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Category Archives: Dulsori

Book now for some outrageously fun evenings

29-May-08
A regular feature of the summer evenings is the SOAS world music summer school. Two years ago I went along to the Samulnori summer school run by the excellent Dulsori and had a ball. Last year, LKL woman of the year 2006 Rowan Pease went along with her daughter and had a whale of a time. This year it's your turn. Korean Samulnori Percussion Dulsori Ensemble Date: 7 July 2008, Time: 6:00 PM Finishes: 11 July 2008, Time: 8:00 PM Venue: Russell Square: College Buildings Type of Event: Summer School Series: Summer Music School Timetable Course Dates: 07-11 July, Mon-Fri 6-8pm Course Fee: £75 (concs £55) Samulnori is the contemporary form of a rural percussion tradition stretching back into antiquity. Today, Samulnori is the most popular style in the Korean traditional ...
Also filed in Events news, Korean traditional music, SOAS | | Comments (0) »

Chuseok at the BM — part sprint, part marathon

26-Sep-07
It is a commonplace observation that Korea is caught between two larger neighbours. Similarly, in marketing terms, the Korean events at the British Museum last Saturday were dwarfed by the blitzkrieg advertising for the Chinese "First Emperor" and the Japanese modern design exhibitions, both also at the British Museum at the same time. But although the façade of the museum was plastered with giant posters of terracotta warriors, all eyes were on the Korean festivities in the museum forecourt. Most people could tell that all the jollifications were Korean. "Korean Harvest Festival" was hastily written in front of the changseung (totem poles) which formed the centrepiece of the first performance in the forecourt. And more importantly, the large group of helpers ...
Also filed in British Museum, Chuseok 2007, Dae Jang Geum, Im Kwon-taek, Lee Young-ae, Pictures, Shin Mee-kyung | | Comments (0) »

Bang goes Chuseok

05-Sep-07
Two events to celebrate Chuseok, Korea's harvest festival. Firstly, the Anglo-Korean Society will be having a buffet dinner at Young Bean Kwan on the Barbican highwalks in the City on 20 September. Guest of honour will be Ambassador Cho. There will be a short pre-dinner talk on Korean customs and food, and guests will be entertained by young Korean musicians on traditional instruments. Pre-booking required with the AKS. Download a flier for the Chuseok dinner here. AKS membership enquiries to Sylvia Park (sylviaparkairtravel at hotmail dot co dot uk) Second, the British Museum will be celebrating Chuseok on 22 September. Many of the entertainments from the Thames Festival the previous weekend will be appearing in the forecourt of the BM, and also in some ...
Also filed in Anglo-Korean Society, British Museum, Chuseok 2007, Dae Jang Geum, Events news, Korean traditional music, Permanent displays, Shin Mee-kyung | | Comments (0) »

Last chance to register…

13-Jul-07
The Samulnori Summer School at SOAS is next week. If you can spare five evenings you'll have a great time. I can't promise you'll end up being able to drum like the fellow on the right, but you'll be able to do a convincing imitation of being able to hit a changgo. And by the end of the week you will be able to touch your toes if you weren't able to at the start of the week. Even if you don't see this post until Monday, you may be OK. Last year one of our class only found out about it on the Monday night at a Samulnori concert on the South Bank (I think Kim Duk-soo was in town) - ...
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New Year in New Malden

17-Feb-07
The lunar new year came to a girls school in New Malden yesterday with more than a few bangs. Samulnori percussion group Dulsori visited Coombe Girls School in Clarence Avenue for a spectacular one hour concert in front of an enthusiastic audience of pupils and visitors -- including the mayor of Kingston. The audience didn't need much persuasion to cheer, clap and generally provide encouragement to the performers: as ever, the energy of Dulsori was catching, and the atmosphere was probably helped along by half-term high spirits. The applause reached its climax when the group's leader took off his top to reveal a well-honed torso to rival Rain's. The afternoon started with Dulsori members parading into the school hall in their full ...
Also filed in Event reports and reviews, Korean traditional music, Koreatowns | | Comments (0) »

Dulsori evening class # 5: the performance

22-Jul-06
If anything was going to go wrong, it was going to be the Hwimori. The others were easy: at most four lines, each one the same length, and played once before moving on to the next; and the cycle was repeated several times so that there was no way you were going to forget it. The Hwimori had 31 lines, of different lengths, played any number of times between one and 8 before moving on to the next one. That's a lot more to remember. We were wobbling by line 4 and completely lost by line 9. With some vigorous conducting and shouting by the professionals we somehow came back together by line 13, and from then on we ...
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Dulsori evening class # 4

21-Jul-06
I can touch my toes for the first time in ages. Such is the effect of sitting on the floor crouching over a drum for three hours solid, four days on the trot. Things were going swimmingly yesterday. We had all done our homework. We were remembering everything, doing the breathing, and actually laughing and enjoying ourselves rather than concentrating furiously on getting it right. So the instructors decided to make things more interesting. Let's cut the samulnori hwimori, they said, and go straight from the obangjin to the third line of the drum-only hwimori, make a quick change to that line, and, hey, didn't we tell you, there's a whole new page we haven't taught you yet. We set to it, ...
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Dulsori evening class # 3

20-Jul-06
Mainly consolidation yesterday. Lots of breathing (back-rolling) and reminders of the previous couple of evenings. We were struggling with the heat, and recognising this after a couple of recaps of the ground already covered we played some Korean games. This involved running around, making lots of noise, holding hands and making moves straight out of a ceilidh. I'm sure it would make for a good psychotherapy session, and it was a nice in theory to have a break and do a bit of bonding. But in the soaring temperatures - the warmest July day since records began - hands were slippery with moisture. Fortunately we were all equally perspiring, so no-one felt guilty, but lots of close bodily contact was ...
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Dulsori evening class # 2

19-Jul-06
Yesterday evening we learnt the backhand. And, in retrospect, as I struggled last night to notate what we learned, we also did triplets. We were without the interpreter yesterday, so 95% of the class was conducted in Korean. Some of the Korean students took pity on us non-Koreans (we had a new joiner, another Brit, who had chosen to go to the SamulNori gig at the Purcell Room on the Monday and who thought it rather excellent) and tried a bit of translation. So when the instructor demonstrated a massive rallentando in the coda to the Hwimori changdan, several times, and expounded at great length, I imagine, on the subtleties of this slowing down, one of the students helpfully said, "get ...
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Dulsori evening class #1

17-Jul-06
I ache. My brain aches from concentrating too much (maybe I should relax and go with the flow, but that only happens when at least three pints of London Pride have gone down my neck). The insides of my legs ache: in order to play the changgo you need to be at least a black belt in the lotus position. Ridiculously, my left arm aches. It's not as if the stick weighed anything: it's just that you end up moving the arm more than you usually do in daily life. And my back aches through the strange "breathing" we were asked to do, which involves performing strange circular motions with your shoulders and solar plexus, while in said seated position. Most ...
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