JooWan Kim
[ visit website ]
Ensemble Mik Nawooj (EMN) is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, California. We’re a hip-hop orchestra with classical musicians, a hip-hop MC, and a Turf Dancer. Our core mission is to bring people together with disparate and different points of view by Method Sampling, which is a principle of borrowing and sampling from foreign fields and by reframing them, rendering a new system.
With our national tours all canceled, we fortunately got two big commissions including a Broadway musical. This allowed us to reinvest the commission fees to record a full length album and produce 5 accompanying music videos, which kept us busy/working throughout the lockdown since March, 2020.
We’ve been meaning to record our new album with an augmented ensemble for a while but never managed to fit the schedule in due to the tours. This pandemic and the lockdown allowed us to have the time to create new recordings we were happy about. Of course, we understand we have been extremely lucky to be able to pull this off.
I’ve been practicing Taoist breathing meditation daily for over 20 years. Whenever things are tough or don’t go the way I want (which have been a lot), I rely on my practice. It is important to have something you can access inside of yourself when outside fails you.
Taking walks/drinking tea/WINE
For the people who rely on physical distribution of their works – Isolation can be a great tool for transformation. It forces you to confront things you want to ignore within yourself and work on the issues you want to avoid. Use this time to create something that helps you cope with the insanity of the world. People will recognize your efforts.
JooWan Kim
[ visit website ]
Ensemble Mik Nawooj (EMN) is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, California. We’re a hip-hop orchestra with classical musicians, a hip-hop MC, and a Turf Dancer. Our core mission is to bring people together with disparate and different points of view by Method Sampling, which is a principle of borrowing and sampling from foreign fields and by reframing them, rendering a new system.
With our national tours all canceled, we fortunately got two big commissions including a Broadway musical. This allowed us to reinvest the commission fees to record a full length album and produce 5 accompanying music videos, which kept us busy/working throughout the lockdown since March, 2020.
We’ve been meaning to record our new album with an augmented ensemble for a while but never managed to fit the schedule in due to the tours. This pandemic and the lockdown allowed us to have the time to create new recordings we were happy about. Of course, we understand we have been extremely lucky to be able to pull this off.
I’ve been practicing Taoist breathing meditation daily for over 20 years. Whenever things are tough or don’t go the way I want (which have been a lot), I rely on my practice. It is important to have something you can access inside of yourself when outside fails you.
Taking walks/drinking tea/WINE
For the people who rely on physical distribution of their works – Isolation can be a great tool for transformation. It forces you to confront things you want to ignore within yourself and work on the issues you want to avoid. Use this time to create something that helps you cope with the insanity of the world. People will recognize your efforts.