GoraniFestival

Gorani Festival

Gorani Festival's first edition brings together 27 musicians from the experimental scenes in Seoul, South Korea and Berlin, Germany.

From October 7th to 9th at Banjul, a venue that has been part of Jongno for decades, new artistic constellations form for an open dialogue across genres and disciplines in three exciting, varied evenings.

Berlin's 11 musicians hail from 7 different countries and meet 16 Korean artists working across traditional gugak, free jazz and independent pop. Each evening carries three sets of 20 to 30 minutes, played by newly formed groups from duos to quintets — combinations of instruments, genres and aesthetics assembled for this festival, and not heard before.

The Gorani

The festival takes its name from the Gorani (the water deer), a rare species found only in Korea and parts of China. This unique, solitary creature embodies a compelling contradiction: with its soft fur and cute appearance, it moves timidly through the tall reeds, but this gentle impression is quickly undone by its sharp, vampire-like tusks and piercing alarm cries. Old legends tell of soldiers trembling with fear in their night camps, mistaking the eerie cries of the Gorani for ghosts. In this spirit, may the sounds of the Gorani Festival today chase away the ghosts of warmongers worldwide.

Banjul

Banjul (빈쥴) has stood at 23 Samil-daero 17-gil in Jongno since 1974, first as a restaurant and, since a 2012 renovation, as a café, stage and gallery. Concerts of many kinds have passed through its small upstairs room over the years. All three evenings of the festival take place there; doors open at 6:30 PM.

Curators

The Gorani Festival is co-curated by Daniel Glatzel (composer and director of the Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra) and Sunjae Lee (Seoul-based saxophonist, head of Mung Records and the Seoul Experimental events calendar). Both bring multicultural backgrounds as well as extensive experience in developing cross-genre formats, contributing their international curatorial and artistic practices to the project.