How I learnt to live with ghosts

I chose this recording - an orchestral Korean recording from Seoul, 1972 - after initially earmarking another sound, but this one spoke to me with its uplifting, playful and mischievous spirit & felt right. Atmospherically, it evoked a busy market place or a ceremonial dance, putting me in mind of the benevolent chaos of the ‘hungry ghost’ concept - more of which later.

The instruments featured in the recording are: traditional Korean percussion - probably a Janggu - and two double-reeded wind instruments : the Hojok and the Hyang P’iri, both similar in tone to an oboe and known for their loud and powerful sound.

After several listens through, I honed in on particular phrases that I liked - ones I might start building a new sound world around. My approach is to improvise with electronics and various instrumentation, until I generate clusters of "sympathetic" musical ideas that complement the source recording and suggest further layers. I view this as a collaboration - a conversation between me and the recordings.

One of the first things I noticed was the challenge of finding accompaniment that felt in tune, because the original recording is not in standard Western tuning - as you would imagine. My years of playing South East Asian Gamelan and love of tuned percussion, would help me to embrace the piece's wonderfully "wonky" quality.

The recordings were really inspiring to work with, generating lots of material which needed to be focussed. My initial piece reached an impasse, so I started a second piece which became the piece you will hear - along with some incorporated moments from the first piece. I became concerned that the work was becoming “too much about me” - maybe the recording’s were getting lost a bit - so I used the trick of using some film footage of Korean life in the 70s, and importing it into Logic for me to watch whilst composing - a way of keeping me in tune with the original essence of the time, location and character of the recording.

I also wanted to incorporate the sound of the Korean language somehow and in the process of developing the piece I’d started to feel like I was "dancing with ghosts": the ones inhabiting the recordings, but also my own recently departed loved ones. So not surprisingly, the piece became an homage to ancestral spirits.

It all fell into place when I introduced the Korean phrases "ghost dance" and "dancing with ghosts", and settled on the title "How I learnt to live with ghosts". This seemed a fitting double meaning to me, after deeply engaging with this haunting sound recording, I felt I’d danced and collaborated with a moment in the past, from a different culture and time, always conscious of honouring and respecting the origins of the sound and its social and cultural history. I hope that my sonic storytelling has succeeded in that intention, mixing together the personal and the source material into a compelling listen.

Instrumentals featuring the hyang piri and hojok reimagined by Tim Saul.

———
Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds