Sam Lee

HK Magazine: What first got you interested in folk music?
Sam Lee: I came across it when I was 25 or 26, and I fell in love with it. I heard these old songs I’d never heard before, these recordings of farmers and old travelers and fishermen. I already had a very ethnographic diet of music from all over, like Indian and Azerbaijani music, and I had no idea there was indigenous music from the UK. I was discovering these massive variations around the British Isles—a real diversity. I wanted to learn more about the people who had kept them alive, so I stepped out of the academic world and went into the field.

HK: You started traveling around the UK collecting Gypsy folk. Were you consciously doing it in the tradition of folk revivalists?
SL: I couldn’t have done it unconsciously, because I grew up aware of their work. I had also spent time with living song collectors, some of whom had told me about the stories of the works, so I was aware that I was stepping into a tradition. But I’d say the only difference is that I was being told there were no more songs to collect—and I knew that wasn’t true. There are lots of songs to collect, even now. We only have about five to 10 years where the singers are still alive, so we’re at the end of an era.

HK: Do you have a strategy when you reinterpret traditional folk songs?
SL: Oh, seek and destroy! One could look at it in a kind of military way, then you find the song and then you colonize! But there’s a real anthropology and biology to the songs. I want to honor the person who sung it, the story behind the song, the story behind the singer’s reasons for singing it, why they love the song, the way they sing it… I have to see the heart of it and make sure  I’m being true to where the song is coming from. Then those concerns have to inform how I arrange it. But it can go in any direction, because there are no rules to how you can do them. They are just words and melody.

HK: What would you say is the most unique version of a folk song that you’ve ever done?
SL: There’s a song called “The Tan Yard Side,” on my album. I learned it from an English Gypsy. The arrangement I’ve put with it is accompanied by the Indian shruti box [a drone box]. The instrument is from India; Gypsies are from India, so there’s kind of a musical journey where both the singer and the instrument come together. The song also features a sample of the song of the nightingale—the instrument plays at the frequency of the nightingale, so there’s this harmonic continuity with the instrument, and the bird, and the song.

HK: Are you interested exploring other folk music around the world?
SL: Yes, my absolute favorite music instrument is the Jew’s harp—particularly the Mongolian-Chinese khomus. I listen to a lot of that and my album features a lot of Jew’s harps, as well as [Mongolian] Humi throat singing. I’m very passionate about Mongolian, Tibetan and Asian music. I listen to that more than I listen to British music—apart from the folk songs of England.

HK: In your music video for “The Ballad of George Collins” there was some pretty impressive dance choreography! Should Hong Kong audiences expect the same?
SL: If they want to fly the dance team over, yes! I’d love that, but sadly I won’t be doing my Pina Bausch moves. I love dance myself, I love to move, and I’m very animated when I’m singing, but this isn’t Beyoncé or Britney Spears—I apologize. It will be an acoustic performance—there are six of us. There’s the Japanese koto, the Jew’s harp, we have strings—violin and cello, trumpet, ukulele, Indian instruments and lots of other percussion as well.