Baramgot Performance

July 14^th, 2011

Had class at Dankook University, the day started to feel like we were establishing a routine as a group, and we knew that we wouldn't have any more membership changes—our group is Amada, Caitlin (Theatre major), Chiayu, Hai, Abigail, Jessica (our only person with Korean heritage) and Alyssa. They're all really sweet. It's hard for some of them to do the type of reading I have assigned because they're not from the humanities, but they're all doing a great job trying. And they are learning the Bongsan Talchum motions faster than I expected, especially Hai.

In the evening I went to see 바람곳 Baramgot, a mixed fusion gugak group. Won Il is the artistic director and he plays 피리 piri and percussion for the group. There is also a 거문고 geomungo player, a 가야금 gayageum player, and a 대금 daegeum player, but the part that fascinates me and the songs I enjoyed the most were when they incorporated sitar (the sitar player also played percussion. The music was rather intellectual, and I definitely preferred certain pieces, esp. with the sitar, but it was all interesting. And there was a great guest performance by a group called 유희 spelled U-희(hee) which I think is stupid, but whatever. They're all Korean National University of the Arts graduates, all from the 연희학과 Folk Theatre Department. At the show I coincidentally ran into Lisa Kim Davis with a friend and also 기영 Giyeong. After the show I gave Won Il one of Karjam's CDs and we talked a bit more about him coming to play in Korea in October.

Yi Saenggang is the Best Daegeum Player in Korea

 April 28^th, 2011

So for mom's last day in Korea we stopped by the Seoul History Museum, which has an excellent exhibition right now of photos from a Czeck visitor to Korea who was here in 1901. That's all we had time to look at, although I was itching to show them the big diorama of Seoul. We had lunch, went home, took mom to the airport. It was sad to say good-bye, we had a great visit. I was only –much too snippy to be acceptable—once. That's like a record for me (not saying I wasn't mildly bitchy on other occasions but I only had to apologize once).

I went straight from the airport to the 중요무형문화재전수회관's 풍류극장 (the Pungryu Theatre at the Intangible Cultural Properties Training Center bldg) for the third installment in the series we also went to on Tuesday. This show I wanted to see because 이생강 Yi Saenggang, National Human Treasure for Daegeum Sanjo was playing. I love him! The other two featured performers were 정명숙 Jeong Myeongsuk who I've seen at KOUS and other locations quite a few times, she's a jeonsu gyoyuk jogyo for 살풀이 salpuli and 강정숙 Gang Jeongsuk, who I may never have seen before. She is a 가야금산조 및 병창 gayageum byeonchang National Human Treasure like Ahn Sukseon. The performance was very different from the performance on Tuesday. First of all it seemed that all three members were resistant to the talking that Ms. Oh wanted to see going on between numbers. However the show was almost fifty minutes longer- Gang played sanjo (in other words she only played and didn't sing) for a good twelve minutes or more, then also sang (pansori) quite a few numbers and Yi played four different types of flute (several numbers on most of them). It was really awesome. At the end Ms. Oh finally got Jeong to dance again (she protested "I thought I was only here to dance salpuri" but she did ipchum) and Yi accompanied her on the daegeum while two other musicians also played. Ms. Oh tried to get Gang to play or sing during this number and Gang refused to do either. I liked the show much more, and I also felt like I'd gotten my money's worth. The whole evening there were some very loud 추임새 chu'imsae people, including the guy one over from directly behind me. A lot of talk back in general. At the very end one of them insisted Ms. Oh sing. She sang about 40 seconds, but it was quite good. 

Mom Arrives in Korea and the K-Arts Students Have a Show

April 14^th, 2011

We went to the airport on the new airport railroad and picked up mom. She'll be here for two weeks.

I ran off to 봉산탈춤 Bongsan Talchum soon after we arrived home. Class was sort of depressing. I made some silly mistakes when I intended to finally do this one part error free. I was just having an off night I guess but it really bummed me out.

April 15^th, 2011

I woke up at 3:30 (two hours sleep) and got mom up (not hard because of the time difference). We went to 조계사 Jogye Temple for the morning prayers. I think our taxi driver there was drunk.

The prayers were good but because of mom's bad knees she can't do any of the prostrations, which is too bad. I did 108 before the service actually started, then during the main prayer suddenly my knee sort of popped and it started to be almost torture to do any additional prostrations. The service was particularly long with a series of prayers I haven't do much, but a nice 보살 bosal (volunteer in the temple) came and brought me a prayer book that included those prayers and I really enjoyed chanting, I understood a lot of the prayers we recited, much more than I understand the prayers I'm used to doing.

