A Totally Rad Encounter

So I was on my way home from class and I heard the familiar sound of the gengari, the high clanging gong of the four-instrument percussion combo known as samulnori. I followed the sound up the concrete staircase of the student union building to see who was playing, thinking maybe some of my music friends were behind this.

Sure enough, it was my friend Dong-U, who we call ssabu (It means sifu in Chinese, if you know what that is; it's a word for teacher, in this case, a traditional music and dance teacher) banging the small gong. Someone I didn't know was playing the large gong, and another friend of mine whom we call Heifer (because she eats so much; she's actually a tiny girl) was on changu, a lightweight, hourglass-shaped drum. I spotted them over the shoulders of a line of hip-hop dancers who looked like they were about to break into some moves.

I waved, and Dong-U came over and gave me a hug (this is super rare in Korea; since my boyfriend and I broke up, my hug quota has gotten close to zero) and said "I love you", his usual greeting. I told him I loved him too, and he invited me to watch them practice. They were short one dancer/musician: Kisser, our other friend who usually plays the other drum but was sick. After a couple minutes, I offered to jump in. There was no drum, but as I wasn't familiar with the sequence, it was probably just as well.

"The fight" is a music and dance motif common to many cultures. Samulnori is no exception: in a traditional sequence, instruments line up facing each other like two gangs and take turns moving forward to intimidate each other and backing off again. The sequence we worked on played out the "fight" between a group of samulnori players and a group of hip-hop dancers. It was, quite frankly, the raddest thing ever. I followed along the best I could banging my imaginary drum and watching these college kids pull some unbelievable moves on the rock-hard floor of the student union hallway. Then the group coalesced into one for some folk dance moves, and ended up gelling at the front of the stage in a crazy tableau.

We went through the sequence a couple of times, just long enough for me to start to feel comfortable with it. Too quickly, people were unslinging their instruments and bowing each other off with the formalities which are de rigeur, even for hip-hop dancers. I shook hands with Ssabu and asked him if I was a good Kisser.

I was so high I didn't even mind explaining the joke three times.