CHAOS WASHING MACHINES

I had a full day of Korean traditional music yesterday, starting with my usual kayagum lesson and then an afternoon of concerts to boot. Nice to get so immersed in it for a day, kayagum sanjo start to make a whole lot more sense heard live by a master. Last semester we were learning folk songs, which are really not that dissimilar from old time tunes in the US. But the sanjo solo music is something else entirely, abstract and really compelling in many ways. Hard to play, very technical stuff.

Here is an example of kayagum sanjo which is well worth a listen.

The various sanjo styles are from Jeolla province and date to the end of the 19th century. Interesting to me to discover again that I am taken to the late 19th century in all ways--my historical research focuses on that time, the old time music I play dates to the same era (in its perfect realization, though not its roots) and then, randomly, I stumble upon this whole realm of music new to me from the same era.

First I went to the a Pansori performance by a living master, that was really remarkable to hear live, with a power and depth far beyond what a recording can capture. Pansori is kind of operatic, but much rawer and rough in the best kind of way. The singer's voice was deep on the level of Margie Sullivan, but she did falsetto parts and guttural asides and was really astounding. The audience was very interactive too, exclaiming and shouting encouragements, especially from the old timers there. This was something interesting to hear, since the setting was a staid theatre. She sang along with a drum player (called a sori-buk) who barks his own responses too, really cool to hear.

Of course, not knowing Korean I was missing much of the point, just catching the aural side of things. I guess it was funny since the audience (which was huge, and largely young) was laughing a lot. But is was a cool experience despite knowing that i was missing so much.

Then I walked over to the regular weekly performance. There are something like 12 different concerts in the traditional series down at the National Center. I've seen three so far and yesterday's was the best, with the kinds of styles I find most interesting.

One thing that I just can't hear enough of is the style of folk singing by three women singing, usually a young, middle aged, and older woman. The style is very raw, with some incredible prolonged descending vibrato-near yodeling glissando, non reptitive and really just great. I have a lot more to learn about this stuff.

There was also a male sol singing called "gasa" that was eqaully strange and great. Similar kind of approach, very dynamiuc with falsetto leaps and much vibrato in the voice, really a different sound.

There is a ton of Korean traditional music free online, kind of amazing, though not surprising. Here is a page with hundreds of sound files, most great, (a few contemporary ones I could do without, personally) Here is a collection of traditional sounds from Gyeonggi Province, including the sounds of rice field plowing, water drawing, pallbearer dirges, etc.