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. 

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: