Girl Groups Thrive in Traditional Music Scene
By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
From the Wonder Girls, Girls’ Generation and 2NE1 to the Brown Eyed Girls, girl groups are currently reigning over the Korean pop music industry. “Gukak,” the traditional music scene, is also enjoying popularity of its own version as girl groups have reinvented and modernized their instruments to cater to the tastes of modern audiences.
Traditional girl groups are changing the genre that has been long regarded as “old and boring” with their creative ideas and young spirits.
Sorea
The group Sorea, a compound word meaning “Sound of Korea, Symbol of Korea,” is gaining popularity among young music fans for its trendy style of traditional music.
The group was launched with five members in 2005 and has since added seven more performers. Their performances alternately feature different members according to the show, and they pursue “new music”by mixing diverse modern genres such as hip-hop and rock.
Following its first album released in 2006, Sorea put out “Monsterious Story” in December last year, targeting overseas markets.
Aiming at popularizing, modernizing and globalizing the traditional arts, the group won the Gold Award in the Creative Korean Traditional Music Competition at the Korean Traditional Music Festival in 2005. Its work was selected as having impressive content by the Korean Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) and was showcased at Midem, the world’s largest music exhibition held in France.
In competition with other Korean pop music teams, Sorea ranked top in reviews by music reporters and professional critics in 2006. The group also made a spectacular debut in the pop music world by receiving a 52 percent approval rating on an Internet poll held by the portal Daum, which gave them the Best New Album Award from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
Sorea aroused interest as their music was used in the soundtracks for various dramas, including MBC’s drama Princess Hours" and "Princess Hours S.”
The performance of “In Panic” produced jointly with B-boy group Extreme Crew brought the group popularity domestically and internationally, as it was distributed through various Web sites, including Youtube. Extreme Crew won Battle of the Year, one of the four world B-boy competitions, to choreography made to fit the music of Sorea.
The group performed throughout Germany at the invitation of FIFA Fan Fest during the 2006 World Cup, and held concerts in Tokyo, Shanghai and Shenzhen. They also toured Taiwan, Vietnam and Kazakhstan.
Its shows were credited by both Korean and foreign reviewers for developing a new concert format and style by combining cultural elements and international trends.
Infinity of Sound (IS)
This is a trio attending the Graduate School of the Korean National University of Arts.
The sisters ― Kim Jin-ah, who plays the gayageum (a 12-stringed instrument); Sun-ah, the geomungo (a six-stringed instrument); and Min-ah, haegeum (a two-stringed fiddle) ― have performed their music both at home and abroad.
In its debut album, “Step One,” the group showed the essence of traditional music mixing the acoustic sounds of the instruments with their own vocals. But in the recent album “In Dreams Volume 1,” they have attempted to blend in electronic sounds.
Notably, the band has recently released an album featuring the title track “Mouana” in collaboration with France-based Cameroonian band Erik Aliana & Korongo Jam.
Using two guitars, gayageum, geomungo, haegeum and an African folk drum, Udu, the song is marked by the powerful vocals of Erik Aliana and good harmony of IS.
The two groups first met in 2007 at Japan’s World Music Festival. They performed on a different stage but they were attracted by each other’s music.
After that, the Cameroonian band visited Korea in 2008 to take part in the Nangye Traditional Music Festival and perform together with IS for the song “Mouana.”
Yeoul
Yeoul, a fusion gayageum (12-string traditional instrument) quartet formed in 2003, consists of four players ― Ki Sook-hee, Lee Su-eun, Ahn Na-rae and Park Min-jung. The four members studied at Gukak National High School and graduated from the department of Korean traditional music at Ewha Womans University. Yeoul plays a mix of genres, including jazz, rock, fusion and classic with their 25-string gayageums and an electric gayageum, which was invented by the group in 2005.
The quartet has invented two kinds of electric gayageum ― an 18-string gayageum (yeoulgeum) that can be hung on the shoulder, and a 25-string instrument that is played on a stand. The members developed the electric gayageum to generate various ranges and tones, compared to the traditional instrument. Depending on the adjustment of the keys, it creates sounds an octave lower or retains a long trailing note like the electric guitar.
Yien
Consisting of seven female members in their mid-20s, Yien has successfully brought traditional music to clubs by adopting the elements of electronic music.
The five artists play haegeum, gayageum, ``piri” (a traditional flute), ``taepyeongso” (a large wind instrument), ``daegeum” (a large bamboo flute), ``sogeum” (a small bamboo flute), ``janggu” (a hourglass-shaped drum), ``kkwaenggwari” (a small flat gong) and percussion.
The members all attended the same class at Gukak National High School. Yien was first created in 2003 and is now one of the nation’s most popular gukak bands.