My name is haejin bang – born, raised, and rooted on unceded Tongva land, I am a culture bearer of both the 소리 (voice) and 북 (drum) that make up 판소리/pansori, an indigenous Corean storytelling practice – pan, “a gathering of”; and sori, “voice” or“sound.” My experiences growing up at home in Koreatown, Central LA—disabled, trans, working class, housing unstable, houseless at times—shape everything I create. My commitment to home and to my ancestral practices are tied to my cultural work: stewarding connections to each other and our shared lands, centering those who have deep roots to their homes and are at risk of continuous displacement.

I began with the need to connect to Home through stories that felt true to my experiences and being. I ground my practice of pansori through nearly a decade of continued studies with culture bearers back in the homeland— Intangible Cultural Heritage Holders and Master Singers/명창 Min Hye-Sung and Song Jae-young, and Master Drummer/고수 Cho Yong-soo. While holding these traditions, my practice diverges from the sole preservation of prescribed narratives. My sori is a cartography of collective histories, of sound tied to body—a political and spiritual practice that collages personal histories with that of the true origins of pansori, rooted in agrarian communities and shamanic rituals. Embedded with/in community and spirit, I hope that my transdisciplinary work creates new possibilities – futures that truly make space for me and other disabled, trans, diasporic bodies to tell our own stories in ways that honor the entirety of our embodiments and ancestries.