Film 1
2.6 MB, filetype: mov
P'ansori is a form of traditional Korean musical drama which has been developed by professional folk musicians since the beginning of the eighteenth century. At that time p'ansori musicians were itinerant entertainers who generally performed in an open space such as a market place or the courtyard of a wealthy patron, in association with other entertainers such as acrobats, tumblers, clowns, and tight-rope-walkers, or sometimes in the sitting-room of a wealthy patron. (3) P'ansori slowly became independent of these other forms of entertainment, and from the turn of this century it was brought on to a stage in indoor settings such as a concert hall or auditorium (Yi Po-hyông 1982a:245-246).
The prefix ‘p'an-' refers to a place where people gather together and the suffix ‘-sori' means a sound indicative of a singing voice or song. It is performed by a solo singer, either male or female, accompanied by a barrel drummer. The singer presents a dramatic story through songs or sori , narrations or aniri and gestures or pallim using a fan and handkerchief as symbolic props. (4) Before the start of the p'ansori proper, which may take several hours, or as much as eight to ten, the singer sings an introductory song with a lyrical text or tan'ga as a warm-up exercise. In performance, both the drummer and audience make calls of encouragement or ch'uimsae at appropriate phrase endings. The role of the audience in p'ansori performance is so indispensable that the traditional saying 'First comes the drummer and second the singer' is sometimes rephrased as ‘First comes the audience, second the drummer and third the singer' (Um 1992:310).
In this paper I will describe a p'ansori performance from the gala concert ‘Sound of Millennia'. This concert was performed in Los Angeles and New York city, USA, in September 1991 to celebrate Korea's entry to membership of the United Nations. Both traditional and contemporary Korean music and dance were presented by various performing arts groups. In this gala concert a few excerpts from the two best known p'ansori pieces were performed. They were: ‘the song of the secret royal inspector's appearance' and ‘the love song' from Ch'unhyang-ga or the Song of Ch'unhyang and ‘the boat song' from Simch'ông-ga or the Song of Simch'ông.
The first piece, Ch'unhyang-ga, was presented in the traditional p'ansori style. (5) The performers were the male singer Cho Sang-hyôn (b. 1939), who is best known for his dynamic ‘gifted voice' or ch'ôn'gusông, and the female singer An Suk-sôn (b.1949), who is currently the most popular female p'ansori singer in South Korea. Their singing was accompanied by the drummer Chông Hwa-yông (b. 1943).
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Film 1 |
‘The song of the secret royal inspector's appearance' from Ch'unhyang-ga or the
Song of Ch'unhyang, performed by Cho Sang-hyôn (6)
2.6 MB, filetype: mov |
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Film 2 |
‘The love song' from Ch'unhyang-ga or the Song of Ch'unhyang, performed by Cho
Sang-hyôn and An Suk-sôn (7)
1.7 MB, filetype: mov |
The second p'ansori story, Simch'ông-ga, was presented by the National Theatre Troupe with a large cast of chorus and dancers. (8) This theatrical version, which included scenery, is a relatively new style and is called ch'anggûk.
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Film 3 |
‘The boat song' from Simch'ông-ga or the Song of Simch'ông, performed
by the National Theatre Troupe (9)
1.3 MB, filetype: mov |
The gala concerts from the two different venues were filmed and edited
into a 59-minute video programme with an English introduction and titles.
The production of this audio visual material was sponsored by the Korea
Foundation which has distributed the tape to various overseas academic and
cultural institutions in order to introduce Korean culture to Western audiences.
In this paper I will focus my description and analysis of p'ansori
on the first two excerpts from Ch'unhyang-ga as follows.