Capturing audiences
What is Pansori?
Pansori is a musical genre in Korea that entails team participation. It is performed by two people at most, where one plays a drum, while the other person narrates a story in addition to incorporating songs. Its origin trails back into the early seventeenth twentieth century. Pansori was characterized with three forms of metamorphosis during that time. The life stages were divided into four categories namely: the era of escalation, era of affluence, era of declination and era of reincarnation. First, the era of escalation was marked in the eighteenth century. Pansori merged concepts from various musical forms at that time. Among the prevalent musical performing songs were shamanic and folktales. Shamanic songs had devout direction; they were inspired by religious context. On the other hand, folktales were varied stories that were mainly fictions narrated to entertain people. The essence of the stories was not only to entertain, but also, to educate others. It instilled proper values and ethical behavior on how people were supposed to relate with one another. The moral lessons projected by the stories inculcated strong admirable traits to many. The history spans more than a thousand years. There are two kinds of Korean traditional vocal music and peasant music (Kim and Heyman 51). Peasant music includes folk songs and music performed by the farmer’s band. Court vocal music is accompanied by an orchestra, while the peasant music is accompanied either by percussion instrument or sung without instrument all together.
The earliest Korean art consist of Stone Age works dating from 300 BCE. Which consist of votive sculpture and petroglyphs. These were followed by early art styles of various Korean kingdom and dynasties. Since then the art has been growing from one stage to another and some of these stages are Neolithic era which was dated 700 BCE, Bronze age dated between 2000 BCE and 300 BCE, and Iron age dated 300 BCE (Ki-baek 1).One culture that has effectively had distinctively diverse articulation of artistic bearing is Korean. The face of art is not a new thing to Korean people. Its history trails down in the ancient times where art was still primitive and pure. You could have fallen in love with art back then. In the modern society, I tend to believe that art has been corrupted. There is nothing so intriguing about it. Much has to do with the creeping technology, which has engulfed every artistic genre. In ancient times, painters used to be painters but now technology has spoiled the once beautiful art of painting. There are computer-based programs that can paint seemingly perfect pictures. The music genre has also been affected adversely (Kim and Heyman 51). The once beautiful, and very entertaining pure magic of songs in ancient times, have been turned to disgusting and repugnant noises. The music is more repellant to the ear than it is attractive.
The themes in the music are just out of this world. While expertise has facilitated film music emergence, the videos are best if they are abolished completely. Almost naked girls dancing ferociously; flaunting their bodies in skimpy dressing has become the new music art (Heyman 61-62).
Performers and performance
Although, the songs were slow and had a steady rhythm, pansori pooled anecdote telling attached with rhythmical songs in between. In order to have a distinctive factor in pansori’s stories and folktales, twelve specialization fields were established. The inspiration for the twelve fields was obtained from the society. One of the themes captured was love. The song-story narrated agony of two lovebirds whose love suffers because of social status difference. These kinds of song- stories were called chunhyangga. Another kind of song stories that were relevant to the society was about selflessness and redemption. It talked about slave trade and poverty issues. It was characterized with a sad tone and mood of the song. People called it simcheongga. Other song-stories conveyed messages about gluttony, heroism and other key issues the society wsa facing (National Gugak Center 1).
The second phase was the era of affluence, which was marked by the nineteenth century. In this episode, pansori flourished in splendor and glory. It was at this epoch that its popularity rose to the peak. The era was characterized with performance of the twelve specializations of song-stories. The pansori performers became highly respected by many. In addition, the audience population increased. Wealthy and influential tribes happened to be the ‘die hard’ fans of pansori. They contributed immensely towards the popularizing pansori. The average citizens were also not left out; they too were fans of the pansori art (Kim and Heyman 55).
With its glory and splendor reign, the pansori also developed other aspects of style to embrace the change. It would incorporate humor encrypted in the form of pun and satires. The puns were aimed at creating intellectual humor for both classes in the society. Both the well-off and common herd of people was intrigued by the humor it triggered. Satire on the other hand was used to poke fun at the well-off people and administration system. Aria was used to reinforce the themes displayed in the dramatic events. For sadness and gloomy atmosphere, slow musical rhythms and intonation were implemented. Of course, the effect to the audience was magical. The performers were very keen to notice different preferences, between the well-off people, and the common herd. This lead to specialization of many performers in one field which the person thought was best. The thirstiness of both the affluent people and the average citizens were fully quenched in their varied tastes (Kim and Heyman 51).
Review of Literature
Important sources
It was hard to collecting sources from South Korea and USA.
The Korean Herald would be an important source in achieving the goals of the study on pansori. This source will give current information about the consumption of pansori art in Korea. For instance, the source will provide good information on the past and present performances in Korean where pansori has been observed.
Cultural activities in different communities play an important role in enhancing growth and development of the particular community (12). In this case, there will be a need to explain in detail what pansori entails and why it is considered to be an important part of the Korean culture.As part of their cultural heritage, Koreans have embraced the pansori, a form of traditional performing arts in Korea, one whose origin and development dates back to the middle period of the Joseon Dynasty that lasted from 1392-1910. The ‘Pansori,’ can be described as a Korean Opera that has two musicians, a singer, commonly referred to as sorikkun and a drummer who is known as the gosu. It is a type of traditional Korean music which tells a themed story in the form of Music Theater, with the two musicians sharing the spotlight. The singer plays the central role through his singing, words, and body language while the drummer plays an accompanying role by providing the rhythm and shouting words of encouragement to add to the passion of the performance. Given its ability to represent the unique cultural landscape of Koreans, the Pansori has a combination of things including a distinct, inimitable sound, rhythm, and singing technique. Having looked at a brief background of what Pansori entails, it will be necessary to provide a detailed discussion on the important role played by Pansori to the Korean culture (Heyman 61-68)
One of the important roles that the Pansori plays in the Korean culture is that it assists in conveying the different emotions that people experience in a life time. Some of the basic emotions that may be conveyed by the singer and the drummer in a Pansori include anger, fear, sadness, joy, trust, disgust, love, surprise, and anticipation among other emotions. In a performance that usually lasts between three to nine hours, a singer in the Pansori ensures that he or she depicts different emotions from the different characters in their story. In order to make the performance more entertaining and exciting, the drummer also known as the gosu uses a barrel shaped drum to enliven the mood of the performance by using words of encouragement and sounds (King 36). In order to ensure that the different emotion are conveyed as intended, the performers of the Pansori go on to incorporate various forms of entertainment that include story-telling, tight-rope walking, and dancing among other forms of performance.
Apart from conveying different emotions of life, the Pansori is also important to the Koreans and their culture since it involves the participation of the audience thus making it highly valued among the Koreans. According to Heyman one of the factors that the composers of Pansori put into consideration is the fact that it should embrace audience involvement (10). When any form of performance involves the participation of the audience, it increases the chances of then audience not just enjoying the performance, but also gaining the intended lessons or benefits of the performance at hand. For instance, given the fact that different performances contain different stories, this means that each performance has a specific lesson. In addition to this, all the performances given in a Pansori embrace different emotions like anger, love, jealousy, fear, surprise, and trust among many other different emotions. In this case, therefore, it is evident that the Pansori forms a necessary part of the Korean culture, and that its ability to involve the audien
