[KS] Kim Duk Soo: SamulNori and Fusion

Keith Howard kh at soas.ac.uk
Thu Jul 13 19:05:00 EDT 2000


To those who are interested, a brief interlude from road signs back to
music and popular culture.

I read with interest the recent comment about Kim Duk Soo on the list, but
then managed to delete it before discovering who it was from (could it have
been Kevin Parkes?). Anyway, to add my -- admittedly subjective -- bit to
what I hopefully can remember:

I don't agree that Kim Duk Soo has always kept his distance from fusion in
his contemporary interpretations involving SamulNori. This might seem
rather contradictory to some of my CD reviews in my recent 'Korean Music: A
Listening Guide', but hang on. It seems to me that there has always been a
difference between what has occurred on stage and what has been recorded.
On stage (and I guess an MBC TV performance counts here), part because of
what composers have requested ever since the early 1980s, and part because
of the experimentation that had its roots in the Konggan Sarang (Space
Theatre) and its manager, Kang Chunhyok's, new year's collaboration events,
the original members of the SamulNori quartet trained themselves both in
improvisatory skills and to very accurate learn complex notated scores.
Their collaborations have involved domestic and foreign jazz musicians
(from Herbie Hancock and Bill Lazwell through to Lee Jeong Sik), but also
solo work within Western and Korean orchestras. As people like Ahn Sook Sun
have joined Kim and his colleagues, so some remarkable music has been
composed/developed. (Was Ahn the singer mentioned in the earlier message? I
do not know.) Kim, I would suggest, really is a master musician, and one
would need to log a massive number of performance events to come to any
adequate sense of his versatility.

The CD recording where the talents of Kim and his SamulNori colleagues
begin to shine through as 'fusion' is the ECM release, 'Then Comes the
White Tiger'  (ECM-1499, 1994). This was mastered by Mannfred Eicher in
Germany, but I understand the recordings were from the same sessions that
produced a second CD mastered in Korea, 'Nanjang: A New Horizon' (King,
KSC-4150A, 1995). Both feature Kim Duk Soo and his SamulNori members, plus
the scat singing of Linda Sharrock and jazz instrumentalists (Rick
Iannacone, Bill Laswell, Wolfgang Puschnig). The ECM release moves beyond
the language of SamulNori (or old Korean p'ungmul/nongak), since the four
Korean percussion instruments are at times used to underpin developing jazz
numbers. Not so on 'Nanjang', where the musical structures are simpler, and
the SamulNori percussion always remains SamulNori. I wonder to what extent
this reflects the sound engineers and those overseeing them at the
mastering sessions? Something more happened by 1997, the time of Kim's 40th
anniversary as a performer (at the grand old age of 45!). 'Kim Duk Soo with
his friends' the album subtitled 'Mr Changgo' (Samsung Music, SCO-137NAN).
Here, he is joined by a number of well-known contemporary musicians,
including Shin Hye Chul (the founder of the early 1990s pop/heavy metal
group N.EX.T, more recently going under the name of 'CROM' and recording
out of a studio in London). The loud and repetitive percussion many of us
will know from SamulNori gets wiped away, and all sorts of harmonic and
lyrical stuff gets developed.

I have always been struck by how Kim Duk Soo (and the original, founding
SamulNori team) have managed to keep ahead of the competition. I saw Kim
perform four or five times last year in Korea, and was astonished by what
he can (still) do. I guess this goes someway to explaining why he has
become something of a cultural icon to Seoulites generally, and to the
increasing number of SamulNori fans around the world.

Keith Howard

Dr Keith Howard
Senior Lecturer in Korean Studies and Music
SOAS,Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square,
London WC1H 0XG, UK
Tel: 020 7898 4687;  Fax: 020 7898 4699; EMail: kh at soas.ac.uk


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