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. 

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.

Pungmul Performance at KOUS

December 22nd, 2010
I went to Severance again and got my ear cleaned again. Please, remember what I have learned about ears: don’t screw with your ears. Q-tips, fingers and other items should NOT be inserted into ears, ever (wet or dry). If perchance your ear is gunky and not cleaning itself like it should, go have your doctor clean it out.

My big research-related event for Wednesday was to attend a performance with 양은석 Yang Eunseok and one of his former university club fellows who I’ve met and two who I had not met before. The performance we went to see was featuring a female 상쇠 lead soi or 꽹과리 ggwaenggwari player. The player, 유순자 Yu Sunja plays호남우도Honam Udo 풍물 pungmul music (Pilbong is 호남좌도 Honam Jwado). I didn’t know how they were going to set it up as a distinct performance (the show was at KOUS and last featuring a set of three lead soi players). Although of course I assumed that the performance would feature the lead soi and include at least some straight up pungmul pieces. There is a lot more to being a lead soi player than just playing the ggwaenggwari or soi. Here is a video (an ad plays first) of a man playing ggwaeggwari (the man who talks at the start of the video is 김덕수 Kim Deoksu, the most famous 장구 janggu player in Korea). I chose to show this video partially because it demonstrates the vital dance component of playing the gwaenggwari. This video shows how a gwaenggwari player, the lead soi in particular is also sometime singing or chanting, the man singing here is 양진성 Yang Jinseong, who runs the 임실필봉농악Imshil Pilbong Nongak preservation association and is the lead soi player for the group.

The show was much more than I had expected, although I do have some confidence in KOUS arranging good shows. First of all it was amazing to see that not only was the lead soi player a woman but most of the group was made up of female performers. The only men were two 소고/상모 sogo/sangmo guys, the 태평소 taepyeongso player (who is actually employed at the same place that Yang Eunseok is working so he’s not the usual taepyeongso player for the group) and a man who came out and did a special sogo/sangmo solo (who I think was just there to show some visual variety, not a member of the same group). Although the lead soi player was great, the costumes were bright and fun (not being an ‘official’ protected group allows you to do things like wear feathers in your hair instead of big puffball flower hats), and everyone was really on top of their game it was one sixty-something year old lead sogo/sangmo woman that impressed me the most. She was so much fun! First of all, her sangmo and sogo were amazing. Even though she did not leap that high, she was fast and nimble, she accented motions so expertly and was so amazing that she was immediately the favorite of many in the crowd. She was also a total ham, dancing as though she was retarded at times (this is traditional in Korea, I don’t know what will happen if PC thought ever hits here- it’ll really screw with some traditional arts), demanding more applause before she went on and in general dancing at an energy level you’d not expect in a woman her age.

The lead soi and the second janggu player sang at one point, at another the MC pulled a famous singer out of the crowd and she and the lead soi player sang while everyone else was off stage. There was a solo by the sangmo/sogo lead and the first and second janggu player danced 설장구 seoljanggu together. The one strange thing was that there were no 북 buk players in the group! A guest sangmo/sogo man came out, he looked magnificent—the black and white makes it look like he was wearing black, silver and white—he was. It was really cool looking. He had to have had his sangmo custom made in that color scheme. The entire performance was really fun and I wish I could have gone out with Eunseok and the others for some makgeolli but Karjam is against women drinking… so I came home instead.

The Lead Soi:


Janggu Ladies:



One of the only two guys in the group:


Really amazing sangmo/sogo woman:







These flips are hard if you're twenty:



Clowning around:


Cool Sangmo/Sogo Soloist Man:

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!