Before we left we bought some things, she bought 3 little gifts and I bought a ring for myself with 반야심경 the prayer Banya Shimgyeong on it. I think mom enjoyed the trip to the temple. When we left it was just starting to get light a little. We headed to the bus stop and took the bus back home and napped.

After we got up we went to the 찜질방 Korean bathhouse/spa. It was a good place to take mom, I think. We enjoyed all the saunas and pools before we joined Karjam in the co-ed area. I think we were there about 3 hours, but when we left Karjam decided to stay.

In the evening we went to the Korean National University of the Arts for the new student performance. All the new students in the School for the Traditional Performing Arts performed. The first piece was a court orchestra piece and I was really impressed. Honestly, that's not my favorite style of Korean music but I thought that the performance was highly professional, really I could not perceive any difference between their performance and that of any ordinary traditional music orchestra, despite the fact that all the players were freshmen (who would be approximately 18-20 American age). The next three pieces featured 거문고 geomungo, 가야금 gayageum and 해금 haegeum. Although I was looking forward especially to the geomungo, the piece was just a boring composition (it was a new work). The gayageum piece was Pachabel's Canon on 3 different pitches of gayageum (with three players per pitch). Blah. I am not a fan of trying to recreate a Western sound on a Korean instrument. It's a waste of the capabilities of the instrument. The haegeum piece also was nothing special. Next we had a vocal number with four pansori singers, a gayageum byeongchang player/singer, several minyoperformers and one women doing jeongga. I found their performance pretty good but not great, at least it got mom fully awake (she is jet-lagged). One really super fun aspect was hearing this type of singing with a knowledgeable (and supportive) audience. There was so much well done 추임새 chuimsae. The next piece was dance, a giant rendition of taepyeongmu and the only performance for the night with upper classmen (why? I see no reason why they couldn't have just had fewer dancers on the stage). It was frankly the most boring and soulless rendition of taepyeongmu I think I've ever seen. Mom fell back asleep.

Of course the important part of the show was the last act: the performance by the 연희학과 Department of Traditional Folk Theatre. The show opened with 13 (of 15 new students) on stage playing seated 사물놀이 samulnori. Actually they all began on 장구 janggu then they switched to samulnori. I was glad off the video camera as it made it easy for me to spot Ga-eun who stayed on janggu and Heesu who switched to buk. Of course as soon as I saw that Wonjung and Inseon were not there, I knew it was because they were in costume somewhere off stage. They entered the stage and the drums switched to a smaller configuration and one player re-emerged on 태평소 taepyeongso. Wonjung was dressed as the old yangban husband and Inseon as the old grandmother, his wife. They discovered each other and exchanged various fairly typical dialogue, then introduced the tight-rope walker. The tight-rope walker was very good, certainly 80% as good as the top performers, National Human Treasures, who I've seen. After he was featured there was a section for standing 풍물 pungmul performers, with Ga-eun as one of the two 꽹과리 ggwaenggwari players. She had a wonderful section being featured dancing with the large poof of ostrich feather whip that they manipulate much like a sangmo. There were several dance solos, including Heesu on sogo with wonderful manipulation of the sangmo. I am totally impressed. Two other Namsadangnoli trick performers came out (I think one was the same guy as the tightrope) and they dealt with spinning tops and disks.

It was absolutely a wonderful performance and I was so proud of the students. Afterwards I gave my students some drinks and told them they did a good job, while I was talking to Ga-eun Professor Kim Duksu came up and asked her who I was. I was a bit tongue-tied, but managed to ask him for an interview. He passed me off to another professor, a theory expert. I guess I'll have to try to ask him again at another time when I'm more prepared! I think mom had fun but she was really exhausted by the time we got home. 

Three Days in Seoul

February 3rd, 2011
My friend Bonnie and her husband Curtis came and spent the night, so I made them dinner and we had a long Korean pop culture conversation. Otherwise I finished Photoshop on the photos from Goseong and transferred all the video to Karjam's computer and other book-keeping type tasks.

February 4th, 2011
I went to a concert at the 국악원 Gugakwon with Kimberely Hall in her capacity with the Asia Society, as the event photographer. However the seats weren't ideal for photography. Worse, though, was that the lighting in the hall was atrocious. The person I was particularly supposed to photograph, Jocelyn Clark, an American professor in Korea with amazing 가야금 gayageum skills, was lit with a spotlight straight down from above, so she had dark pits for eyes and her nose cast a shadow over her mouth—it's not pleasant for the audience to see a show lit like that, and definitely I was dissatisfied with the photos. When I met her after the show she said the lighting also made it difficult to see the strings. The rest of the show was moderately better lit, but none of it was very good.

