and we prefer not to talk about the problem in the room and just be polite and just, you know, it's not like a British cultural [00:14:00] thing that we've inherited. So, yeah, I had many of those conversations with my friends and some people were willing to have those difficult conversations and we'd make it through and we kind of level up in our friendship or we would not and it would be game over.
[00:14:16] Janice: Yeah, it was a great shift in my life and I also like wrote a play, a musical about it. It was originally titled Janice Lee and the White Supremacy Smackdown. That's when it was like a 10 minute [00:14:30] political manifesto. And then we're like, how do we make this theatrical? And so then I rewrote it with the help of my director, Matt White into a musical satire and then the title changed to, will you be my friend? And it was a great trap. And that show actually, in Kitchener Waterloo where it was first produced, stirred up a lot of conversation. We got a lot of backlash. Which is a good sign. It's terrible at the time when I'm receiving [00:15:00] long, long emails.
[00:15:01] Janice: But backlash is a good sign because it's the first step. It means that you have struck a chord, right? People are like, Whoa, how dare, how can you say that? How dare you like point out this thing that we haven't been acknowledging exists. and, uh, that's always the case. Nowadays, it's like, if I value the relationship enough, I will bring up the points where we need to work out the kinks where we need to have difficult conversations about like, these are the ways I would need you to [00:15:30] treat me to feel respected.
[00:15:31] Janice: And I also want to, you know, treat you with respect. So we're talking about boundaries. We're talking about the way we can love each other because it's not the same for every single person, like, let's say with my name, my Korean name, Seunghyun. Some people will want everyone to call them by their Korean name, and some people will only want you to call you by the Korean name if you can pronounce it correctly, and you can't go around applying the same rule to everyone, right?
[00:15:56] Janice: So you actually have to ask questions and get consent and always check in. And [00:16:00] these kinds of things we're not good at culturally. We haven't been socialized to do that. So, yeah. Yeah, lots of difficult conversations. And if I don't value the relationship enough to bring up that, oh, you did this thing or you said this thing that was a microaggression or, it's a sad reality that like, I don't actually care about you enough to invest the work. and you do make those choices because you can't take on every single little thing that comes up.
[00:16:23] Rosalyn: It seems like a lot of emotional labor, and, it was interesting the way that you, mentioned you challenge people that you respect,[00:16:30] and it was actually when we talked to Treasa Levasseur, she mentioned you in that exact way, as, as somebody who has challenged her, before. And, I do think that that's an amazing sign of respect because that's your time, you know, that's your emotional labor that you're putting into that relationship.
[00:16:45] Rosalyn: And hopefully it's because you respect them enough to want that to be reciprocated, right?
[00:16:49] Janice: Yeah. And you're trusting that there is enough love there that you'll be able to hear each other, understand each other and, you know, make a new agreement going forward. it's a [00:17:00] risk, right? You're like, I think our friendship is strong enough that we can have this conversation. it's always deeply uncomfortable, especially when like someone you care about, it's like you did this thing and it hurt me.
[00:17:11] Janice: You don't want to hurt your friends but because you don't, you listen and you learn and hopefully you change your behavior and treat them the way they want to be treated. Yeah. I always am purporting about consent. I like ask so many consent questions. Can I have a conversation with you? Can I have a conversation with you about something you said? [00:17:30] It's about something you said the other day, but like so many hedging questions.
[00:17:34] Janice: So just like people have the choice, right? Like I don't feel like I have time right now, but could we make time on the weekend or like, would like to bring up something you did that hurt my feelings. And I'm wondering if we could have a conversation about it because I'd really like to work it out, and sometimes you get an email or text like that and you're like, Oh, and then you get stressed out until you have that conversation. But
[00:17:52] Rosalyn: hmm.
[00:17:53] Janice: I do think you want to ask the person if they're willing to have that conversation, because there's also no point in [00:18:00] entering into it if you don't have the same goals of like hearing each other because sometimes like, like, I don't know if you've ever, if you get into an argument with some random person about like, I don't know, transphobia or some political issue before you just launch into a debate, I think it's to save everybody some grief, just be like, do you want to have a conversation?
