{"id":9762,"date":"2026-10-13T03:20:25","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T19:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:801\/?p=9762"},"modified":"2026-10-13T03:20:25","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T19:20:25","slug":"music-and-instruments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hanliuquan.com\/?p=9762","title":{"rendered":"Music and instruments"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nThe Music of South Korea has evolved over the course of the decades since the end of the Korean War, and has its roots in the music of the Korean people, who have inhabited the Korean peninsula for over a millennium. Contemporary South Korean music can be divided into three different main categories: Traditional Korean folk music, popular music, or K-pop, and Western-influenced non-popular music. (“Music of South Korea,” 2018). The music of Korea refers to music from the Korean peninsula ranging from prehistoric times to the division of Korea into South and North in 1945. It includes court music, folk music, poetic songs, and religious music used in shamanistic and Buddhist traditions.[1] Together, traditional Korean music is referred to as gugak (Hangul: \uad6d\uc545), which literally means “national music.” (“Music of Korea,” 2018). [2]\n<\/p>\n

\nVocal music is an important facet of the Korean tradition. One of the longest and rarest older forms is the kagok, which consists of 26 five-section solo songs and one duet. Accompaniments and interludes are provided by a small ensemble that usually consists of a k\u014fmungo (six-stringed zither), a se\u2019piri (a small double-reed aerophone), a taeg\u016dm (large bamboo flute), a haeg\u016dm (two-stringed fiddle), and a changgo (hourglass drum). Sijo is a three-line form of classical Korean lyric poetry that may be sung to the sole accompaniment of an hourglass drum; in formal settings, however, the drum is normally joined by a double-reed aerophone, a flute, or a fiddle. Narrative songs are found in the genre called kasa accompanied by a flute and drum. (“Korean music,” n.d.)
\nKagok, sijo, and kasa are all types of court music. The dominant narrative form of music performed today, however, is the folk genre p\u2019ansori. It is traditionally performed by a singer-narrator (kwangdae) and a drummer (kosu), who marks phrases with rhythmic patterns on a barrel drum (puk) and with vocal interjections (ch\u2019uimsae). Spoken narration and dialogue (aniri) are balanced with songs (ch\u2019ang), body movements, and fan gestures as hours of epic drama unfold. It may be that p\u2019ansori emerged from ancient shamanistic entertainments of the gods before it became popular with the aristocracy. The earliest written records of it date to 1775. Of the many stories noted in later sources, five have survived both in written form and in popular folk tales. In the late 20th century, government support revived the tradition, so that p\u2019ansori epics are available on recordings and in professional performances. P\u2019ansori is also celebrated in such films as S\u014fp\u2019yonje (1993), which depicts the lives of two p\u2019ansori singers in the 1950s, and Chunhyang (2000), which is an adaptation of the love story recounted in the Ch\u2019unhyangga song cycle; both were by film director Im Kwon-Taek. (“Korean music,” n.d.)\n<\/p>\n

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