Saturday, December 25, 2010

Tatu and Yuso Performance (Freaking Cold)

December 24th, 2010
I went to Severance Hospital to get my ear cleaned again. I might not have needed to, but as I told the nice resident, I didn't want to gamble on it not suddenly getting full of gunk and painful over the weekend. BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR EARS.

In the evening Karjam and I tried to hurry to the 국악원 Gukakwon for performances by 타투Tatu and 유소Yuso, but the bus was really uncooperative. We watched it pull out from the stop from the other side of the street and waited far too long for the next bus. The exact same thing happened on the way home as my toes turned to ice. Tatu performed first, which was fortunate, since even with hopping off the bus and into a very skilled taxi driver's vehicle we were still a tad late. The group presented several different acts from a bellydance (by totally non-competent dancers) plus Korean percussion piece for the first act to a 판굿 pan gut performance at the end, trying their best to enjoy 풍물 pungmul but also show something new and exciting to an audience that (of course) has seen pungmul before. In fact during their show I was worrying about Yuso. What was Yuso going to show that was much different from Tatu? However I needn't have worried.

Yuso's performance was spectacular. And I don't say that because 이종휘 Yi Jonghui is a really awesome 상모 sangmo instructor and I want to support him. It was truly a very amazing show. It wowed Karjam (he's been getting a bit jaded and bored with traditional Korean music). He kept exclaiming how much a Tibetan audience would love to see something like this! There were three parts to the performance. The first was a sort of 사물놀이 samulnori type piece with Jonghui playing 징 jing until it was time for him to play the second 꽹과리 ggwaenggwari part. The second part was a 모듬북 modeumbuk piece with one buk as large as those in the Buddhist temples plus others in various sizes. The final piece was their 판굿 pan gut piece, it was really awesome, the skills that the Yuso performers exhibited just blew me away. There was lots of great sangmo action, but I was tickled to see that Jonghui was not the featured sangmo performer.

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