Leo Rec. Lauren Newton & Park Je Chun : 2 Souls in Seoul (US/S-KO,2008)****
This is a concert of ‘free music voice’ Lauren Newton with South-Korean percussionist Park Je Chun. The inspirational idea seems to refer to ‘pansori’, the old narrative folk vocal style to perform stories with dramatic content, important to witness through it the depth of emotions of the narrated and sung experiences. The folk style reference is changed into a conceptual musical idea transmitted into and for free music, so without bringing a specific story to remember of life experiences with the real emotions guiding this to tell the story. Instead the whole empathetic variation lies at first in a more abstract visualization, then thoroughly discovers the voices and stories related with that discovery from within. At first, within the musical freedom of expressions, only the ghosts of experiences are traced, first only like shadows of a past existence that had a voice of their own. The piece, with calm rhythms, builds up slowly like a meditative painting. Thoroughly Lauren’s voice takes shape of the idea of real persons, first singing just like an American native Indian when concentrating on a story, like a shaman (3). The percussionist Park Chun continues to play sparsely, carefully, attentively, waiting off any movements of the lion. Further on (7) the voice starts babbling, and then is singing again (10), as if here an essence of language is turning back thoroughly to its previous expression of a singing voice (like Asian languages were). This singing then becomes like a free entertaining jazz form (11) while seemingly narrating a story. From then on, suddenly, real words come to the surface (12), like boiling bubbles where with the loosening air, hidden contents appear, still embedded in a quiet careful sense of waiting even through the notice of flashes of appearances. The voice becomes an inner cry, like in some part of the story of a usual ‘pansori’, calming down to turn into the native shamanic singing again, then showing a possessed voice briefly, which jumps off in the scene like a spark of flame, this voice appears in the images. Later, the singing becomes a song in the environment, with couch bells-alike percussion, and shows a moment of contemplation (14) and also the voices of whispering off-scene vividness. Near the end, also Park Chun takes part in the singing briefly (recorded rather quietly), a point where I recognize the essence of the pansori-style percussion, as rather off-beat but on-fact tensions to the story. His solo voice is caught by Lauren who sets in for a last outburst of her voice accompanied by Park’s adaptive percussion. Both artists here work with increased tension as with conclusive energy (16), but not until another strong contemplative moment accompanied by singing bowls.
Altough I did not expect at first that this could be convincing to try, the performance succeeds to do something with ‘pansori’, even when it is with a different context and fundament, the alternative experience is rewarding.
Also notes on the performance by Stuart Broomer entitled ‘border songs’ are able to give a preparation for additional depth to this experience.
