Korean Classical Music & Dance Company

Welcome to Central Library. My name is Hye-Won Paek. I'm the part of L.A. Made team. L.A. Made is a series of cultural programs funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and this is our fourth season, offers 165 educational and entertainment programs to choose from, taking places from here, right here at Taper Auditorium and at branches across the Los Angeles Public Library system. I would like to introduce today's performance featuring the Korean Classical Music and Dance Company, who will bring us the grace and beauty of Korea through art of dance. They participate in the closing ceremony of the 1984 Seoul Olympics. And now, please give a warm welcome to company director Dr. Don Kim and Korean Classical Music and Dance Company. Good afternoon. My name is Don Kim. I'm a director of Korean Classical Music and Dance Company. We're from the Music Center right here, Education Division. Korean Classical Music and Dance Company founded here in 1973. I'm the founder and also director. We have more than 5,000 performances so far. I was teaching UCLA. I retired a couple years ago. Today, I'd like to present traditional music and dance of Korea. There are a few things I would like to explain to you, each number. First dance is a part of a court dance. Most court dance done by the court musician or dancers up until 1910. After 1910, there's a Japanese annexation, and now we don't have any royal family. Since then, almost 35 years, 36 years, no more open for the traditional dance and court dance music. But after the war is over, we still restore. Now, you can see now, we have that traditional one. The court dancer wear the typical court lady costume. Most court dancers wear the flower crown. Also, men wear the something hat and the ornament with the flower, too, and they cover their hand with the scarf. Folk dance, folk dancers, they don't cover no crown or anything like custom, so they're different. First dance, we call the hwagwanmu, which means flower crown dance. This dance performed for the royal family when they have a banquet and ceremony, a special occasion. They always have this kind of dance. Here's a flower crown dance, hwagwanmu, h-w-a-k-w-o-n, hwagwan means flower crown, mu-m-o-o, mu means dance, dance especially from the palace. If the palace, they put the mu-m-o-o instead of some other name. Here's the first dance, flower crown dance, hwagwanmu. Number one, please. Here's a flower crown dance, hwagwanmu, part of a court dance. Next, we're going to go outside of a palace, have a folk dance, dance with this drum. It's an hourglass looking drum, we call the changgo, c-h-a-n-g-g-o-r, changgo is the name of this instrument. Korean word, chang means a hit with a stick, go means a drum, so changgo means drum play with a stick. Changgo is one of a very important part of Korean musical instrument. It could play both court and a folk music and dances. Compared to the western musical instrument, I probably would say this is Korean timpani. You have two small drum put together, here's a lower part and higher, also we could adjust the tone using this strap. There's two ways to play this instrument, with one stick like this, this is a bamboo stick, left is bare hand for the court music and dances, two sticks like this for the folk music and dances. Basic Korean rhythm is very different from neighboring countries, especially Japanese and Chinese. Japanese and Chinese, their basic rhythm is a two, double rhythm like this, one, two, one, two, one, two, but Korean is a three, triple, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, it's different. I'm going to show you how to play this instrument, first with one stick, next with two sticks. Thank you, that's the way they play this instrument. Next, the dancer will carry the changgo on their shoulder, they play this instrument and dance. We name the changgo chum, chum, c-h-u-m, also means dance. If this is part of a folk dance, they name the chum instead of a mu. So here's changgo chum, changgo dance. Next, I'd like to play this string instrument for you. The name of this string instrument is kayageum, k-a-y-a-g-e-u-m, kayageum is the name of this instrument. First kayageum came out about 1,500 years ago, so the little kingdom, kingdom of kaya, k-a-y-a, one of the king, king Kasil, k-a-s-i-l, he invented this instrument. So we name this country kaya, k-a-y-a, chum, g-u-m, chum means string instrument. This kayageum has 12 strings, strings made of silk. This is pentatonic scale, the five-tone scale, like g-e-g-a-b. We have three different octaves here, re, three of them, three sol, three la, two mi, one qi. 12 strings but still five-tone scale. I'd like to play the folk music name is sanjo. Sanjo means scattered melody. It starts from very slow, 24-bit, and then goes 12, and then goes 6, a fast 6, finish with a 5-bit one. Total five different movements, the total music lasts about 120 minutes. You want me to play all these things? No, I'm going to play the little bit part of them. Can you raise this volume a little higher please? Thank you. That was the kayageum, k-a-y-a-g-u-m. Don't tell me that's the kodo. The kodo is Japanese, this is Korean, kayageum. Next one is a mixture of a chord and a folk dance. We name the puchechum. Puche means a band. The dancer's costume is a court dancer's costume. Meaning of this dance is joy of life and happiness. Here's the puchechum and dance. Next is a drum dance. We call the bukchum. B-u-k is a book. This dance originates from the monk dance, usually danced by the one drum, single drum, and monks dance. During the dance or end of the dance, they play the single drum, but recently they separate dance part and drum and add more drum. Like today, you have three drums. Each performance could play sometimes five drums, sometimes seven drums. Here's a bukchum drum dance. They call the nongak. Nongak literally means farmer's music or band. At the end of that, we have a spinning head dance. All instruments are round. The spinning head makes a circle. It means harmony. You play for this harmony. There's no start, no end. It asks for the gods, abundance, crops, welfare for the country, family. This all means they started a few thousand years ago. Now, the professional play this instrument, and especially it's named the samulod. Before, we didn't have the name samulod. It was just called the pungmul or nongak. It was a farmer's music. But this music and dance were arranged here. It's called the buksori and number two, the sound of a drum. We did it again. Thank you. Did you enjoy that? Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a wonderful day. See you next time. Thank you.