One thing I absolutely love about Seoul is all the random festivals that they have. So far since I've been here, there's been at least two or three festivals going on for each weekend. The main event for last week was: the Seoul Drum Festival.
Drumming is big here in Korea. It's a big part of traditional culture and performance, and there's many, many modern re-interpretations of the traditional instruments. So needless to say, when I found out that there was going to be a Drum Festival in Seoul, I knew it would be good, and it didn't disappoint.
The Drum Festival is an annual event that highlights the different drum styles of Korea and abroad. It took over Seoul Forest by setting up a huge stage in the middle of the lawn, and jsut going in was kinda interesting. Because of the whole swine-flu precautions, everyone that enters the festival first has to walk through thermal sensors to see if you have a fever. Then, there's at least 3 staff people standing by the entrance to give you hand sanitizers. It was quite high-tech for a random lawn festival.
Upon entering, there were lots of booths set up for free promo stuff and drums for you to play with. There were all the different types of Korean drums, and it was really cute watching the little kids play with the drums. Some were actually really good and knew what they were doing.
After messing with the drums for a bit, the show finally starts. Again, there were two M.C.s, and they kinda made a big deal out of the opening ceremony (apparently, they made the world's largest drum for this festival and so of course they needed a lot of pomp and circumstance when the major or whoever he was made the first strike). They tried to make it sound so dramatic that it was quite comical, and for a bit I was a little skeptical as to the quality of the performances.
The rest of the show after the opening ceremony, however, was really great. There were 8 or so different groups that performed, a couple of which were international groups. There was one group from Mexico, and another really flashy group from Brazil. The Brazil group was the only one to not play the drums. They just did different Samba and Salsa numbers to a beat, but they costumes and performance was so out there, that it didn't really matter they didn't play the drums themselves.
The other 6 or so groups were Korean. They all featured different kinds of drums and all had their own unique styles, so every performance was unique and did a great job. There was one group that used metal fans to hit the drums, and there was one performance with the traditional drum dance with the ribbon hats.
Overall, Ning and I were both pleasantly surprised by the quality of each of the performances. The only downside to the entire experience was that since it was for 3 hours outdoors, it started to get quite chilly outside. And of course, me being the pansy that I am to the cold, I actually got sick by the end of the night, so poor Ning, he had a sick host for most of his visit. : /
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