The ancient practice of musok is often referred to as Korean shamanism. A polytheistic folk religion which carries a retinue of village guardians, household deities and ancestral spirits, its mediators are called mudang and will for a charge perform divinations and ‘gut’ rituals – elaborate and colourful offerings of food, song and dance during which the mudang will sometimes fall into a trance state – in a bid to boost the fortunes of the curious, superstitious or even devoted.
Today’s mudang readily advertise across social media and cases of fraud are hardly uncommon, but musok is also experiencing something of a resurgence especially among younger Koreans, shorn of some of its old connotations, boosted by a sense of cultural authenticity and the casual interest that comes from its routine appearance on television and film.
Since moving to Berlin, the South Korean saxophonist Jung-Jae Kim has collaborated with the esteemed trumpeter Axel Dƶrner, the father and son string team of Ernesto and Guilherme Rodrigues, the electronic composer Eric Bauer and the drummer Stephen Flinn yet Shamanism his debut on Relative Pitch Records is the first album to emerge under his own billing.
Linking up with three South Korean compatriots in the form of his fellow saxophonist Sunjae Lee plus the percussionists Junyoung Song and Sunki Kim, the record seeks to both conjure and inhabit the ‘folksy and indigenous’ spirit which has long dwelled within the Korean peninsula, with the flow of Shamanism described as a kind of ceremony through a series of phases or stops along the way.
In fact the first thing that Shamanism and its opening track ‘Jeop’ reminds me of is the great British free improvisational saxophonist Evan Parker, most especially his Relative Pitch album Horizons Held Close where he was joined by his Trance Map partner Matthew Wright on turntables and live processing. With the bandleader Jung-Jae Kim playing his tenor saxophone and Sunjae Lee handling the smaller alto and soprano single reeds, what they suggest is a fowl language of bird calls, trilling and sometimes swampy or engaged in a circuitous fluttering, with an element of ruddy hostility but no clear destination in mind as they persist in their heedless and headlong flight.
While saxophonists like John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Peter Brƶtzmann famously utilised two drummers and there are no shortage of jazz albums featuring twin percussionists, this configuration of a quartet with two saxophonists and two percussionists is exceedingly rare. Jung-Jae Kim on the lower tenor often plays these kind of blubbery, trilling or squawking phrases and textures but can also hold long sputtering drones while the alto and soprano of Sunjae Lee gets in on the mix but can rise above the earthy ruckus through pure and sustained tones.Ā Junyoung Song and Sunki Kim meanwhile divvy up their percussive duties, with lighter stick work accompanying fuller hits and kicks or dry sticks rubbing up against shimmering metallics.
Amid puffs from the alto, on the third composition ‘Sang’ the ensemble sound like a steam train engaged in a dreamlike, chimerical back-and forth shuttle, with the chugging percussion also redolent at times of clopping sea shells. The end of the track calls to mind the truth marching and unified spectres of Albert Ayler as the quartet trail off into the distance.
‘Je’ is more pulsing and winnowing while ‘Yeom’ staggers out of the gates with a slop and a shiver of small cymbals or bells. Sunjae Lee takes a high arc over the rest of the ensemble, playing what is almost an arabesque. The groove is often implied rather than stated on Shamanism but the quartet really get into it on ‘Yeom’ as the twin saxophonists wrest, wriggle and writhe in the air while remaining kindred spirits from the perspective of harmony, as a series of faintly thunderous drum rolls and silvery emphases add to the restless undercurrent.
Altogether the album Shamanism offers a rare example of experimental music that is not just lean or spare but light, active, alert and even vivacious, shapely and substantial but never bogged down as like a wisp it rises to engage in its next frolic. The four musicians play to each other’s strengths and no doubt have much more to give.
Several shorter tracks on Shamanism play like interludes because aside from their brevity they and their interplay feel more musically compact. ‘Gang’ juxtaposes the immediacy of bicycle bells with middle-distance foghorn blasts as the other saxophone struggles antsily to sit still. In the most polite way possible, ‘Chuk’ sounds like faint tamping, metalworking or glass blowing, one of the percussionists turning a ratchet or cog rattle as a shop door tinkles open and closed and somebody finally sits down ever so slowly on a whoopee cushion which drawls out its familiar raspberry.
Befitting the album’s title, ‘Gae’ is especially shamanistic from the moment of its slender outset. Reedy and wafting blows of the horn carry the scent of incense while bells twinkle in a diffuse light, on a track which is still diaphanous but sounds somehow cloistered. In a similar vein the opening moments of ‘Mul’ remind me of the album Miserere byĀ Chad Fowler, George Cartwright, Chris Parker, Kelley Hurt, Luke Stewart, Steve Hirsh and Zoh Amba for Mahakala Music with its tenebrae and strepitus, its noxious vapours and wine-soaked bars or rain-soaked streets. This one however becomes by turns a bit more boisterous, through pot-and-pan percussion and buzzing, zagging lines of saxophone.
Jung-Jae Kim and his tenor swirl, with the leader displaying the richness of his tone and voicing as Junyoung Song and Sunki Kim keep up a slack and syncopated rhythm. Sunjae Lee comes in at an elevated pitch to dovetail with the tenor, making this particular rite sharper though no more impetuous as the quartet sidle to a close. ‘Bun’ seems to feature some circular breathing while elaborating the cacophony, the band reaching a fever pitch then careening drunkenly across the stage while ‘Hae’ shuffles into another state or phase, the moment of reverie now over.