[00:18:19] Janice: About this. Are you willing to hear other perspectives because if they're not then don't waste your time
[00:18:24] Rosalyn: That would save us a lot of time. I think, you know, starting off with that first question, to [00:18:30] me it seems kind of radical in some ways, you know?
[00:18:33] Janice: Yeah, yeah,
[00:18:34] Rosalyn: and maybe, I think I blame everything on social media right now, but, so much of, being online sometimes is just like, I say my thing, and then somebody else says their thing, and it's not a lot of, true conversation, and so I, putting some, weight and some energy into, true conversation having is, it's kind of a radical, priority shift
[00:18:54] Janice: I like that you use the word radical. It's one of my favorite words because it comes from the root Radic, [00:19:00] radish at the root,
[00:19:01] Janice: right? Like let's get to the root of the issue here, So it is radical. Something is off about our friendship. What has it been? Oh, well, let's get to the root of the issue.
[00:19:10] Janice: It's that there's a little bit of racism, sexism, whatever happening, power dynamic that is playing out and it needs to be addressed. Are you willing to address it? It is radical. the thing is it's confrontational, right? And we're, we're quite bad at conflict. I'm not, I love conflict. I love good, like put your [00:19:30] cards on the table.
[00:19:30] Janice: Let's hash it out. That's me because I don't like to waste time. It's really like, it's a time saver, like just being clear and direct. And it's okay if my feelings get a little sore because I can recover from that, but I can't recover from you being dishonest.
[00:19:44] Rosalyn: We're talking about identity and you mentioned some different, different aspects of your identity. Can you introduce us to, uh, Scotty?
[00:19:54] Janice: Oh, yeah, sure, sure, sure. I am a performing [00:20:00] artist in the theater and I do clown and physical comedy. Clown being this very large umbrella of physical comedy that is about being connected to the audience, really rooted in the joy of being in your own body. So some of the questions the clown asks themselves are like, Où est le jeu?
[00:20:19] Janice: Where is the game? Where's the fun and everything and follow your pleasure. So I have to love everything I'm doing. The clown knows that they are beautiful and talented and they are just a gift to the world. So one of [00:20:30] my clown characters is Scotty, Scotty Kim. I made him in a drag king comedy workshop with my teacher, Deanna Fleischer, who's out in Washington State. And, Scotty is a satire on masculinity. So Scotty is so lovable. He's just a nice guy, kind of bro-y athletic, you know, he's, he's Korean and he knows TaeKwonDo. And he's trying to be a feminist. That's his [00:21:00] main thing, he's like, he's trying to be a good man and what is healthy masculinity?
[00:21:05] Janice: He's exploring that with his best friend, Shionardo DiCaprio, another drag king clown, a friend of mine. Yeah, Scotty is an amalgamation of just like every man I've ever known. And I think a part of me gets to have a catharsis on satirizing these men and making fun of them because I know so many men who I have personally trained at the Janice Lee school of feminism.
[00:21:26] Janice: They paid no money to go to this school and then they go on and become [00:21:30] professional feminist educators and get paid to do that kind of work.
[00:21:32] Janice: Okay. Yes. True story but that's what we want to see in the world, right? We actually do want to see men talking about their feelings. And you know, having strong male friendships and not putting all the emotional labor on the women and fems and non binary people in their lives, right?
[00:21:47] Janice: So, Scotty is a clown character and um, the thing about satire is your audience needs to be intelligent. Like your audience needs to know and have enough cultural context to know what you're commenting and critiquing. But I get a lot of joy out [00:22:00] of doing that Scotty character. And uh, yeah, we've been making a bunch of TikToks, learning how to use TikTok.
[00:22:06] Janice: And yeah, I mean, You know, everyone loves Scotty. It's really interesting. All the queers slide into my DMs whenever I post Scotty content. I'm like, guys, you know that Scotty is me, right? You know that I am Scotty, just me with a mustache and a lower voice. Like, Hey guys, Hey, what's up? Oh, Hey, Hey, Rosalyn.
[00:22:22] Janice: Uh, can I give you a compliment, Rosalyn?
[00:22:24] Janice: Oh, yo, um, I'm really feeling this, like long hair on the floral background thing you got going [00:22:30] on. Yeah. It's like folk music, but like contemporary, you know, but like professional, Scott is like going around asking people, can I give you a compliment? It's like teaching people about consent.
