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Yoon Mi-rae has returned with her third album after a four-year hiatus. ¡°t3, Yoon Mirae¡± draws on the difficulties she went through as a child of an Africa American father and a Korean mother. ¡°I¡¯ve sung many songs, but never sung about my life. So this time, I wanted to tell my fans who I am,¡± she says. Her father, who was a radio DJ when serving in the U.S. Forces in Korea, provides an English voiceover. ¡°I listened to my father¡¯s music from when I was in my mother¡¯s womb,¡± she says. ¡°He is the one who awakened a sense of rhythm in me when I was a child. He had 30,000 LPs and threw a party almost every day. He was my music teacher, still is, and will be forever.¡±
Yoon displays the full range of her talents on her new album, which covers genres from hip-hop to soul and R&B. The rap she performs in songs like ¡°Black Diamond¡± and ¡°Pay Day¡± is thrilling. ¡°Rapping sends audiences wild when you¡¯re on stage. It accompanies an exciting performance and really energizes people. Singing a tune is a bit boring, I think,¡± she said. After all, she is the best female MC in Korea.
During her absence due to conflict with her agency, she toyed the idea of giving up. ¡°It was so difficult to live as a musician that I often thought about giving up. But I couldn¡¯t live without music,¡± she said. Being of mixed race, she is no stranger to difficulty. Yoon took a high school equivalence exam after she dropped out of school at the age of 15.
¡°When I came to Korea as a young girl, I had no friends and couldn¡¯t speak Korean, so I spent most of my time in a game arcade,¡± she said. ¡°The old lady who ran the arcade was my closest friend. Kids of my age only bullied me. They called me ¡®negro¡¯ and shouted ¡®Yankee, go home¡¯ at me. They told me to go back to my country with a ticket they were going to buy for me. I went to an international school, but there were only two students of African American descent including me, and I was still treated badly.¡±
Yoon confesses she always felt confused about her identity since she was considered neither American nor Korean nor African-American. ¡°But to my amazement, after making my debut in the entertainment world, people treated me as just an entertainer,¡± she said. ¡°I was puzzled at first, but now I¡¯m happy about it.¡± When she started to work as a singer, she hid the fact that her father is an African American because her agency convinced her to do so, warning her of prejudice. ¡°Tell them that your grandfather or grandmother was half African-American,¡± they advised her.
¡°When the success of half-Korean U.S. football player Hines Ward raised interest in mixed-race children in Korea last year, I was so furious,¡± Yoon said. ¡°Were there no mixed-race children in Korea before Hines Ward? And have things changed now? No, it¡¯s as if nothing has happened.¡± She herself plans to help mixed-race children in one way or another.
Yoon wants to be a musician free from obsession about success, but it isn¡¯t easy because music is also her bread and butter. ¡°I decided to be a musician because I love music, but as I get older there are times I have to play music for money. I want to make enough money by playing music to buy a house for my mother and treat those I love well. I hope to establish a firm reputation as a musician 10 years from now so that I can pursue music I really want to pursue without caring about the public response.¡±
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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