samulnori

Technology kind of makes me want to stab my eyes out. I had this entire entry written, and I have no idea what made it go back a page and delete it all, but it has frustrated me, so apologies if my recreated entry looks like I hurried through. If it looks like that, it's because I hate technology.

Thursday (it was a busy week), I had my first samulnori lesson! Samulnori is a version of the ancient traditional Korean drum circle adapted for stage performance, and Nanta is based on it. Sa-Mul-Nori translates as four instruments playing, and it's basically a percussion quartet that you can expand for a bunch of people to play at once, doubling parts. When a lot of people got upset after the first culture workshop class and went to the office and complained about not getting what they'd expected, the staff called around and found this circle to teach us to appease the students. Interestingly, though there was a very good turnout, I don't think anyone I knew of complaining was there. Boo them, but I'm glad we got this opportunity.

First the club performed for us, which was super cool. They had all kinds of fantastic dynamics and stylistic things that would make a lot of musicians in Johnson City drool, but they're all amateurs doing it for fun, led by a peer. They didn't have enough English to scrape together for me to really converse with any of them, so I don't know how often or how long they usually practice. Then they let us all pick an instrument to learn. The pictures are of me learning bass drum, Juyung learning the high cymbol-y thing, and a bunch of my friends learning the treble drum. The fourth instrument is a bass gong, and it just acts as a drone so they didn't stick anybody learning it. I picked bass drum just because more people tried to pick treble drum than there were instruments availble, and I didn't care; I just wanted to hit something. They taught us three different basic rhythmic patterns that you stick together in performance, and let us practice hitting things for two hours! It was ten tons of fun, and great stress relief. They told us several times that there was little importance in being accurate, that it was all about the feeling of the thing. Everybody who went had a great time beating themselves silly. I could feel it in my shoulders for the next two days. :)

Afterwards, we went out for Mondu, and I thought I'd post a couple of pictures of dinner below because people and food pictures never get old, right? Mondu is a Korean food very similar to Chinese dumplings, and they make several kinds cooked slightly different ways and with different fillings. This restaurant sells whole plates of them for only 1,000 won, so what you're looking at is a whole store of Korean dollar menu. Yes, I have in fact gotten good enough at chopsticks to eat these with them. The people in the picture are, from left to right, Cindy, Moon-hee, Yoong Kyung, Jin, Juyung, Anna, and Wendy. Everybody you haven't seen yet is Korean, students from Ajou who are taking part in the summer school to meet people from different countries and to get better at English. They have all been delightfully helpful in ordering strange food, navigating subways, that kind of thing.