Ray Soul, Seu Aprendiz - Suicide Prevention through Music & Art

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This artistic collaboration consists of a collection of short writings, photographs, and music that reflects the composer, Ray Soul's mind, and his psychological and cognitive reactions after witnessing his mother's suicide and ultimately developing a rational explanation for her decision. Ray Soul tried to detach himself from the incident and objectively look at what it means to be a victim of such a fatal event.

To do that, as a native Korean, he used non-native languages such as Portuguese to carefully craft his understanding of the event, which allowed him to recall the memory and meditate on its connotations indirectly. In other words, describing things that we do not want to remember in our mother tongues can sometimes create its scenery too vividly and is immensely painful. Using another language creates a psychological buffer zone to consider these personal events because it does not display the complete picture instantly and requires interpretation processes.

On top of this linguistic process, music and photographs add another layer to Ray Soul's artistic reflection. Thus, with these three interactive elements, both creators and spectators can see an artistic rendition of the event, which leads them to take their own journey to analyze its meaning and apply it to their own situations.

The Seu Aprendiz project is part of a suicide prevention campaign that One Soul Fellowship is embarking on. One Soul Fellowship is a nonprofit organization in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Created in collaboration with prominent photographers E Reum and Jun Choi and world-class musicians such as Ebinho Cardoso, Art Hirahara, Matthew Nicholl, and Jair Oliveira, who created the music for Seu Aprendiz, this project conveys how the arts can play a role in understanding and healing after such life incidents. We urge you to listen to the music while viewing this artwork. www.seuaprendiz.com

The artists on this project acknowledge that suicide leaves scars on family, friends, and communities, which are difficult to heal. Suicide becomes even worse when others copy this destructive action. We hope this artwork and music, creates awareness of the negative outcomes of suicide and becomes a part of the healing process of victims who suffer from loss.

Soul has released four studio jazz albums since 2007 and has participated in numerous tours and international jazz festivals in China, Japan, and Korea. Soul has performed with many prominent jazz musicians, such as Jason Moran, Marta Gomez, Scott Robinson, Art Hirahara, and Takuya Kuroda. Soul has also participated in the production of the Latin Grammy-nominated album Yeah Won (2010). His love of Brazilian music began when his aunt's family immigrated to Brazil. Brazil's language and rich musical culture has inspired him to compose songs like "Seu Aprendiz, " which is based on the true story of his mother's death and his over 15-year process of psychologically processing it.

Ray Soul has been a professional jazz bassist and producer immersed in the New York jazz scene for over two
decades. While studying with the legendary bassist Reggie Workman as an undergraduate at the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at The New School in New York City, he was driven by a recurring quest to find his own voice and develop his own concept of jazz, which he has termed "Interactive Jazz: Jazz as a New Visual Art." He extended this concept while pursuing his master's degree in music technology at New York University.

Soul's ability to connect sound and color via chromesthesia has provided the foundation for developing his new approach to sonic visualization, and he has been able to theorize this approach in his master's thesis. Soul eventually solidified this approach as a new means for improvising and visualizing jazz as a visual art form using interactive technologies. The work "Another Season" premiered in May 2009 at the Artgate Gallery in Chelsea, New York City. A second exhibition, "Adhesive Paradox, " opened at the same site in June 2012. "Seu Aprendiz" (2021) is his latest piece, which utilizes the interactive jazz concept with the newly introduced linguistic interpretation process.

Soul is deeply interested in advocating for the development of sustainable career platforms for artists, and this is his current doctoral dissertation topic at Northeastern University. Soul has brought attention to career development issues, especially among East Asian immigrant artists whose mother tongue is not English, while performing and closely interacting with them. He realized that their struggle reflects and explains his own career situations as a Korean immigrant in the US and that many others struggle with the same issues. While interviewing with record label owners for his second master's thesis in the arts administration program at Columbia University, Soul witnessed a socially constructed bias against Asian jazz musicians in the United States. This became the central message in Soul's musical works. A new composition that will be released in late 2021, "Shrimp Fried Rice, " reflects this situation. Soul is constantly challenging himself to become a better person, and music and his family provide him with the energy to continue becoming a pathfinder regarding challenging social issues.

Players & Instruments:
Composer/Arranger - Ray Soul
Lyrics - Jair Oliveira
Piano - Art Hirahara
String arrangement - Matthew Nicholl
Cello - Naseem Alatrash
Violin - Bengisu Gokce
Vocal - Ebinho Cardoso

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