[00:22:44] Rosalyn: We had a big Scotty Kim fans on the, uh, Folk Music Ontario staff. So a request that was made in our, our morning meeting.
[00:22:52] Janice: Yeah, but I guess I should speak to the gender aspect of it, which is that, uh, I'm a gender queer person. So I grew up as a tomboy and [00:23:00] most people know this word tomboy, a girl who's a little bit boyish growing up and we might call, a girl who is an athlete, a tomboy or like a farm girl, a tomboy, a girl who plays hockey, or a girl who refuses to wear dresses.
[00:23:14] Janice: It's a kind of gender queerness, which is like that we are not adhering to the strict gender binary that we are taught about male, female. And so, like, we all know a tomboy and it's, it's quite, common. And I think to be a tomboy [00:23:30] is perhaps more socially acceptable than the other way around for you to be a girly boy.
[00:23:35] Janice: There's kind of more shame attached to that. I think it has to do with patriarchy, you know, because masculinity is still so beloved. And that's a part of why I think Scotty gets so much love. It's really interesting because I remember at the beginning resenting Scotty a little bit because I'm like, man, everyone thinks Scotty is so cute, but why don't they think I'm cute? I am Scotty. I am Scotty just with a mustache [00:24:00] and me wearing my sports clothes. Like Scotty's wardrobe is just my wardrobe of my soccer clothes, you know? Oh, it's interesting.
[00:24:08] Rosalyn: Yeah, I mean, that is, kind of messed up in a way that like, it's such a juxtaposition to hear this masculine character, doing real feminist work, you know? Be cool if that wasn't, like, like I want it to still be funny, but like I want it to like not be that funny, right?
[00:24:26] Janice: Like people respect it more and it is heard [00:24:30] clearer when a man says it, as opposed to when a woman says it, right? Like all the feminist facts that Scottie is spitting are things that I know, Janice knows. So yeah, it's an interesting, gender experiment. and it's really fun to just like to move in that way.
[00:24:45] Janice: And it's really fun to see Rosalyn, how a charming man can disarm anybody and how much power it comes with. Like I just do this look and I do this like an eyebrow thing and the ladies, like their knees get weak. You risk, [00:25:00] go, you go to a lady and you show her some respect and like all the doors open.
[00:25:05] Janice: It's so easy. The bar is low, is my point.
[00:25:09] Rosalyn: I was wondering if we can talk a little bit about some of your music. I wanted to highlight Ancestor's Song, debuting at number 17 on the folk charts. Woo hoo! Tell us a little bit about that song and what meaning it has for you.
[00:25:26] Janice: Yeah, so the album, Ancestor Song, it took me seven [00:25:30] years to make. It starts at the bottom of, you know, earlier we were talking about that purge period in my life. So this album really charts that entire journey, from the bottom when I was completely spiritually and emotionally destroyed from all of that grief and that slow journey of recovering from that and The title track, Ancestors Song, is about a journey of remembering where you came from, which was part of my process, like reconnecting to my Korean roots and [00:26:00] Korean music, and about what you have inherited.
[00:26:03] Janice: Like when I think about my voice box is literally something I inherited from my ancestors and I, my family, we have a list of the names of our ancestors. I know I'm 27th generation and probably the first professional artist. So with that, I carry responsibility. And the natural ability I have was given to me, through my DNA, through my ancestors.
[00:26:22] Janice: And, the songs on the album are very anthemic and have strong musical themes. Many of the [00:26:30] choruses are just sung melodies without words. it's cool as an artist to know that you have been given a gift, right? Like, to have a natural ability to just compose melody. Like, I feel like I am an endless well of melodies.
[00:26:45] Janice: Like, I never have an issue with coming up with a new melody. It's just like, I just need to sit down and make myself do it. Because some people have writer's block, let's say, like, I never have melody block. Because I just have that natural ability and that's a gift. Or like, I literally feel [00:27:00] like I was born with that.
