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East-West Center

Korean music festival
taps a link to jazz

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By Cynthia Oi
Star-Bulletin

When the music begins at the Korean Musical Treasures concert tonight, jazz lovers may be in for a pleasant surprise.

For improbable as it may seem, Korean music shares the improvisational qualities of jazz.

ON STAGE What: "Korean Musical Treasures," a concert of classic, folk and contemporary styles Date: 8 to 9:30 p.m. today Place: Hawai'i Imin International Conference Center, Jefferson Hall, East-West Center Tickets: $10 general, $7 students, seniors, military, faculty; at UH Campus Center box office, by phone at 944-7177, at the door Information: 944-7612

"Korean music is highly personal, individualistic," said Byong Won Lee, professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. "Unlike music of other Asian countries, Korean music puts more into improvisation."

Melodic improvisation wraps around rhythmic patterns and the sound quality is "raspy, husky," he said.

"Individual instruments, such as bowed instruments, produce strong, buzzing sounds. This has been the preferred quality and style of music in Korea," Lee said.

"The closest thing to it would be African-American music in terms of sound quality. It is jazz more than classical Western music."

But that's just one segment of Korea's musical repertoire, Lee said, and the performance will illustrate that.

"The concert will embrace every form from ancient traditional and court music to folk music and Buddhist ritual music and contemporary music," he said.

Some will be meditative and sedate, others will be "very lively, very active." Folk music will reflect the rural life with songs about the hardships of farmers and fishers, the seasons and human relations.

"The listener will be able to get a taste of the breadth of music that comes from Korea," he said.

The concert ensemble will be composed of musical scholars and performers, including Jae Won Im on taegum (transverse bamboo flute), Il Ryun Kim, voice and kayagum (12-string zither), Tae-Baek Lee on changgo (hourglass drum) and Yon Sop Yang, kayagum and changgo.

The event is being presented as part of the UH's conference, "Current Research in Korean Music." It is the first international gathering of ethnomusicologists and scholars of Korean music, Lee said. Twenty-seven people from Japan, Korea, Great Britain, China, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States are attending.

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