The show itself consisted of six pieces of new music for Korean traditional instruments (usually). I have limited patience with such, in general, because for every good piece you hear quite a few bad ones. It is as if the musicians, composers, directors, etc. are all so bored with the traditional repertoire they're willing to try anything—but that doesn't mean it's good for the audience! The first piece was for five solo gayageum. No, that doesn't make sense. Why not just have one solo player do the whole thing? Why five? They alternated playing in a very unconventional way, taking the new techniques popularized by composers like 황병기 Hwang Byeonggi and then going way beyond into new territory. Chiefly, the piece was not melodic. I'm sure it must be beastly hard to play as nothing was predictable at all.

The second piece featured the 생황 saenghwang, an instrument that was described after the show by Kimberely American boyfriend Shawn as "you know, the bong," and indeed Hilary Finchum-Sung (who also attended with son Oliver), confirmed that it's filled with water. It was saenghwang, viola, cello and two violins. I honestly didn't feel that the music fell within the category of "Korean music" in any way at all, but I'm probably just being conservative. Honestly, to me, it sounded like the music to a movie montage about a person who was losing their mind and was committed to a mental hospital.


The third piece was one of the two I liked the most, it showed the promise of new compositions particulary through the interesting conversation between the 단소 danso and the 피리 piri and a lovely part where just the danso and아쟁 ajaeng were playing together.

The fourth and fifth piece were for full orchestra, the orchestra was seated in chairs (western), and wearing black and white (so western), with vaguely hanbok styling to the neckline, the women's outfits ended up looking more to me like Vietnamese clothes given that it was a slit skirt over pants. I have not much to say about either piece, they used some interesting additional instruments from western and other non-Korean areas, but the music itself didn’t captivate.



The sixth piece was in the broad genre of military music, powerful and aggressive with 나발 nabal horns, 태평소 taepyeongso and piri plus a lot of percussion. More than just the music, I enjoyed hearing the composer (who was also the conductor) talk a bit about his process before the piece began.


February 5th, 2011
I met Joji at the Electronics market and bought another voice recorder because the one I bought in August records at much too low of a volume to be useful. Even if the mic is practically in the mouth of whomever I'm interviewing. We then proceeded to the National Museum where we toured the Silk Road and Dunhuang exhibit.

At five "The Gwangdae" had a performance, the hall was crowded but 대천 Daecheon's wife helped us to find a seat. The show was fairly good.

사물놀이 samulnori, a singer, followed by 풍물 pungmul, followed by 이매 Imae from 하회별신굿탈놀이 Hahoi Byeolshin'gut Talnoli, followed by a lion's dance (the lion pretended to be a camel to great amusement), then a spinning disk performance and that was the it. The audience, especially the young children loved it. After the show I got to see everyone which was awesome. 가은 Gaeun also came to the show.

Still feel sick.

Fusion Music in Karjam's Future and Sangmo Class

October 19th, 2010
In the morning Karjam and I went to meet our friend 조은정 Jo Eunjeong, who was formerly a 가야금 gayageum instructor at UCLA (I took her class for a quarter, but I must admit I’m hopeless on the instrument). She and Karjam have rehearsed together and even performed, unfortunately due to a lack of follow through by others who promised to get us the performance footage we only have this little video of them rehearsing together. They sounded much better than this after rehearsing more. They will start rehearsing together from next week and we have various plans that after they become more fixed we will share with everyone.

Back home I worked on slap dash video editing on the crappy (but easy) video editing program we know how to use (as opposed to the really fancy program we cannot figure out how to do almost anything with yet and we’re pretty frustrated with). I just made up a little something out of some clips on a digital camera (not a video camera) from the 강령탈춤 Gangnyeong Talchum performance the other night. Due to frustrations with Youtube’s compliance with the Korean Real Name Internet Verification Law, I have not been able to upload this yet (I'll link it here when I do- working now!).