[00:27:00] Janice: and I think a large part of why people love music so much is that it makes you feel right. Like the way that a melody can make you feel emotions, even when it doesn't have words, because something about. Especially a voice for me to like a song melody, someone's voice is an audible sensory experience of their spirit, like of their soul. Right. And you get to hear that and take that in. And several of us can do it at the same [00:27:30] time. It's so magical, right? So just to infuse melody with feeling. And with phrasing where you can really feel where the breath is, because even just like hearing the breath in a musical phrase, I think you also get a sense of a person's spirit and soul. so I'm really proud of this album because I really feel like it's my best work that I've ever made. Uh, it took years to get all the funding that I needed, but I was like, I am not [00:28:00] making this. Without every single aspect of it actualized. So it took a long time, but, You know, I got the kayageum, the Korean zither, Korean table harp on it.
[00:28:11] Janice: I have Korean, janggu, Korean drum on it. You know, I have like all of the instrumentation that I wanted, that I dreamed of. So, I'm excited that it's finally out in the world.
[00:28:20] Rosalyn: Are there some tracks on the album that you would like to highlight that, maybe, exemplify some of some of the [00:28:30] conversation we've been having today?
[00:28:31] Janice: Crumpled Heart Unfolding. It's like, I mean, I've been just saying it's my Bohemian Rhapsody. it's a journey song and it's about that process of recovering, the process of healing. Really coming back to yourself, regathering yourself and trying to convince yourself that you still want to be out in the world.
[00:28:51] Janice: I'm really happy with the production because it starts with this kind of free form gospely, [00:29:00] acapella section with some members of the Montreal gospel choir. It's so cool. Jojo Worthington, my producer and another amazing folk musician. She had this idea. She was like, I just like, feel like all of these voices should be going and they're all around you.
[00:29:13] Janice: And it's like the voices of your ancestors and then kind of the beat drops and then the song begins. I'm like, okay, yeah. And you know, sometimes you have these ideas and they don't actually work when you try them. So it was cool that we were able to make that happen. And then. There's a beautiful string arrangement and there's, there's horns [00:29:30] and yeah, I think it is that whole sound of You know, there's kind of like a hip hop beat on it, which is on drum kit. but there is this very kind of folkloric sounding melody, which is the chorus. and then we have the changu, the Korean drum that kicks in. There's a lot of instruments on it. So it's really, if you hear it, listen to it in a car or something, you'll be back, actually hear every single instrument, On the choruses, Rosalind, the drum kit is playing the quarter notes [00:30:00] and the janggu is playing the triplets. So they're kind of locking in really, really tight. with each other. so musically, I kind of geeked out on that section. And then, you know, I also played trumpet in high school band.
[00:30:22] Janice: So having kind of this orchestral sound, what I'm calling like epic folk, epic contemporary folk music. I feel like this album is really, I've landed on my sound. You know, in your early career, you're like, all your songs sound [00:30:30] like the artists that you love. And you know, I, I love so many genres. I just love music. So, this album too, kind of, you know, a radio DJ will say like, it's very cross many genres.
[00:30:41] Janice: To me, it's folk music because it's about people, it's about community and it's storytelling. It's nice to feel like, ah, this is my music. This is what uniquely I sound like. And it's not me trying to sound like somebody else
[00:30:56] Rosalyn: So Janice, you also just got off of a big old tour [00:31:00] in, in November. Can you, can you tell us a little bit about that and, and how it went?
[00:31:05] Janice: It's called Seatbelts Everyone because the world is a wild ride. We are in the apocalypse. You need to buckle up and hold on, like grab the person you love and your dog and hold on. It was the first time I toured out of province with a band, so I got to go with a little folk trio, and because I'm always lonely on tour, Rosalyn.
[00:31:27] Janice: I'm like that loser in the [00:31:30] airport with a guitar, a drum, and like two suitcases and just like sweating and why is the Montreal gates like two kilometers away in Pearson. I swear touring in Canada is very hard because as soon as you leave kind of Southern Ontario, everything is so far apart, right?
[00:31:50] Janice: And as a musician, your body is your instrument. And I can't, I did it once. I can't drive for 10 hours, 17 hours from [00:32:00] Calgary to Edmonton to Vancouver, whatever. Like it's too hard on the to body arrive like a crumpled balloon and you can't inflate your lungs to sing, you know, so I find that to respect my instrument, my body, I have to fly and these things cost money.
