First New York Sanjo Festival to Take Place Next Week
By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
The first New York Sanjo Festival and Symposium will take place from Oct. 19 to 20 at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
The event organized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Gukak FM will consist of a symposium and concerts with the world's leading Asian and Korean music scholars and Korea's foremost ``sanjo'' and ``sinawi'' masters who are recognized as National Human Intangible Cultural Assets.
Sanjo is a style of traditional Korean music involving an instrumental solo. Its origin comes from the Korean indigenous shaman culture filled with native spirit and sentiment. Korean traditional musicians strongly identify with this music which grew to be the representative instrumental genre of the 19th century.
This genre adopted elements and stylistic features from the court and folk music traditions and has come to reflect a ``pan-musical'' style that is quintessentially Korean. As solo instrumental music, sanjo offers many opportunities for dazzling virtuosic display in the course of its multi-movement form.
The soloist interacts with rhythmic accompaniment given by the janggo, the traditional hourglass-shaped double headed drum.
``Sanjo'' shares the features with the American jazz/blues tradition, and modal systems such as Indian raga and Turkish maqam.
``Sinawi'' is also a traditional form of Korean music performed improvisationally by a musical ensemble and traditionally accompanies the rites of Korean shamanism.
Compared to other Korean traditional music genres such as ``pansori'' (Korean traditional narrative song) and ``samulnori'' (Korean traditional percussion), sanjo is relatively unknown to the world.
The organizer said the festival is designed to draw international attention to the music through the festival.
In the festival, the scholars will explore the Korean sanjo tradition in its social, cultural and historical background and examine similar traditions in Asia.
There will be an emphasis on the shared characteristics and the influence of master musicians and how they personalize their music and create unique performance styles that have become part of the heritage handed down to their students.
The symposium with lectures and performances will take place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both days at the Elebash Recital Hall.
Robert Provine from the University of Maryland and Hwang Byung-ki, a gayageum master and professor of Ewha Womans University, will give keynote speeches on the first day.
R. Anderson Sutton from University of Wisconsin, Anthony T. Rauche from University of Hartford and J. Lawrence Witzleben from University of Maryland will take part in the conference sessions.
Geomungo (Korean 6-string zither) player Heo Yoon-jeong, gayageum (Korean 12-string zither) player, Park Hyun-sook, ajaeng (Korean bowed 8-string zither) player Lee Tae-baek, daegeum (Korean transverse bamboo flute) player Park Hwan-young and haegeum (Korean 2-string fiddle) player Kim Sung-a will participate in the sessions.
The festival concert by the Sanjo Masters will be held on Oct. 20 at 8 p.m. in Proshansky Auditorium.