BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
The music of Korea and Australia will be fused in a world first collaboration between leading percussion groups from each nation in EARTH CRY. Australia’s Synergy Percussion and Korea’s Noreum Machi will present traditional and contemporary music against moving projections by Sydney artist Samuel James for a unique concert experience.
Synergy performed in Korea during 2010 and 2011, and became “addicted” to the country’s traditional music. But it was Australian drummer Simon Barker who suggested the group meet up with Noreum Machi, and in late 2011 the group came to one of Synergy’s shows. Later, the musicians gave members of Synergy a private studio performance.
“Most people probably have a few musical experiences which change their life. Hearing them play that day was one of those for me,” artistic director Timothy Constable says. He describes Korean music as exuding a “raw beauty, earthy sonic palette and a fiercely virtuosic rhythmic vocabulary”.
“It’s wonderful when asymmetrical rhythms just seem so intrinsic and unforced. There’s no music really like it, although of course you can hear influences from Middle Eastern, subcontinental, and other Asian cultures.”
While Synergy will play the regular marimba, vibraphone, bass drum, and other such instruments, the group has studied Korean drumming and when they perform with Noreum Machi there’ll be a fusion of Western and Eastern styles. Noreum Machi will perform on instruments such as the Buk (low drum), Chungoo (hourglass-drum), Jing (large gong), Kwenkwari (small gong), along with winds and voice.
“Excitingly, we’ve had some beautiful new instruments made, inspired by Korean drums but finished in Australian style with kangaroo skin,” Timothy adds. “I think this somehow encapsulates what we are trying to achieve musically with this show.”
Timothy has performed in Korea and as a student of Kim Yeong Taek and Kim Chongee – “two of the greatest drummers living today” – he has an intimate connection with the country’s music. But despite this, it wasn’t all that easy to team up with Noreum Machi. One might consider it an achievement in itself.
“It took us two years just to convince them to collaborate, to demonstrate over repeated visits that we were determined and capable. It’s a big deal to open up this music to us like this.”
He says that Australian musicians have a lot to learn, and when he started taking his chungoo playing seriously he found something that would “fuel the next 10 years of my creative development”.
“It wasn’t the rhythms, or specifically playing their instruments. It was the way that they balance yin and yang, the way the music breathes, the way they improvise, integrate the whole body in making sound, and use it as a healing practice. These things all express more universal cultural principals, so I think musicians of other disciplines could get a lot out of checking them out, too.”
The most challenging part of performing Korean music as a Westerner?
“Sitting cross-legged. As a musician more broadly it’s always challenging to be a beginner again, and with my teachers over there, that’s how it has been.”
It’s not a one-way street, and Timothy is excited that Australia’s music sparks equal interest in performers with backgrounds in other cultures.
“They are also really enthusiastic for our culture, our Indigenous culture, and the little contemporary percussion sound-world that Synergy has been working on for 41-years. I love Australian music and I think one lesson from projects like this is to take it seriously.”
Check out this Synergy website for events near you.
Image supplied.