[00:32:14] Janice: And some presenters have travel funding and some don't. And so, like. I was really proud of this tour. I'm my, I'm a one person record label. I booked the tour. I did all the marketing, some of the shows were self produced, so I did tickets, but you know, I did all the contracts, et cetera, et cetera.[00:32:30]
[00:32:30] Janice: I hired my musicians. We did all these rehearsals, in Vancouver Island. My good friend, Richard Garvey helped me book a bunch of shows out there. and you know, I had a travel grant in. and I had everything lined up to get a travel grant in terms of letters and all those things. But the Canada Council, sometimes they run out of money.
[00:32:44] Janice: And so we didn't get that travel grant and I wasn't banking on it. But in every single way, the tour was successful, you know, artistically, we played to new audiences. We got invitations to return. We sold some merch, like we had a great time as a band. Like we, talked about what we needed to take care of [00:33:00] ourselves and do we need alone time every day?
[00:33:01] Janice: All these things. We didn't miss any flights, no one got sick. All these things, we wore a mask. We were very good. So in all regards, it was so successful and I was really happy with it. and I didn't come out burnt out or anything. I was emotionally really grateful and felt really fulfilled. But if you are going to measure the tour by, did we make money? You know, I'll say I didn't lose as much money as I thought I would. So in that regard, and it's a success, just cause in this country, it's very hard to make money as a touring artist because [00:33:30] back in the day you would, at least you would make up the money because you would sell CDs. You know, you can make more money off selling like a t shirt these days than even selling a CD because people don't, again, have CD players.
[00:33:41] Janice: The listener has now moved to a playlist format successfully through the streaming giants, right? So there's like only two ways that an artist can make revenue these days. It's just like ticket sales and merch. Right but a lot of the times if you're touring, a lot of the ticket sales is just covering your travel costs and accommodation.
[00:33:57] Janice: So there are very [00:34:00] few full time musicians these days. Our income is being subsidized by something else, like by a day job or by your partner or maybe they're very good at getting grants, but I'm worried about the industry because every artist, every musician I know is struggling.
[00:34:14] Janice: And it's getting harder as the cost of living increases and there's so much risk now, especially with getting sick. At the same time, we have to perform successfully on social media and you have to give away so much free quote unquote content. [00:34:30] Like you have to be posting videos of your performances, so not even the performance can be a product anymore because people can watch you perform for free on the internet.
[00:34:37] Janice: So more and more of the products get taken away from the artists who are the workers. And all the profit gets siphoned upwards to the people who control the means of dissemination, which are the streaming giants. You know, so if you think about it that way, like the artists just work and work and create these products and we don't get any revenue or profit out of it.
[00:34:57] Janice: And I am worried. I am worried for the [00:35:00] state of the music industry and I'm trying to educate listeners and music lovers that they have to actively support the musicians that they love because every musician I've talked to this year is wondering if they should give up. Or at least wondering if they should do something else or, spend less time doing music because it is not feasible. And now, unless you are directly donating to that musician's album fundraiser or, buying tickets or buying merch, like that musician is probably on the cusp. Everybody's on the cusp right [00:35:30] now of like packing it in or like changing careers or pivoting. You have to be a little bit financially irresponsible to continue being a musician, like you have to be a little bit, delusional to continue to keep putting out music in this economy, which is one that just favors the owners and doesn't favor the workers.
[00:35:48] Janice: Right.
[00:35:48] Rosalyn: So that being said though, do you have glimmers of hope or inspiration?
[00:35:53] Janice: The hope always comes from the concert for me, like music is magic, music is [00:36:00] medicine. You go around in these times, in these hard times, in these apocalyptic times and sing your songs to a group of people, you create joy, create a room of listening. This is like literally what the world needs right now.
[00:36:12] Janice: Listening and joy, a sense of connection, everything in our world is built to make us feel disconnected from each other, to make us feel inadequate, so that you have to buy things and have profit, and accumulate wealth so you can feel, worthy, but really what we need is human connection.[00:36:30] You know, and to like learn how to love ourselves.