Tuesday is 상모 sangmo day, so of course I went to the 임실필봉서울전수관 Imshil Pilbong Seoul Training Center. It’s still midterm period, so there was only one more student than last week (and he was only absent last week because of his great grandmother’s funeral), he’s one of the two high schoolers in the class, both of them want to go to Korea National University of the Arts. 이현석 Yi Hyeonseok, the one I included a photo of last week, is a first year high school student (out of three years), the other is a second year student (I haven’t learned his name yet). At first I was having a bad day because I felt that I was almost making negative progress, I was even more frustrated when 태원 Taewon (again he was our only instructor) had me practice 반대사위 (not sure on the spelling, but backwards or clockwise spins). It was incredibly frustrating that I couldn’t get into a spin rhythm, but I felt much better when second-year couldn’t do it either. The second hour of class I worked on 양사위 (spinning on one side for 1.75 spins, then switching directions and spinning to the other side for 1.75 spins) together with the other students! Taewon said we had to do it 400 times (and the count is 1,2,3,4=1, 1,2,3,4=2, 1,2,3,4=3 and so on), I am not sure if we did or not, at any rate we spun for forty minutes and I was able to keep at it, although of course my spin stopped and had to be restarted quite a lot more than the spins of the others. After our intense exercise we sat down and had a very serious conversation about Korean education and the future of students who go into the arts (like the two that were there with us). That was a bit depressing.

Fusion (and Chuseok)

September 22nd, 2010 추석 Chuseok, the Korean Autumn Harvest Holiday

Well, as foreigners without a particularly close family in town we didn’t do anything particularly for the holiday, however we did venture out for several hours of observation of various performances and events. There were far fewer than the internet led me to expect and each place I’d looked up in advance had less going on, presumably in all cases because yesterday’s rain had caused plans to change, but it was still a very happening day outside, lots of small events and concert stages. None of the places we went to, ironically, had the traditional events I wanted to see, partially because I saved the best event (being held two days in a row) for tomorrow. We started at City Hall, spent quite some time in 덕수궁 Deoksu Palace, then proceeded to 천계천 Cheongyae Stream, hit a bit of 대학로 Daehangno, then looped around and came back to 세종문화회관 Sejong Culture and Art Center which was hosting a performance by Sukmyeong Gayageum Ensemble. That meant that not most but ALL the performances we’d hit during the day fully qualified as fusion.

Photos:
The funniest menu item I've seen in a long time and the view down the stream.



Photos of Deoksu Palace and Karjam. The one B/W should teach him to stop goofing around when I want to take a photo of him!






Photo of one of the Sukmyeong performers.


I am torn on the subject of fusion. The other day when I went to Prof. Hilary Finchum-Sung’s class one of the cool things she said was that the violin had developed over centuries to be ideally suited to playing Western classical music, like Mozart, and that likewise the Korean instruments, regardless of roots in China (in most cases) had evolved to fit the ideal Korean aesthetic. So when you try to play “Moonriver” on the 해금 haegeum it’s sort of laughable at best. I call that sort of thing a gimmick. It’s the same with photography, people will develop a very unusual process that creates an unexpected result and then go with it, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good photo. It’s unexpected to hear the Beatles on 가야금 gayageum, but that doesn’t mean that it really sounds good. Honestly it sounds like muzack. Elevator music. Maybe you’d want to listen to the end the first time, but after that would you want to hear it again, really? The Beatles being one of the main sources of the Sukmyeong group’s adaptations (they play very few Korean traditional pieces and even when they do, since they all use 25nylon string (modernized from the classical 12 silk string) gayageum, it still won’t sound fully traditional. In other words I find Western music played on Korean instruments at least a waste of talent, and often just annoying. However some groups that combine Western and Korean instruments and play pieces of music that are a bit between the two traditions can produce exciting results that may cause people to reconnect with traditions/traditional music/ traditional instruments and can give young performers a chance to be creative and find excitement in a musical genre bound by tradition and chock-full of canonical pieces which though often (산조 sanjo) originally as welcoming to improvisation as jazz are in practice increasingly rigid. During the day Karjam and I heard both interesting fusion and not interesting fusion.

One of my favorite performers is 장사익 Jang Sa’ik. The man has an amazing voice. (Or should I say had? He can’t sing with the power he could when I was first seeing him live.) Jang is traditionally trained and fully proficient in traditional music, and has chosen to create fusion ensembles to accompany adapted traditional, traditional and newly-composed songs. I can't complain about his fusion, he's just a master, and if it keeps him artistically engaged I'm all for it. But there are a lot of performers who don't master the traditional arts before they start messing around with fusion and I think that that is often off key (bad musical pun, sorry). [Another Jang Sa'ik fusion performance].

김덕수 Kim Deoksu, one of the most famous drummers in Korea, has had long-standing fusion relationships, including with the Jazz group Red Sun. It's funny to look back on it now, but the first Korean music CD I ever owned was Kim Deoksu Samulnori with Red Sun (actually it was given to my ex, but by my 합기도 Hapkido instructor, way back in 1996).

