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with these instruments; whether, as he put it, there is a ‘feral Korean […] thwacking seven shades out of a geomungo in some distant part of the Korean countryside’. I put the question to [su:m]. “Every people – our mother, our grandmother – can sing a folk song,” Park says. “Sometimes there is only a song and some- times there is a kind of instrument. For example, in Korea still they do a ritual and they play piri and gayageum.” It’s not a sub- ject Park and Seo are expert on, but they assure me that exten- sive audio collecting has taken place and the results are held in academic institutions. I’ve since been reading with fascination about music in Korean shamanism, but that will have to be another story for another day.
The debut album, Rhythmic Space: A Pause For Breath was released in November 2010 in a sumptuous, glossy cardboard package, but at present seems impossible to buy in Europe, even as a download.
here [su:m] are gentle and precise, Jambinai are loud and muscular. Jambinai are a three-piece band, backed by additional drums and bass at their Womex showcase, which I’ve seen most often categorised as ‘post-rock’, putting them in a genre alongside the likes of Mogwai and Explosions In The Sky. They must be one of the heaviest bands we’ve ever covered in this magazine, but amid the waves of shredded electric guitar remain the traditional instruments: geomungo, piri and haegum (a form of violin held vertically). One of the pleasures of Womex is the way it facilitates the most unlikely cultural encounters, and one of my enduring memories is of a huge man in African garb in absolute raptures over the intense music of these small, neat Ori- ental musicians.
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“Mostly with Korean traditional music, new bands play soft music, acoustic, listenable,” leader Lee Ilwoo explained to me a few hours before this show took place. With Jambinai, he wants to confound expectations and “have some power in Korean music.” The band (he is joined by the women Kim Bomi and Sim Eunyong) have a way of pushing the traditional instruments to their extremes that makes them crucial to the sound, and the music is just as uniquely Korean as any national ensemble. One hears the piri wailing away as if it could tremble and split through the sheer force with which it is being played – the geomungo being whacked and scraped, Kim sawing away at the haegum – and expects the strings to fly away from the wood.
Jambinai are less confident with their English than [su:m] and our reliance on a translator leads to slightly stilted conversation, but their enthusiasm shines through. “The Korean instruments are the reason of Jambinai,” Lee tells me, reassuring me that the group aren’t in a transitional phase towards becoming just anoth- er rock band. “Nowadays we play metal or rock, but without the base of Korean instruments there would not be Jambinai’s music.”
Like [su:m] and Geomungo Factory, the members of Jambinai have been academically trained in Korean music. The group start- ed acoustically, playing “contemporary classical or ambient music”
[su:m]
Photo: Judith Burrows
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