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.

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. 

SNU to Sajachum

November 4th, 2010
In the morning I went to Professor Hilary Finchum-Sung’s awesome class on Korean music. Today was devoted to 시나위 shinawi and 산조 sanjo primarily. She brought in a bunch of students to play shinawi for us (this being shinawi as the group ensemble based on what was shaman-ceremony accompanying music), two stuck around to play sanjo (아쟁 ajaeng and 거문고 geomungo). It’s really awesome to be able to hear the music after Hilary’s contextualized it and explained it so well. Afterwards we ate lunch in the cafeteria together.

cell photo:

In the evening I headed to 봉산탈춤 Bongsan Talchum class, 장용일 Jang Yongil was teaching us again. Us ended up being a very small group, only four others showed up, but one (선영 Seonyeong) left before class really got underway. She’s moving to France in a couple months. So it was just high school student수미 Sumi, 병호 Byeongho and the guy who is Byeongho’s back half of the lion: 조연혁Jo Yeonhyeok. We started with practicing the lion dance, and I actually tried being the back half of the lion to Seonyeong, I learned a couple of the tricky points to being the back half. It looks easier than it is, not that it looks particularly easy, either. Jang spent a fair amount of time explaining the entire meaning of the lion scene, at one point he quizzed me and I didn’t immediately answer (I didn’t quite get what he meant) and he starts scolding me about “how can I study this long and not know this.” I think he doesn’t quite understand that the point of my research is not to analyze the scenes (or become a world class dancer) but rather to look at how, where, to whom, in what way etc. he is teaching. (As well as other people teaching other arts and the other major prong of my research is looking at how shows are presented to audiences, how effective that communication is). He repeatedly emphasized that no one can dance these dances correctly if they don’t know what they mean (this was directed at the two guys who are just starting to perform the lion dance when other’s aren’t available, they couldn’t answer any of his questions).

Yesterday they had performed on the US military base in mid-Seoul, and I asked some questions about how the announcer had introduced the show, etc. This led to a long conversation with Jang (he’s so opinionated!) and it started to stir up some analytic thinking that seems based around an idea of a conceit that the audience understands directly from the artists, what the artists intended, without need for mediation. Comments welcome.

Dept. store already decorated for X-mas:

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.