Fusion has been embraced by the government as the perfect ingredient in tourism ad campaigns, just look at this one for an example.

These days there are a lot of co-productions with B-boys (in case you didn't know, Korean B-boys win many international competitions, and Korea's becoming quite the hot location for B-boy and B-girl activities). [example 1] [example 2]

Some Koreanists have written on fusion music, including R Anderson Sutton who wrote a whole article on how the Haegeum is being utilized for a lot of fusion these days, whereas in the past the gayageum was more favored. I love Haegeum, but sometimes people try to repress its natural rasp when they play it in fusion, which to me begs the question "why use haegeum if you don't want it to sound like a haegeum?" [Haegeum fusion example 1][we heard a lot of music in this vein today][a third example][more haegeum fusion]

There are also a lot of younger traditional musicians who try to adapt K-pop hits for their instrument, I don’t know if this is being performed anywhere seriously, but so much of this is running around Youtube, I should acknowledge it. So are they screwing up by not concentrating on polishing the ‘real’ skills of their instrument or are they keeping themselves engaged and finding artistic inspiration? I really can’t judge this, but I need to follow up on this subject during my fieldwork. And I’d really like comments on this subject! [Go halfway through the video to hear the pop with the gayageum

Meeting Professors

September 16th, 2010
Wow. It was the fullest day I think I’ve had so far.

In the morning I went to audit Prof. Hilary Finchum-Sung’s class “Intro to Korean Music.” She’s the first foreigner ever to be hired by a Korean music department. Not music department in Korea, a department that teaches KOREAN music. Wow! Actually I know other people like Heather Willoughby who are also ethnomusicologists with Korea as their region, and probably Heather or others could have been as competitive for that job if they’d been on the job market at the time that SNU was hiring. Regardless, last year she was teaching music theory IN KOREAN! She did say there was a lot of new vocabulary involved in teaching that class, but I was incredibly impressed. In fact, I’ve rarely been more impressed. Close up when we ate lunch after class she looked tired, but when she was teaching she was high energy, pretty and talented. The class is still in the highly introductory period where she’s setting a base-line of knowledge for the students to stand on so I knew most of what she taught, but she did it very well, demonstrating 거문고 Geomungo (6 string zither), 해금 Haegeum (two string fiddle) and 장구 janggu (hourglass drum). She is actually on her way to being really good on the Haegeum, and she sang a little with a very pleasing singing voice. She had some music students visit class to demonstrate 대금 Daegeum (transverse bamboo flute), 가야금 Gayageum (12 string zither) and 피리 piri (double-reed oboe), because it was the introduction to instruments class. So I had lunch with her and will go back to her class again.

Cell phone photo with Hilary and two of the music majors:


After that I rushed to meet Professor 전경욱 Jeon Gyeong'uk, who is one of the top experts on mask dance drama, and among professors who teach on the subject the one I respect the most, hands down. He is also officially the person I am affiliated with for the Fulbright. It was very hard to talk to him, as there were six people in his office when I arrived (it’s always like that!) and he prepared us all tea (full tea production with all the pouring of water and discarding this and that and making sure the temperature was just right and what not. He’s a big tea aficionado. I had a five minute window when no one else was there, he went to the bathroom then sent a fax (and I waited for him to finish doing it) then asked the first question on my list, and he moved to his computer and attached documents that he sent me, and while he was doing that a reporter from the 중앙일보 Joong-ang Ilbo arrived, and until I had to leave he was still lecturing her (and preparing more tea). The lecture to her was very interesting, I won’t type it up in the public blog version in detail, but the short version was he was going off about changes to the masks that actually meant they were not as well made as in the past, lost artistic ability, ornamentation, realism, details, etc. It was sort of a rant. I told him I’d read what he’d sent and meet him again in a couple weeks.
Cell phone photo: Prof. Jeon makes tea


I rushed home, had a two minute cold shower, grabbed my 한삼 hansam (white sleeve extensions for practicing 봉산탈춤 Bongsan Talchum) and my 미투리 shoes, loose pants and a t-shirt and rushed out to 봉산탈춤 where we had a fairly ordinary practice. I am worried about 원 중 Won Jung, who is applying to the National University of the Arts School of Traditional Performance. I don’t actually think he has much innate performance talent, and I wonder how much that counts (he wants to learn and devote himself to traditional arts, and through hard work he’ll get better… isn’t that what education is about?). His audition is Oct. 6th or 7th.

And I read academic Korean articles for tomorrow's class on all the bus and subway rides.