OzAsia Festival - Daorum
DIANA CARROLL
30/09/2008
Daorum is an exceptional example of musical fusion at its best. Steeped in the conventions of modern jazz but celebrating the traditions of Korean pansori singing, Daorum is a rare musical treat. It is new, original, and very exciting.

This particular show was created in 2005 by drummer Simon Barker as part of the 2005 Australia Month Festival in Seoul, an opportunity that came to Barker as part of his enduring interest in Korean music. Barker had been on a musical pilgrimage into the mountains of Korea where he met percussionist Kim Dong Won and renowned pansori singer Bae Il Tong. The 2005 show emerged from this meeting of musical minds and a documentary of the journey should be shown on Australian television later this year.

To uninitiated ear, pansori singing sounds like a violent collision of opera and death metal. The pansori singer spends months or years in the mountains shouting at waterfalls to enhance their vocal power. Pansori itself is a form of opera, the musical storytelling of universal tales of love, loss, and heroism, but the sheer force of the singing gives it an epic quality often lost in more traditional opera.

This collaboration with Barker on drums, Phil Slater on trumpet, Matt McMahon on keyboard, and Carl Dewhurst on guitar, accompanying the two Korean masters, is simply superb. The first piece, an improvisation, gave a superb display of the musical intimacy between these fine musicians. The following pieces in this short program were excerpts from traditional pansori stories given a new twist with the western instruments. Each performer in this ensemble is an accomplished musician but the sheer power of Bae Il Tong’s vocals was quite remarkable. He is also an incredibly engaging performer to watch, bringing drama, pathos, and comedy to each epic song.

Daorum has been performed at the Queensland Music Festival and the Sydney Opera House – it would be wonderful to see it back here as part of our Festival of Arts. Space Theatre, September 26.

Daorum
Oz Asia Festival
Space Theatre
Friday

Daorum is a six piece cross-cultural group – four Sydney jazz musicians and two Korean performers – founded by drummer Simon Barker to explore the Korean tradition of pansori. A theatrical blend of folk music and storytelling, pansori traditionally features a singer/storyteller and a drummer. Daorum’s intention is to incorporate these traditions with contemporary jazz improvisation. Pansori vocalist Bae Il Tong has an enormous emotional range and a powerful voice, almost frightening at moments of deep, raw-throated intensity in his storytelling and song. Simon Barker outlined the narratives, age-old tales common to many cultures: wronged heroes, corrupt officials, a beautiful daughter with a blind father. The second Korean, Kim Dong Won is a percussionist using various gongs and a double-ended drum. At first the instrumental music sounded more Korean than jazz influenced with Phil Slater creating wind effects through his trumpet while pianist Matt McMahon tinkled abstractly at the top end, to blend with Carl Dewhurst’s high guitar notes. Later the two Koreans took centre stage and demonstrated the amazing varieties of sound possible from just voice and a single drum. When the whole group portrayed chaos at a banquet the music contained elements of free jazz with a Korean modality, as Barker’s frenetic drumming built the effect. Daorum is a laudable enterprise interpreting aspects of a little known Asian art form for Australian audiences.

John McBeath