Nathan Hesselink - Samul nori Compositions

Samul-Rock Fusion (2008)

Fusion pieces became standard fare for samul nori groups beginning in the late 1980s, primarily through the collaborative activities of Kim Duk Soo SamulNori and the Euro-American jazz quartet Red Sun. The compositional strategy employed in nearly all cases was the fusing together of traditional Korean folk rhythms with Western melodic and harmonic ideas. In a similar vein, here I have chosen one Kyŏnggi-province rhythm and four Kangwŏn-province rhythms to serve as a rhythmic base, to be performed on the traditional percussion instruments. To this I have added electric guitar and electric bass parts playing gestures inspired by classic rock music.

Yeongdong Nongak (2009)

This regionally based piece draws upon the rhythms of the yeongdong/yŏngdong area—the eastern counties of Kangwŏn province nestled between the northern ranges of the T’aebaek sanmaek and the East Sea. In 2006 I spent the summer living in Kangwŏn province conducting field research with members of Kangnŭng Nongak, the cultural asset team (munhwajae) for that particular region’s folk drumming and dance (p’ungmul/nongak) tradition. During that period I was able to learn and document their core repertoire through interviews, field recordings, and extensive musical notation. Kangnŭng Nongak’s repertoire differs from others on the peninsula in its continued references to agricultural practices and lifestyles. Unlike other cultural asset teams that borrow rhythms and ground formations from Chosŏn-period military choreography, shaman rituals, and itinerant troupe performance culture (the namsadang), Kangnŭng’s main “piece” (the entertainment-oriented p’an kut) is a single lone movement that re-enacts rice planting and harvesting in all of its various guises. The challenge in this work was to extract the most representative and complex rhythms to be performed on the core percussion quartet, and to establish an order and length that made sense within such a concert-hall piece.

Han-Mi Karak (2009)

Where the previous two compositions follow well-established procedures for samul nori, in this last piece I broke from standard practice by limiting myself to the traditional quartet of gongs and drums in my combination of Korean and Western rhythms. Previously Korea and the West were conceived of as separate musical universes, so that the Korean elements were nearly always confined to Korean instruments, while the Western elements were realized on Western instruments. In this work I alternated between secular and ritual rhythms of the Chŏlla provinces and rhythms drawn from Western rock and jazz. The challenge here was to seamlessly combine and interweave these rhythms so that audiences will recognize something of both traditions as a kind of hybrid, rather than as a series of abrupt changes and/or juxtapositions. This mixture of East and West is reflected in the title: “Han(Korea)-Mi(U.S.) Karak (Rhythms).”

Han-Mi Karak 2.0 (2013)

After wondering for a number of years why I hadn't heard any "Korean" rhythms in Korean EDM and pop music, I decided to try my hand at converting my "Han-Mi Karak" composition into a kind of digitized Korean drum performance. Using only GarageBand and a few sounds, I reprogrammed three of the more complex rhythms from my original "Han-Mi Karak" piece into this updated version 2.0. I'm not sure how successful I was, but hopefully a few of you will appreciate and/or enjoy my first attempt at such a project.