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.

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.

Chushyeoyo Performance (again)

December 3rd, 2010
On Friday evening I headed to the Korean National University of the Arts (KNUA) again because 허창열 Heo Changyeol had invited me to come see 추셔요 Chushyeoyo. Yes, you know I’ve already seen it (and so did he) but I went again, with Karjam this time, and I’m really glad that I did. The performance is pretty raw and fresh, the performers are obviously having fun, and seeing it the second time I found more details and depth in the performance than I did the first time. Honestly the first time I saw it I was freezing to death sitting outside with a wind kicking up, seeing it inside in a hall heated to a reasonable temperature was much better. One odd thing, though, was that I noticed the music much less than I had the first time. I don’t know if they changed something, or not.

I am planning to (and have begun) write a real review of this performance, potentially to submit for publication. Perhaps I’ll post any early draft here for some comments.

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