The sloth spends its entire life in trees, sleeping more than fifteen hours a day. Because of the sloth’s immobility, moss even grows on its fur. When the sloth licks its fur, the moss enters its body and provides minerals it requires. Between the moss-covered hairs, a variety of insects such as mites and beetles make their homes. In this way, a single sloth forms an ecosystem of its own. The same goes for human beings. It is said that microbes matching the number of cells in our body live inside of us, helping with digestion or causing illnesses. To these microorganisms, the human body is their world. In the same respect, we are just mere microorganisms living in a vast ecosystem called the cosmos. From that perspective it’s easy for us to accept the belief that my mistake or triumph today doesn’t really matter that much in the big scheme of things. The first music piece we have for this week’s episode is “The Milky Way” but before we listen to that piece, let’s talk about another interesting song about the universe. Gagok song “Pyeongrong평롱” is about a woman wishing upon the Big Dipper for a long-lasting tryst with her loved one. It goes as follows. 

Perhaps you were able to sense how sincere the woman was about her prayer. Now let’s listen to “The Milky Way” performed by fusion gugak band Gongmyoung.

This week’s artist is master singer Oh Jeong-suk. She was born in 1935 in the city of Jinju, Gyeongsangnam-do Province. Her father was a pansori fan and amateur kkwaenggwari꽹과리, a small Korean gong, player. Perhaps influenced by her father’s affinity to music, Oh Jeong-suk loved watching Korean traditional operas. When she was fourteen, she saw the performance of Park Ok-jin박옥진, nicknamed the Queen of Tragedy, and joined an opera company right after. In the following year, she transferred to Kim Yeon-su김연수 Opera Company where she met Kim Yeon-su, her lifelong mentor. Master singer Kim Yeon-su organized all five principal pansori repertoires in his own unique style, which came to be known as the Dongcho-je동초제 after his pen name Dongcho. Oh Jeong-suk is the one who widely introduced and popularized this Dongcho-je style of pansori.

A pansori singer usually learns the basics of singing from her teacher but studies and masters the skill by oneself afterward. This method of learning is called ‘dokgong독공,’ practicing alone to make the teacher’s voice one’s own. Oh Jeong-suk has performed the entire length of a pansori piece every year since 1972. Whenever she had a pansori performance, she would reportedly engage in one hundred days of dokgong to sharpen her skills. On the day that Oh Jeong-suk sang the entire Sugungga piece in 1974, her mentor Kim Yeon-su passed away. People couldn’t deliver the news of his passing to Oh Jeong-suk, fearing that she would be too saddened to finish the performance. Imagine how devastated she must have felt after completing several hours of pansori performance to learn of her mentor’s death. But she must have believed that carrying on his legacy was the right way to honor him. So, in 1975, she won grand prize at the first Jeonju Daesaseup Festival performing in the way her teacher taught her – with clear diction and good acting. Let’s listen to Oh Jeong-suk singing a passage from Sugungga where the turtle runs into a tiger. 

In the old days, a funeral was a village affair in which everyone got involved. People would share food at the deceased’s home and comfort the surviving family members and remember the dead. Villagers would also carry the coffin to the graveyard and help bury it. The funeral bier was considered the last luxury the dead could enjoy, so it was decorated with flowers and colorful ribbons as if it was a sedan chair for the bride. The grieving family and the deceased’s friends would follow the bier and the pallbearers sang funeral songs to console them. Each region has preserved and passed on these songs in its own style of narrative texts and musical patterns. Such funeral songs sing about the fleeting nature of life and advise the living to do good deeds and appreciate those who are close to them. The funeral process teaches people not to fear death since death is a natural part of life. Let’s listen to the funeral song from Goyang, Gyeonggi-do Province sung by the Goyang Deulsori Preservation Society.