SOUNDTRACK: COREYAH-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #41 (June 30, 2020).
Watching Korean bands mix traditional and modern instruments is really cool. Korean traditional instruments (like the geomungo) are really quite unlike anything the West has produced so I love seeing them in action. But merging them with electric guitar (and plastic hand clappers) makes for such an interesting juxtaposition.
This week we’ll publish four Tiny Desk (home) concerts from around the world. We begin in South Korea. Today [is] the music of Coreyah. According to the band, the name represents “inheritance,” and that’s evident in the way this six-piece presents old or traditional Korean music with a modern twist.
If you’re going to mix up such disparate elements you can pretty much do anything.
It’s an uninhibited vision of Korean traditional music with some psychedelic rock, Balkan gypsy, even sounds from South America and Africa. You’ll see and hear instruments including the daegeum, a large bamboo flute and geomungo, a large Korean zither that lays on the floor.
When translated into Hangul, the Korean alphabet, Coreyah means “whale,” which is the group’s good luck charm. The music was recorded in the band’s music studio in Seoul, with COVID-19 shutting down most of the country. Strict social distancing is still ongoing in South Korea, though they are streaming their concerts to fans.
And just a note from the band: The geomungo player in this video is Park Dawool, as Coreyah member Na Sunjin was forced to miss this recording due to a personal emergency.
“Till the Dawn” features some great flute playing from Kim Dong Kun on the tungso. There’s a heavy riff on the geomungo from Park Dawool while Kim Cho Rong plays the double headed drums. Kyungyi play a more stanadrd-looking drumkitm but it is hardly typical. I really like the instrumental break that is just flute and geomungo.
For “Yellow Flower” Ko Jaehyeon plays jagged guitar chords accented with flute. This song is quieter and singer Ham Boyoung has some kind of device that she is holding, but I can’t tell its purpose.
For the final song, “Good Dreams” percussionist Kim Cho Rong moves to the front to play the chulhyungeum which turns out to be like a slide guitar geomungo.
I could watch them play all day.
[READ: July 2, 2020] Weird Al: Seriously
I had been seeing ads for this book in my Instagram feed for months. So I decided to finally check it out.
Back in the day, I used to really enjoy reading academic books about non-academic subjects. There was a whole series of “The Philosophy of” various pop culture things that was fun. It often seems like these books overthink their subjects. Not that the subjects aren’t doing the things that the authors suggest, but I do have to wonder if the authors see a lot more than the subjects do.
That certainly feels true here. I’m not saying that Al doesn’t think about race or gender when he writes songs, just that he probably thinks “this will be funny” a lot more. (more…)
I’m updating this post in July of 2020, because Aparna Nancherla deserves her own post. When we saw her, she was hilarious. Since then she has gained some noterirty and I am always pleased to see her on TV shows (most recently in the Steve Carell-created Space Force).
SOUNDTRACK: SUFJAN STEVENS–Peace! Songs for Christmas Vol. V (2006).
This EP comes very close to being my favorite; it may even beat vol 3. In part because the disc is 35 minutes long (still short for Sufjan Stevens but longer than some bands’ full lengths).
I Just Read About That... 