A piercing tone with a nasal quality emanates from the haegum , a Korean traditional fiddle-like instrument, while the clear and delicate sound of gayageum , a twelve-stringed instrument, joins in. The varied sounds with vastly different textures are slowly building into a Korean traditional folk song; albeit in a contemporary fashion. Parallelly, the vocalist belts out a gagok — traditional vocal music which originated in the 18th Century, drawn from poetry and performed for royalty. What takes shape is a redefined, simplified version of Korean traditional music.
This weekend, the city will serve as audience to this process, as four individual artistes from Korea come together as a quartet called The Soloists, to create fusion music in VR Chennai in an open-to-all performance. The event is organised by the InKo Centre and the Indo-Korean Cultural Centre in India.
“Our group was made just for this tour. We named our team The Soloists because each of us is a solo player in an area we have majored in. It was very interesting for us to get to know each other’s perspective of music,” says vocalist Kim Dae Youn. He majors in JeongGa, a song that focuses on ancient poetry and originated in the 18th Century during the Chosun dynasty. “I used to like singing songs in front of people when I was a child, but I did not know Korean traditional music at all until I was 16. The very first time I heard JeongGa, its generic beauty of slowness absorbed and moved me deeply. From then, I started to major as a professional JeongGa vocalist,” continues Kim.
Accompanying him will be Lee Taekyung on the haegum , Yuh Chaehyun on the gayageum and Solip Han on the cheolhyungeum , an iron-stringed zither played with a plectrum and pick on the left hand, using multiple techniques that include vibrations, glidings and pushing tones.
“There are many attempts to make fusion music in Korea these days. As we are younger people in a traditional field like this, we try to listen to earlier examples of successful fusion to get ideas and inspiration,” Kim says, adding that the entire process is often quite challenging. By his own admission, even though Korean traditional music has its own character, it is not as popular an industry in Korea as K-pop. Which is why, as young artistes, they feel the need to be active proponents.
They have some interesting plans for their performance in India — what can the Chennai audience expect? Kim says, “The first song ‘Sijo and Gasa’ is played in a completely new style. In the original version of the song, six instruments are used — daegeum, haegeum, gayageum, geomungo, piri and janggu . Each of the instruments has a progression of its own. But in our music, we add chulhyeongeum and change the progression of the gayageum section. The last song, ‘A Great Love’ is a combination of Christian music and the Korean folk song ‘Arirang’ — this was a tough one.” The intent is to introduce the city to their traditional music — “not only with its deep resonance, but also the feeling of bonding with Nature, and the value of love, which the music talks about.”
The Soloists will perform in Swargamandapam, VR Chennai, Anna Nagar on September 28, at 7 pm. Entry is free.
