SOUNDTRACK: JAMBINAI-Différance (2012).
I am fairly stunned that I never posted about Jambinai at the Olympics in Korea in 2018. Their performance of “Time of Extinction” blew me away and before the song was even over I was looking them up to find out more about them.
Jambinai blend traditional Korean instruments with rock instruments. But not in a “we rock and want to bring in a flute” way. The three main members met at Korea’s National University of Arts while studying traditioanl Korean music. They wanted to play traditional music in an innovative way but in a way that was very different from K-pop. So their band consists of
Kim Bo-mi– haegeum;
Lee Il-woo – electric guitar, piri, taepyeongso, vocals
Sim Eun-yong – geomungo.
I had to look up what some of these instruments were, and here’s what I’ve got:
Geomungo (also spelled komungo or kŏmun’go) or hyeongeum (literally “black zither”) is a traditional Korean stringed musical instrument of the zither family of instruments with both bridges and frets. It is generally played while seated on the floor. The strings are plucked with a short bamboo stick called suldae, which is held between the index and middle fingers of the right hand, while the left-hand presses on the strings. The most typical tuning of the open strings for the traditional Korean music is D#/Eb, G#/Ab, C, A#/Bb, A#/Bb, and A#/Bb an octave lower than the central tone.
In the video from the Olympics, the band is surrounded by dozens of geomungo players.
Haegeum (Hangul: 해금) is a traditional Korean string instrument, resembling a fiddle. It has a rodlike neck, a hollow wooden soundbox, and two silk strings, and is held vertically on the knee of the performer and played with a bow. It is one of the most widely used instruments in Korean music. Its range of expression is various despite having only two strings, with sounds ranging from sorrowful and sad to humorous.
Taepyeongso (lit. “big peace wind instrument”; also called hojok, hojeok 호적 號笛/胡笛, nallari, or saenap, 嗩吶) is a Korean double reed wind instrument in the shawm or oboe family, probably descended from the Persian zurna and closely related to the Chinese suona. It has a conical wooden body with a metal mouthpiece and cup-shaped metal bell. It originated during the Goryeo period (918 – 1392). The loud and piercing sound it produces has kept it confined mostly to Korean folk music (especially “farmer’s band music”) and to marching bands, the latter performed for royalty in the genre known as daechwita. It is, however, also used sparingly in other genres, including Confucian, Buddhist and Shamanist ritual musics and neo-traditional/fusion music.
Piri is a Korean double reed instrument, used in both the folk and classical (court) music of Korea. It is made of bamboo. Its large reed and cylindrical bore gives it a sound mellower than that of many other types of oboe.
Jambinai released this album in 2012 but reissued it in 2016 when they released their second album a Hermitage.
This nine-song (mostly) instrumental post-rock album is just astounding with the sounds they produce.
1. Time Of Extinction (2:56) opens with some quick riffage on the Geomungo. After 20 second the roaring guitars and drums crash in. Before a minute is up, the guitar falls back and a wondrous haegeum solo takes over amid the background rumbling. It’s followed by some staccato thumps and full-on blasts of noise. The taepyeongso mixes with feedback to create a wall of discord before it all crashes to a close.
5. Paramita Pt. 2 (4:21) Part 2 slows things down a lot–just a geomungo thump and some sporadic notes on the haegeum. It feels menacing and suspenseful–punctuated by deep bass notes that resound and linger. The song unexpectedly explodes about two minutes in with a wall of noise punctuated by cymbals.
8. Empty Pupil Pt. 2 (4:39) Part 2 further explores the quiet guitar with some cool creaking sounds from the geomungo before it starts playing a riff that ends with a big crash each time. It picks up the tempo as the haegeum is introduced along with some acoustic guitar strumming but there is no climax to this song it just ends and fades.
Stream it on their bandcamp site.
[READ: June 4, 2019] “Stonehenge”
The June 10th issue of the New Yorker features five essays by authors whom I have enjoyed. They were gathered under the headline “Another Country.”
I enjoyed Min jin Lee’s Free Food for Millionaires quite a lot. I had no idea that she was not born in America. She came to New York from Seoul when she was seven, and her essay is fascinating for a couple of reasons.
First, she says that every day in the 1970s and 1980s it took her two hours to get from her home in Queens to the Bronx High School of Science. She spent most of that commuter time reading Sinclair Lewis novels about America: Main Street, Babbitt, Dodsworth, Arrowsmith.
On weekends she worked with her family in their father’s store in Manhattan’ Koreatown. The store was burgled several times and everyone in their family had been mugged at some point.
She notes that Sinclair Lewis wrote about white Midwesterners who struggled against materialism, corporate greed, fascism and narrow thinking. She found it calming to read about these big ideas since her family life was so hectic. The books also made her feel like she’d traveled even though she never did. (more…)
