Yesterday was Chuseok, one of the two most celebrated traditional holidays of Korea. Korean traditional holidays had a lot to do with the seasonal divisions of the agricultural calendar, but the original meanings of holidays have dissipated these days and are now serve more as occasions for families to get together. The prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, however, has made even those family gatherings impossible, rendering this year’s Chuseok lonesome and joyless. Today we brought music pieces associated with traditional holidays. The song that represents Chuseok is none other than “Ganggangsullae강강술래.” Also a ritual, Ganggangsullae was performed by women of the Jeolla-do region and was inscribed as a UNESCO cultural heritage of humanity in 2009. Women supposedly looked forward to performing Ganggangsullae on the lunar New Year’s Day or Chuseok, because women in the old days were not allowed to laugh out loud or enjoy themselves outside of home. But on these traditional holidays they didn’t have to work out on the fields and sing and dance without minding anybody. Performing Ganggangsullae was the highlight of their day-off. Let’s listen to “Ganggangsullae” sung by female gugak quartet Jeoldaegain. 

Ganggangsullae/ Sung by Jeoldaegain

People performed ganggangsullae by holding hands and going around in circles while singing the song Ganggangsullae. During interludes, women would put on mimes about their daily routines, such as tying together herrings to dry, rolling up mats or stepping on roof tiles. They would spend hours performing all these skits and dancing and singing, which would have reenergized them to return to their everyday lives. The next piece we have for you is “Pagyeong파경,” a folk song from the western region. One of the holiday traditions in Korea was to have a blind man read passages from the Taoist scripture. The reader would recite a prayer wishing for peace and prosperity and then the “pagyeong” passages that ward off evil spirits. The pagyeong we’re going to hear today is not the serious version read by a blind reader, but a witty rendition by folk singers that parodied the original pangyeong recital. The comical version features a variety of spirits, such as virgin and bachelor ghosts, spiteful spirits of widows and widowers, a ghost that died while eating rice cake, and more. The song tells these spirits to leave not in a cold-hearted exorcistic way, but by offering them food and wishing them peace on the other side. Here’s Kim Yu-ri singing “Pagyeong.”

Pagyeong/ Sung by Kim Yu-ri

Another group of people who looked forward to holidays was the village pungmul풍물 band. This Korean folk band would travel around a village and wish each family good fortune. In return, people would give them money, rice or other crops. The band members did not spend the goods for their own interests but saved them like a community fund and used the money to build or fix village facilities or help out needy people. Their musical presence brought joy to villagers and inspired generosity and goodwill. One of the songs the band played was “Binari비나리,” which mentioned a phoenix living in a royal foxglove tree. The phoenix is a mythical bird that supposedly lives only in royal foxglove trees and appears only during a peaceful time. Pungmul bands used to play this song to wish for peace and riches to everyone who heard the song. That being said, we’ll wrap up this week’s Sounds of Korea with “Binari” so that our listeners would be blessed with good fortune and peace of mind. Here’s Korean music group Noreum Machi performing “Binari.”

Binari/ Performed by Noreum Machi