"Foreigner" in the Land of My Mother

A Reflection on Music and Life: by Zoë Yungmi Blank

I’m a musician from California now living in my mother’s homeland, Korea. Back in the San Francisco Bay Area, I grew up playing folk music in communities of people who’d sung together for decades. Their songs were shared via oral tradition going back centuries: Korean songs praising moral behavior in agrarian family life, Irish songs blasting England’s military recruiting, Spirituals expressing the hardships and injustices of slavery in America, and 1960s folk revival depictions of revolutionary zeal. As a child, folk music was like peeking into a window of a people’s history of the world. It filled me with such desire to learn peoples' histories. But the more I learned, the more I realized I needed to learn.

Studying folk music makes known the fact that we are all part of a continuum, not just a musical one, but a societal one, and maybe a spiritual one, too. All this regional folk music drew my attention to the land under my feet and urged me to ask what my relationship to it was. Immediately upon doing this, something felt wrong. My connection was blocked, even denied. I didn’t know much of the land, besides elementary school Gold Rush fun-facts. I had no knowledge of the Ramaytush people who’d lived there for thousands of years before me. I didn’t know how to play a role in making things right. Without this connection to place, how could I understand who I was, how I got to be there, and what I wanted to do with the mind and body I’d been given? The more I’ve learned from and joined in solidarity with struggles of Indigenous Peoples, the more I feel okay with who I am in this continuum.

It took moving to Korea to really start this process. Maybe that’s because this is the only land I’ve lived in where I have any native blood. At the same time, however, it’s also a land where I am a "waygookin" or foreigner. Still, I feel a certain electric feeling living in the neighborhood my mom grew up in, and where my grandma was a school teacher. I feel an energy in the mountains, coaxing melodies from my heart. The reasons I’ve stayed in Korea are many, but most notably it’s due to the communities I’m part of here. One organization I’m in, the International Strategy Center (ISC), supports foreigners and Koreans interested in people’s history, Korean social movements, revolutionary politics, and direct actions. The ISC also links up people’s movements and struggles around the world to share and discuss our similarities and differences. For the first time in my life, I really feel connected to a place and ready to grow. This is thanks to my organization comrades and my music and activist friends, like Seth Martin who generously proposed I do this reflection you’re reading now.

Learning Korea’s history has also been a lesson in American imperialist settler colonial history. By dedicating myself to Korean social struggle, especially for independence, democracy, and peace on the peninsula, I feel not only more connected to my Korean heritage, but also, ironically, more patriotic an American than ever. While this kind of feeling and sentiment may be understood and shared between folksingers and activists around the world, I realize it might need some clarification here: 

If patriotism means loving one’s country or homeland, that would include looking your country in the eye, holding it accountable for its wrongdoings, gathering/joining neighbors, friends, family and citizens so that we can become more aware and critical of our country's wrongdoings, supporting our fellow countrypeople – and the people our country has affected. The work of anti-imperialists and decolonizers is highly patriotic. Therefore, as a Korean American, my involvement in struggles for sovereignty and democracy in the land of my mother makes me more patriotic an American. It is complicated, rich, unsettling, but necessary and constant work. Solidarity with Korean sovereignty struggles, for me, is also solidarity with decolonization struggle in “America”.
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And the more actively involved I am, the music from both homes that I was raised on and now sing rings in my ears and heart more clearly than ever. I hope listeners can hear and feel that too.

Three songs:

1) Lonely (Holo) Arirang music video with Kim Seon-Gu of Maru socially-minded arts collective, and Seth Mountain, for Korean National Liberation Day, Gwangbokjeol. This day is commemorated in both North and South Korea. The song laments the tragic split of a country and people, drawing attention to cherished landforms that exist interdependently in both North and South Korea and bear witness to the unity of a decolonized and united Korean Land that defies and condemns the current division.
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2) This is my cover of Kim Kwang-Seok’s song, From Where the Wind Blows. The first part of the song is in his original lyrics. The second part I’ve translated to English and sung in my own way. I listened to this song growing up, which Korean people are usually shocked to hear. Kim Kwang-Seok’s songs portrayed individuals’ sorrow and frustration as the democracy movement was coming together and he’s one of my favorite Korean musicians.​
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3) Bay Rim 
A pondering on how Californians have gotten to reside in such a drought-ridden wildfire state, where invasive Eucalyptus trees brought for commercial shipping purposes now explode in flames, under neglected power lines due to PG&E cutting costs. I only recently learned that the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians -- in addition to legalizing the kidnapping of Native children into settler families and legalizing the enslavement of Native people for petty crimes -- criminalized the practice of controlled burning, which had been practiced for centuries by Indigenous forest protectors to prevent the land from becoming a tinderbox. 
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​A note about labels, this being an Anarchist Christian publication:
You may notice that my communities and projects include people from a few varying affiliations — Anarchist, Socialist, Centrist Liberal, as well as Christian, Agnostic, Muslim, etc. While I personally resonate and identify with Marxist-Socialism, I do get warm fuzzies upon hearing the word “anarchist,” for anarchists have more in common with me than many folks out there. It's rare and precious to find people willing to stand against the imperialist colonial powers that use capitalism to exploit the vulnerable. I dream of participatory democracy, communities where people become protagonists in their own lives, societies, and governments. I think ideologies are constantly evolving to be relevant with time and place. So for me, Socialism doesn’t mean I cannot be spiritual. I am not Christian, as it was impossible for me to choose when my family members include Buddhists, Agnostics, a rabbi, Catholics, and Protestants. My mother is a Korean metaphysics consultant, so walking into the dining room meant I could be drinking tea with a monk from Tibet, a healer from India, a psychic from Arizona, or a space clearer from around the corner. Our upbringings can be very unique, so individuality is a precious source of creativity and expression. Simultaneously, when individuals organize together, I see beautiful power, strength, and growth. So, for anarchists & Christians reading this, I hope you’d want to befriend me and chat, asking each other questions, dreaming together, and ultimately struggling together in solidarity!

https://www.zoeblank.com/

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Zoë Yungmi Blank

is a musician and student of life, living in Seoul, South Korea. She enjoys playing fiddle with Seth Mountain and she spends much of her time coordinating community events and studying Korean history with the International Strategy Center.