Korean gugak-ska fusion band to tour Australia

The 15 members of Uheeska, which combines ska band Kingston Rudieska and pungmul band Yeonhui Company / Courtesy of Kim Shin Joong

By Jon Dunbar

Uheeska, a collaborative band that fuses Korean and Jamaican folk music traditions, is heading down under for a couple of shows in Australia.

Combining traditional Korean gugak music with Jamaican genres like ska and reggae has been done before ― in fact, members of this band were among the earliest to attempt it ― but only Uheeska performs fusion in innovative and exciting ways that take up a lot of room on a stage.

Uheeska is a collaboration of Kingston Rudieska, which focuses on the first wave of ska dating back to the early 1960s in Jamaica, and Yeonhui Company, a pungmul troupe featuring an array of traditional percussionists and singers.

"Pungmul," also known as nongak, or "farmers' music," is an agrarian musical genre consisting of percussionists, singers and dancers who perform a variety of formations that includes dancing and acrobatics.

Ska bands are already known for having a lot of members, and Uheeska has even more ― 15, according to trombonist Choi Chul-wook.

Kingston Rudieska, formed in 2004, has been collaborating with gugak musicians since nearly the beginning.

In 2005, they met Jang Goon, a singer of "pansori," a traditional narrative form of Korean music, who has been featured in some of their songs. They found that simply by performing a ska version of the traditional folk song "Arirang," they could drive audiences wild, and they developed from there.

"I think that was an important moment, when gugak was approachable for the public in a friendly way," said Choi Chul-wook, trombonist of Kingston Rudieska. He also acknowledged the many gugak collaborations that came before, including those by Kim Soo-chul as well as Kim Duk-soo, an original member of the fusion band, Samulnori, which later inspired a genre of that name.

Jang Goon, whose name translates to "General," went on to join I&I Djangdan, a dub-roots reggae band led by Kim Ban-jang, who was known for leading the reggae band Windy City.

Meanwhile, the members of Kingston Rudieska continued following their own path. For their 2014 full-length album "Everyday People," they brought Brian Dixon, former guitarist of the U.S. reggae band Aggrolites, to record them. Dixon reportedly encouraged them to keep finding ways to highlight their Korean heritage in their music, showing interest in them bringing "their soul" out. The album included a few songs with gugak touches, most notably the instrumental "East & West" featuring Choi Hwi-seon on gayageum.

In 2017, the reggae band NST & the Soul Sauce, which has included members of Kingston Rudieska and I&I Djangdan as well as Windy City, had its first collaboration with pansori singer Kim Yul-hee, resulting in a lasting partnership. The band even toured with Jamaican reggae legend Lee "Scratch" Perry in 2017.

Then in 2018, Won Il, the music director of the Yeowoorak Festival, matched Kingston Rudieska with Yeonhui Company. The combination of the two bands came to be known as Uheeska.

They produced an energetic, seamless fusion of their two styles, and what's more, they made it look effortless.

"The first performance that day was almost our last, but we felt joy while performing," members of Yeonhui Company said in a written interview with The Korea Times. "The Korean performance industry has a culture of 'dwipuri' (afterparties). After the performance, when we had an afterparty at a famous pig feet restaurant in Jangchung-dong with many artists, and we promised to be musical friends for the rest of our lives."

Uheeska performs at Channel1969 in Seoul's Yeonnam-dong, Jan. 23. / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar

Members of both sides share one important thing in common: their Korean heritage, which includes going through the public education system and a lifetime of exposure to Korea's rich music traditions, if sporadic in some cases.

"The reason why Jamaican folk and Korean tradition go well together is because of the meeting of traditions," said the Yeonhui members in an email interview. "Ska and our rhythm tell a story. And the sentiment of sublimating 'han' (sorrow) to 'heung' (joyfulness) is common in both Jamaica and Korea."

"Traditional music can feel strange and difficult," Choi added. "There's a lot of complicated and difficult beats, so you might find it hard to listen to, and you might think it's the music that grandparents used to listen to. However, if you're Korean, you can feel familiarity due to repeated exposure, even if you don't mean it. I think anyone can feel the charm of gugak if they have enough opportunities to feel its energy."

Uheeska combines Korean drumming with Jamaican rhythms and the pungmul vocal styles of Yeonhui Company with Kingston Rudieska's take on Jamaican genres.

The vocalists mix in a combination of traditional Korean "chuimsae," a form of exclamation during music performances to emphasize feelings or influence the rhythm, as well as the Jamaican tradition of "toasting," which is almost the same thing, just with a more Jamaican vocabulary.

"Chuimsae is like a thread and needle," said the members of Yeonhui Company. "It also helps and gives strength to the performers. Our chuimsae is not fixed, but we communicate with each other our momentary emotions and feelings. At first, only Yeonhui Company was doing chuimsae, but now it's fun with Kingston Rudieska doing more chuimsae."

"I think each chuimsae sound is more than just an instrument," Choi said. "Chuimsae is the sound of oneself overflowing with heung during the performance, and this chuimsae is playing a role of increasing the excitement for other performers and the audience."

The members of Yeonhui Company, which coincidentally shares its name with Yeonhui-dong, a neighborhood within walking distance of Hongik University, the area of Kingston Rudieska's origin, said they are no strangers to Hongdae area's indie music scene.

"Music transcends time and space," they said.

Uheeska has performed a few times in Hongdae venues. The band even performed for Kyungrokjeol in February, the birthday of Kyung-rok, bassist of Korean punk band Crying Nut, which is one of the neighborhood's most exciting events of the year.

"We want to travel around the world and play on and off stage for the rest of our lives," said Yeonhui members.

"I want to let many people abroad know our music," Choi said. "And I want to study gugak more."

Uheeska will be playing in Canberra this Saturday and Sydney next Tuesday, as part of the 2022 Korean Festival hosted by Australia Korea Culture & Arts Incorporated (AKCAI) and the National Unification Advisory Council. Also on the bill on both dates is a troupe of traditional Korean music and dance performers.