Friday night I checked out a concert by one of my favorite Korean groups, the Jimmy McGriff-like organ funk of Funkafric. The show was held in the Hongdae club Strange Fruit, a small venue that has a surprising good sound system. For whatever reason, the turnout was pretty light.
Here are a couple of closeups, of the main man behind Funkafric, Lim Ji-hoon, as well as his current drummer Heo Curly (sorry about the poor quality of the pics).
Sadly, I don’t have any good photos of the violinist playing that evening, Echae Kang. But she was very good, too. She and guitarist Ranhee Sun were particularly fun singing backup on their reggae-tinged cover of “La-La Means I Love You”.
This was one of those Funkafric shows where they teamed up with a pansori singer (sadly, I did not catch her name) — I gather they do that sort of thing from time to time. Usually I’m not a big fan of “fusion” music, but this mix actually worked out surprisingly well.
Honestly, there were a few people there. Not sure why all my photos are making places look so empty.
To get a sense of Funkafric’s sound, here’s a video of them playing on EBS last year.
Anyhow, I do believe Funkafric will be playing at Mudaeruk on Dec. 20, with My Way Killing and some other excellent groups. You should check it out if you are in town.
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