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. 

The Day I Perform Sangmo in the Snow

January 14th, 2010 Two Days Before my Birthday (Phone calls and emails welcome because I'll be hanging out with a bunch of people who've never met me before, and I like b-day acknowledgement)

Woke up, ate breakfast, had morning class. The class went very well, although 수희 Suhee talked a lot, it was interesting and I learned a lot and remembered to record a fair amount of what she said with my voice recorder. One of the recently arrived 개전연 Gaejeonyeon people, 우현택 U Hyeon-taek, is a Korean traditional dance major. He was urged to stand up and give a small presentation. Part of the discussion after class ended was on the ways to evaluate different 장구 janggu. Basically, the more lines of the tree on the janggu the older it is, the slower growing, the better the wood, the better the sound. There are sizes to janggu, you should match it to your own size. 영록 Yeongnok, who is broad shouldered and nearing 6 feet tall, uses an 8. Usually if you're sitting to play you want a slightly larger one than if you play 풍물 pungmul a lot (since pungmul is properly played while dancing/marching around). A half size difference is about normal. Suhee, who is quite petite, uses a 6 for pungmul.

Lunch (totally meat, I barely ate anything but rice and the soup, which was thin black sesame gruel). Then I interviewed Janghyeok. Which was interesting, because I rarely can talk with anyone except people like 이종휘 Yi Jonghui and 김은주 Kim Eunju and 김영숙 Kim Yeongsuk about arts politics, unless I've made a special interview appointment to interview someone. It's been awhile since I had a discussion with someone new about this stuff and his age, well, it was just a very refreshing conversation.

At 2 the performers assembled in our practice room and talked about the performance and prepared ourselves. If the 상모 sangmo is loose on my head, it's hard to spin, avoiding that I erred on the side of so tight after awhile I thought I was cutting off circulation to my brain. Seriously, it was painful. We started playing around 2:40. It was two 북 buk, one 징 jing, two 장구 janggu, and two 꽹과리 gwaenggwari with two 소고 sogo dancers, two sangmo and sogo dancers (obviously one of those was me) and three elementary school children also on sangmo and sogo. Plus three people doing 잡색 japsaek, the characters who dance around in the performance. We started playing and then 국진 Geukjin, who was the 상쇠 sangsoi (lead gwaenggwari player who leads the whole group) led us onto the snow, which we were packing into sludgy ice with our steps. I was trying to spin my sangmo and my feet were slipping sideways at the same time. And my shoes didn't feel thick enough for dancing on snow/ice. After too long there, we moved, and paused at another spot, then we moved again in between the old traditional buildings where the instructors live. We re-enacted the ceremony at 대보름 Daeboreum (first full moon of the lunar new year) where you dance to someone's house and bless them and get fed and liquored up in return. Suhee and 원로 Wonno acted the part of the householders. We danced there and got fed a bit and some people drank soju, then I finally took off my sangmo (blessed relief) and packed it up to leave. We ended playing at 4:45 and Geukjin drove me to town, where I caught the bus to Jeonju.




In Jeonju I ate dinner and had tea with Bonnie, a friend from the US who is also in Korea on a Fulbright-Hays, and 김월덕 Kim Woldeok, one of my two closest Korean girlfriends. It was such a wonderful break from food at the training center.

Caught the bus to Seoul, the bus had internet! Man I love Korea.

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.

Bukcheong Saja Noleum Performance

October 8th, 2010
My morning Seoul National University class was even better than before. The professor is sometimes a little off the mark (as in her understanding of Korean history has been understandably colored by being trained only in Korea by in many cases nationalistic scholars), but she’s super knowledgeable, and I enjoy talking with her. The problem is that the rest of the students are half asleep and say NOTHING. Actually some are only occasionally awake (at least no one snored). If they engaged with the material I’d believe they were in graduate school, seriously, it’s embarrassing. This was a problem during my MA at Yonsei, too. Do they expect information to be spoon-fed to them? The passivity of learning is just phenomenal.

I took a nap in the afternoon and then went to the performance of 북청사자놀음 Bukcheong Saja Noleum in 풍류극장 Pungryu Theatre, which is on the first floor of the Intangible Cultural Properties Training Center that houses both Bukcheong and Bongsan Talchum among other arts. I paid for a ticket, despite knowing how to get in for free (and knowing that no one would challenge my right to be there), because I feel bad about the situation that’s cropped up. This year they decided to charge 5,000 per ticket but they didn’t do any extra advertising and last year’s standing room almost non-existent has become this year a half empty theatre (and it’s a small theatre).

The performance was awesome, Bukcheong is so different from the other mask dance dramas. I actually wrote detailed notes, in abridged form:
The performance began with a short, educational but fairly general intro by the theatre staff. Then most of the dancers danced in and out again after circling the stage. At last the Yangban is dragged onto stage by his servant, they talk and the Yangban says to bring music, so the servant calls the musicians onto stage.
The musicians were on 징jing (one person) and 북 buk (one person) and 통소 tongso (four people). They stood to the back and side of the stage, they do not wear masks (like 양주별산대) or flower hats (like 풍물 pungmul performers wear), but have exposed faces, a headband (of the type worn under a mask) and exposed heads. Next the Yangban wants dancers and 한삼 hansam (sleeve extension) dancers come out (exposed faces but wearing hoods), then knife dancers (exposed faced men with no hoods, 지훈 Jihoon was the leader of the two and cued the other guy as to what to do). Next two 소고 sogo dancers (both in men’s clothing, although they were women) and two older women in hoods and hanbok with 한삼 hansam came out. The following act was Jihoon and his partner back again with the two little children dancing on their shoulders. This was followed by the dance of the physically retarded hunch-backed woman (how would that ever go over in the US?), one of the highlights and one of the only other masked characters. After another dance by the married women in 한복 hanbok and hoods the lions finally come out. The lions were great, after the lion who ate the rabbit gets sick a monk chants for him and an acupuncturist comes out with needles (metal chopsticks). There was a final bow and then they taught the lion dance to anyone who wanted to learn, I did and go to dance the backside of the lion (manipulating the tail). The costume wasn’t as heavy or uncomfortable as I had worried it would be.

Photo- actually from Andong, but this is one of the same lions!