My second kayagum lesson was interesting because the class shrank by about 2/3 this week (no doubt because of Chuseok and people heading home) and so it wasn't an insane wall of sound. Plus, I was able to observe the fingers of some accomplished players who obviously have been studying the style for some time. Plus we learned a couple of folk tunes rather than just exercises.
It turns out they let you play the instrument there but not take it home, so I had to stay out there to practice. There are worse things. But that old saying "too good to be true," you know the rest.
You still can't complain about the price and set-up of these lessons. It is a brilliant way to promote the traditional culture. I spoke with a wide array of people learning various instruments: an American ethnomusicologist learning one of the drums (as it turns out she is also a Fulbright researcher here), an French-South African learning a different kind of drum, a bunch of gringos picking away at the kayagum.
I was once asked about how I would define mastery, and the first thing that popped in my mind was mastery of a musical instrument. Obviously there are any number of masteries to be defined, but is what first struck me. Maybe it is because of the necessary combination of technique and soul, but who knows. Watching the hand movement of someone experienced doing a perfect pluck-flick manuever on the kayagum is one of those moments.
By coincidence, the other day a Sogang colleage lent me a book called The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body (by Steven Mithen) so maybe I will get some insight into the core mastery of music from that.
Since it turns out they are not giving me a kayagum to take home, I stopped by the area filled with traditional Korean instrument shops (there seems to be a discrete district for every possible thing there is) and inquired about the price. I got a lot of grins in one store. They went and got a clerk from the back who spoke English and he came up and asked me "do you have a daughter?" In fact I do, which I told them, but I sort of obscured the point that she is smaller than the kayagum at this point. It appears that some really do take this "feminine instrument" thing seriously. I keep running into that problem. Here I am, U.S. male, sewing and playing the kayagum. What next?
But look here is Byungki Hwang, master of the kayagum, playing in 1958:
It turns out he first learned kayagum at the Korean Museum for Traditional Culture. You can learn more about him here.
On other music fronts here in Seoul, things are moving forward to bring some old time music here in the spring. Midwest dance favorite Fiddlin' Chuck Hornemann will be coming to Sogang for a concert and a square dance (which I will call), so that will be fun. Perhaps the first such event in Seoul, but I will have to check on that before making that claim.
It turns out they let you play the instrument there but not take it home, so I had to stay out there to practice. There are worse things. But that old saying "too good to be true," you know the rest.
You still can't complain about the price and set-up of these lessons. It is a brilliant way to promote the traditional culture. I spoke with a wide array of people learning various instruments: an American ethnomusicologist learning one of the drums (as it turns out she is also a Fulbright researcher here), an French-South African learning a different kind of drum, a bunch of gringos picking away at the kayagum.
I was once asked about how I would define mastery, and the first thing that popped in my mind was mastery of a musical instrument. Obviously there are any number of masteries to be defined, but is what first struck me. Maybe it is because of the necessary combination of technique and soul, but who knows. Watching the hand movement of someone experienced doing a perfect pluck-flick manuever on the kayagum is one of those moments.
By coincidence, the other day a Sogang colleage lent me a book called The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body (by Steven Mithen) so maybe I will get some insight into the core mastery of music from that.
Since it turns out they are not giving me a kayagum to take home, I stopped by the area filled with traditional Korean instrument shops (there seems to be a discrete district for every possible thing there is) and inquired about the price. I got a lot of grins in one store. They went and got a clerk from the back who spoke English and he came up and asked me "do you have a daughter?" In fact I do, which I told them, but I sort of obscured the point that she is smaller than the kayagum at this point. It appears that some really do take this "feminine instrument" thing seriously. I keep running into that problem. Here I am, U.S. male, sewing and playing the kayagum. What next?
But look here is Byungki Hwang, master of the kayagum, playing in 1958:
It turns out he first learned kayagum at the Korean Museum for Traditional Culture. You can learn more about him here.
On other music fronts here in Seoul, things are moving forward to bring some old time music here in the spring. Midwest dance favorite Fiddlin' Chuck Hornemann will be coming to Sogang for a concert and a square dance (which I will call), so that will be fun. Perhaps the first such event in Seoul, but I will have to check on that before making that claim.
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