Latvian-Korean fusion band improvises music

LAproviKO performs at The Studio HBC, Oct. 26, 2022. / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar

By Jon Dunbar

A performer asks the audience to shout out words. Once selected, the word is used to inspire the musicians on stage, and they launch into a new and unique creation.

No two shows will ever be the same for LAproviKO, a Latvian-Korean fusion band whose name stands for "Latvia," "improvisation" and "Korea."

"I think that there are no better or worse words," said Martins Baumanis, the Latvian keyboard player and leader of the band. "We've had the most mundane words generate the most elaborate and beautiful soundscape or piece. It just gives us a little springboard to start with and I usually go with my first instinct and encourage our band to do the same. I really enjoy the openness feeling of this format and it also makes the audience listen a bit more, as they are a part of the creation process."

The band mixes Western instruments like keyboard and guitar with Korean instruments such as the "gayageum" (zither) and "daegeum" (bamboo flute). They use those instruments to blend different musical traditions together, which results in something that sometimes resembles jazz, and at other times takes inspiration from the Korean genre of "samulnori" ― hardly an easy fit.

"There is a limit to the volume of Korean traditional music," said Kim Min-ji, the gayageum player. "Even if you use a microphone, it's difficult to catch the sound of Korean traditional music instruments. When we performed for the first time, we were busy playing individually, so we only made our own sounds loudly, but now we are trying to understand each other's instruments and balance them."

"When I first tried playing improv music with Martins, I felt like I was naked on stage because I was doing something I had never done before, but now I feel free when playing improve," said daegeum player Kim Myeon-su.

But Baumanis savors the complexity of weaving disparate sounds and rhythms together.

"It almost is better when it's hard to incorporate the instruments ― it always forces us to make creative solutions," Baumanis said. "Limitations are very useful in music. For example, if the traditional instruments can only play certain modes, for me as a pianist it is really easy to predict their playing and then I can really mess or support it easily."

He coordinates the musicians during songs with the elaborate use of hand signals, a technique he picked up from Peter Wiegold, his professor at Brunel University London.

Wiegold had founded Club Inegales, a performance venue in London specializing in improvisational music.

"The formula was simple," Baumanis said. "Peter's band had some of the best cross-genre performers in the U.K. and they would invite a variety of guests. The band would only have one rehearsal before the performance with no or little amount of score. Peter would bring it all together with his gestures, and the result would be different every time."

One of the members of the house band was a daegeum player named Hyelim Kim. "the 'gugak' (traditional Korean music) element was very apparent, but it was never something forced or intentional," Baumanis said. "I never heard of the word gugak until I came to Korea."

As a student, Baumanis went to one of the club's first concerts in 2012, and he had a chance to grow and develop alongside the music venue.

"It was such an experience as a student to see the growth of the club and to start with helping voluntarily at the door, checking tickets, to being part of the band and to be responsible for recordings and mixing," he said. "Peter always says that it's not world music, it's not jazz, but at the same time that it is all of these things. I really became enamored with the club and probably that's why wherever I go, I try to keep the spirit alive."

After earning his bachelor's degree in music composition at Brunel, he completed a master's degree in music leadership from Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. His first job after his studies was coordinating music education programs in Montserrat, a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean.

When he finished that job, he returned to his home country where he served as CEO for an orchestra called Sinfonietta Riga. But lured by the thought of connecting different cultures with music, he went to Korea in early 2020 with plans to start an improvisational choir, which he said was a lot of fun before the pandemic shut down live rehearsals.

Then he met Dana, a gayageum player looking to make a new band, who introduced him to her musician friends, and they formed the band together. This included the gayageum and daegeum players, as well as Allen, the band's guitarist, who took an interest in combining Korean music with rock elements after listening to bands like Maluihan and Jambinai.

After practicing in Baumanis' apartment a few times, they had a chance to play in The Studio HBC. Their biggest show so far was at Seoul Friendship Festival 2022 in October.

"Our music is naturally suited to intimate spaces with attentive listeners, but it was a real adventure to also try out a big, loud place such as the central plaza in Seoul," Baumanis said. "In that particular performance, we had two protests going on simultaneously in close proximity. I think that will always stay in my memory ― trying to create new music with my band members on the spot as fervent speakers shout their lungs out."

LAproviKO will play at The Studio HBC this Saturday, opening for Uheeska, a fellow gugak fusion band that mixes Korean traditions with Jamaican music styles. Visit youtube.com/@laproviko8719 to hear clips of the band's past performances.