K-Pop Anyone? Tune Into All-Girl Band TRI.BE

If you thought kimchi is the lone South Korean soul food that made you sing, you are missing K-Pop. Or just rewind your life to Gangnam Style. Of late, the Korean assembly line forged a brand new band—TRI.BE, a multilingual, seven-member, all-girl troupe that debuted with a two-song album called TRI.BE Da Loca. Eshita Bhargava speaks with the septet—Songsun, Jihna, Kelly, Hyunbin, Jia, Soeun and Mire—and finds that TRI.BE leaves a pleasant ring in the ear like the delightful aftertaste of kimchi. Excerpts:

New album CONMIGO

The title of our album means ‘with me’ in Spanish. The title track, RUB-A-DUM, is inspired by the children’s story The Pied Piper. As the pied piper plays his flute to gather the townspeople, we wanted to express how we want to play around with our audience.

Working on songs

We are still learning how to write, compose and produce music. Thankfully, we have our producer S.Tiger and EXID’s Elly working on our music and production. They teach us to understand our music. We hope to create our music one day.

Popularity of K-pop

SongSun:  It is because of catchy tunes and magnificent performances. I love how we can communicate with everyone through K-Pop.

Kelly: It is such an honour to be a K-Pop idol. I believe K-Pop is popular because of its addictive melodies.

JinHa: K-Pop has become a genre of music. I think people like it because of the exciting and remarkable performances. I will work harder to convince more people to like TRI.BE’s music.

HyunBin: When I look at social media or YouTube, it is clear that many foreign fans cover our music. Sometimes they know about K-Pop more than we do. I think they like it so much because they can see how idols keep improving through intense training, and because each group has its unique colour.

Jia: The most important thing is talent. However, I believe that K-Pop groups became more popular because they had other qualities as well, such as good personality and manners. I believe their hard work has paid off.

SoEun: I think the senior artistes who debuted before us have made a huge impact.

MiRe: The elaborate and charismatic music and performance are probably the secret to the popularity of K-Pop. Also, I believe social media has played a part too.

On Bollywood

SongSun: I would love to try it out. If the opportunity comes, I want to perform in a traditional Indian outfit.

Kelly: I am not familiar with Indian artistes, but I would love to listen to their songs.

JinHa: I love Indian food and I heard “Paani Wala Dance” at a restaurant. Ever since I listened to it, it has become my favourite Indian song.

HyunBin: We would love to create music with Indian tunes, just as how we tried Latin music.

Jia: Unfortunately, I have not heard any Indian song yet. I have often heard of the famous Indian curry. I want to try authentic Indian curry when I visit.

SoEun: I like Casablanca by Ennah. I would love to do a cover for it someday. Ennah’s voice is exactly the tone I like, and I think she is charming.

MiRe: I want to try it out for sure. It would be great if I could learn traditional Indian music that has the sound of sitar or tabla.

A song for Indian audience

JinHa: I recommend LORO by TRI.BE.

SoEun: Please check out our song RUB-A-DUM. I hope our Indian fans will have fun listening to the cheery pipe sound.

MiRe: Many of them probably know our title tracks DOOM DOOM TA and RUB-A-DUM. However, they might not know our B-side tracks LOCA and LORO. Those are great addictive songs. 

(This appeared in the print edition as "Out Pops The K")