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<\/p>\nLooping \u2013 the use of digital equipment to record and play back sounds in real time as a means of musical self-accompaniment \u2013 has been around for decades. It\u2019s most often within the realm of guitarists and vocalists, and customarily employed in live performance. But Portland, Oregon artist Joe Kye obviously didn\u2019t get that memo: his chosen instrument is the violin, and he uses looping in the recording studio as well. Joe Kye\u2019s uptempo, complex yet delightfully accessible music also serves as a vehicle for his lyrical themes of empowerment, equality and sharing of the American immigrant experience.<\/p>\n
The creative result of the tension between seemingly opposing forces is at the heart of Kye\u2019s approach. A classically trained musician, he nonetheless developed a deep and abiding love for improvisation. After years studying the violin, he left it behind in college. \u201cI stopped playing,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI got sick of playing music that [another] person \u2013 usually white, male and dead \u2013 had imagined 200, 300 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Kye\u2019s passion for music was intact, so he got into singing, joining an a cappella group. Eventually that pursuit led him back to the violin, but this time with a completely different approach. \u201cEvery individual has their unique experience,\u201d he explains. \u201cAnd what I learned through improvisation is that I was free to bring my world view into reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kye says that he found improvisation to be a liberating activity. \u201cIt allowed me to express how I viewed my<\/i> experience \u2013 as an American, as an Asian American and now as a father \u2013 in sound.\u201d And looping allowed him to further expand his sonic capabilities. \u201cI got a looping machine mostly to practice improvisation,\u201d Kye recalls. He quickly found that he could treat the device as an instrument in and of itself. \u201cIt became a part of what it means to give voice to the many different melodies and identities that I have within me.\u201d<\/p>\n
To date, Kye has released two albums \u2013 2016\u2019s Seed to Sprout Live<\/i> and 2018\u2019s Migrants<\/i> \u2013 along with an EP and several singles. While his work is varied \u2013 taking in textures from pop, classical, hip hop and beyond \u2013 there\u2019s a playful spirit that ties it all together. His debut album documents a live set that sandwiches a reading of Gloria Gaynor\u2019s disco hit \u201cI Will Survive\u201d between a spiritual (\u201cWe Shall Overcome\u201d) and \u201cThe Star Spangled Banner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kye laughs when that\u2019s pointed out, but insists there\u2019s no disconnect. \u201cI grew up here as a son of poor immigrants,\u201d he explains. \u201cAnd \u2018I Will Survive\u2019 was one of my mom\u2019s favorite songs. It gave her strength to continue to build a home for our family.\u201d He believes that Gaynor\u2019s anthemic hit goes hand in hand with a song adopted by the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n
The interactivity that Kye pursues isn\u2019t limited to his work with the looping device. His concerts are a give-and-take experience that involves the audience as well. \u201cI want to elicit introspection and vulnerability,\u201d he says, \u201cand then develop that into a sense of communal wonder and curiosity.\u201d During performances before the Covid era, Kye would wander into the audience, microphone in hand. \u201cI would ask people questions, and when there was an answer that struck our communal fancy, the band and I would riff on that and create a looping song based on that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The social distancing required during the pandemic has made that approach more difficult, but Kye remains committed to finding a workaround. \u201cWe just ask audience members to yell stuff out,\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n
Kye\u2019s recent single, \u201cThe Way Out\u201d is a collaboration with choreographer Diego Garita. Begun as a project with New York City-based Young Dancemakers Company, the track addresses the immigrant experience from the perspective of Latin Americans.<\/p>\n
\u201cDiego\u2019s mom was undocumented,\u201d Kye explains. \u201cBecause of that, he had to go back and forth between [here] and his home country in Mexico.\u201d Garita\u2019s story resonated with Kye, whose family emigrated to the U.S. from Korea when he was a child. \u201c\u2019The Way Out\u2019 was born out of that conversation,\u201d he says. \u201cI tried to bring attention to the plight of refugees at the American border who are escaping sadness, poverty and the legacy of colonization.\u201d<\/p>\n
But even with serious themes, a Joe Kye concert is a fun, uplifting experience. And Kye is in his element onstage, interacting with both the audience and \u2013 on this tour \u2013 fellow musician, multi-instrumentalist Machado Mijiga on percussion and keyboards. \u201cMachado will have a looping pedal, too,\u201d Kye emphasizes. \u201cWe\u2019ll be building large sound waves and exploring different instrumentation depending on what each song \u2013 and the moment \u2013 calls for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Looping \u2013 the use of digital equipment to record and play back sounds in real time as a means of musical self-accompaniment \u2013 has been around for decades. It\u2019s most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,51],"tags":[4773],"class_list":["post-22547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-pop","tag-joe-kye","cat-41-id","cat-51-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22547"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22564,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22547\/revisions\/22564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}