[00:36:32] Janice: So I think music really is this revolutionary answer to a lot of our problems. So always after the concert, I feel amazing. I have proof from this last half an hour that melodies and rhythms we create with our bodies and our instruments can heal, can connect, can create joy. It's what we need, right? Sometimes it's very hard to get people to leave their house and come to the concert. But once they're there, like. Once they're in the room, I'm like, I'm not worried, you know, now you're here. Now, now let us give you this gift of music. so that's always where the hope [00:37:00] comes from. So touring has been really encouraging because meeting new audiences and, you know, rural audiences are very different from urban audiences and Alberta audiences are very different from Ontario audiences culturally.
[00:37:13] Janice: But to be able to sing these songs and for everyone to understand what we're talking about. Because the human experience is so universal. So in these ways, like I'm touring, I continue fueling that drive to continue to make art, which is good because that is what I want to do. Despite the economic conditions that want to destroy your [00:37:30] dreams, you know.
[00:37:30] Rosalyn: It's like something about the, empathy building when you're touring and you're visiting all these places that maybe you wouldn't go as a tourist, and then like sharing this like really intimate, moment and performance with, folks that you might not have.
[00:37:44] Rosalyn: Access to normally have a conversation with, that to me is a real, real gift to get to like, share that communication and, kind of empathy building moment with, with a whole bunch of new folks.
[00:37:55] Janice: mm hmm.
[00:37:55] Janice: I’m so highly aware of what a privilege it is to be able to go on [00:38:00] stages and have people listen to you. Right. I've talked about this before. I think folk music is about listening where the audience wants to hear the words they want to hear you. The room is a listening room. We're sharing stories and we're listening.
[00:38:11] Janice: And then afterwards, the musician listens to the audience. And here's what they thought. And it's a practice. It's a culture of listening. And I think that's what we need in the world.
[00:38:22] Rosalyn:You mentioned people listening to music in a car. How would you like people to find your music and interact with your music? How can people support you [00:38:30] and, and listen to you in a way that helps you out?
[00:38:32] Janice: Come to a concert, buy your ticket in advance. I'm saying that everywhere as much as I can. Buy your ticket in advance, buy your ticket in advance. That's all we want. You can buy my record straight from my website or from my Bandcamp because that money will actually come to me. If you listen to it on Spotify, I won't really make any money off of it unless I get to a million streams. But even then, you know. Not much at all. So I think it helps when listeners add my album to their Spotify and like follow me on all the social [00:39:00] medias.
[00:39:00] Janice: Cause those things actually do count. And when I try to access larger funding bodies and stuff, I do have to submit my number of followers and number of listens, you know? But I, there's this one thing I'm trying to do where I'm trying to, you know, trying to like access. This, like a small record label kind of designation.
[00:39:19] Janice: And for that, you need to sell like a thousand records. And, you know, 10 years ago, I could have when people all had CD players, but people don't have CD players anymore. So it's difficult. But yeah, my [00:39:30] favorite way to connect with audiences is live. I think what I do is being a live performer because the energy that is created in the room where everyone is listening and the groove, the electricity in the room, that is something you can't package and put it on a CD.
[00:39:46] Janice: And that's a really special experience. But you know, live you can only access, maybe a hundred people at a time. It's very hard to tour in this country because everything is very far apart. But yeah, I'm pleased with the amount of shows I got to play [00:40:00] across the country this year and meeting new audiences and just really want people to listen to the record because you put so much time working on it.
[00:40:07] Rosalyn: Yeah. For all those listening, we will, we will put the links to how to, ethically listen to Janice's music, but also go on there and follow her and you will not be disappointed. You will be entertained and maybe challenged and all those, all those good things. Thank you so much, Janice Jo Lee, for coming in and speaking with us today. I [00:40:30] feel like, there's, many more conversations I want to, spend this and do, but, I hope that we get a chance to speak again soon.
[00:40:37] Janice: Thank you for having me, Rosalyn.
[00:40:46] Rosalyn: That's all for this episode, friends. The ReFolkUs Podcast is brought to you by Folk Music Ontario. Find out more by heading to folkmusicontario.org/refolkus. That's [00:41:00] R-E-F-O-L-K-U-S. The podcast is produced by Kayla Nezon and Rosalyn Dennett and mixed by Jordan Moore at The Pod Cabin. The opening theme is by King Cardiac, and the artwork is by Jaymie Karn.
[00:41:10] Rosalyn: Please give us a download, a like subscribe, rate and review to let us know you're listening.