Banjang Kim - Drums & Lead Vocalss, Gapyol Youn - Guitar & Vocals, Sangkwon Jeong - Percussions & Vocals, Taeguk Kim - Bass & Vocal

When we met with Windy City backstage at the Ulsan Summer Festival, Kim “Banjang” (roughly translated “Head of the Class”), the groups drummer and lead vocalist, was sitting barefoot in his tent engrossed in a book while bobbing to the reggae on their stereo. Banjang, a gracious and funny character with an innocent youthful cadence, greeted us with a warm smile and invited us to take a sit beside him.

The members of Windy City met over the Internet in 2004 and were originally called “Bus Riders”. As the band grew, they changed the name to “Windy City” after the record label started by American funk icon Curtis Mayfield. Since then Windy City has played in Japan, Thailand and France and released two albums Psychedelicious City and Love Record (both available on iTunes)

Windy City at the Jisan Music Festival

I had first heard of Windy from an EBS documentary on the groups trip to Jamaica.  I asked him about his trip and he said that it was his second time to the island and that it was one of the great experiences of his life. “Rasta is not a religion, to me,” he says earnestly, “its a way of life.” For Banjang, Rasta means living with love and respect in the “Babylon system.” Highly suspicious of capitalism and government, he spoke of how modern Korea destroys peoples lives and disconnects them from one and other.  In Jamaica he found people with a past similar to the people of Korea, the same sadness and hardship that Koreans call “Han“

Windy City at the Jisan Music Festival

Besides Bob Marley and Marcus Garvey, one of Banjang’s heros is Jeon Bong-jun, an Korean revolutionary who revolted against Japanese and Western oppression of the Korean underclass. He likens him to the heros of the reggae movement in the way he struggled for freedom from oppression. To Bangjang, this is what it means to be a Rasta, not only the belief in Haile Selassie I or living by biblical dictates (he says he eats Ital cuisine as often as he can but confesses to a little salt now and again) but to struggle against Babylon to live a free a spiritually guided life.

Bangjang’s beliefs in peace, love and unity are the main message of his music. Perfectly at home playing to a crowd of young families and middle-aged ajummas in Ulsan, Bangjang stood up from his drum kit and addressed the audience with a grateful appreciation for having him as a guest in their city and invited everyone to stand up and take the chance to meet their neighbours,  to greet them and to “know them by their smell.” “These days,” he laments to the people “we don’t even have time to know our neighbours” The crowd loved it, and where out of their seats clapping to the music and hugging their neighbours. “Isn’t live beautiful?” he asks the smiling faces “Enjoy your life and relax.”

Windy City are playing tonight at  Club 500 in Hongdae with I-and-I Djangdan. Doors open at 9pm

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