I recently mentioned the Jeonju Sori Festival and how much I was enjoying it, and how I wanted to write about it, but had been asked to write a piece for translation and inclusion in a Korean magazine. I decided to simply write the magazine piece and post it here — for the time being, unless maybe I can submit it somewhere else — in one shot.
Some of the people who attended the festival this year had some pretty negative things to say about it, and I can understand some of their disappointments — although the complaints tended to come from people who for whatever reason didn’t (or couldn’t) attend many shows. Me, I never expect much from the outdoor part of a festival; that’s usually just where the free, lowest-common-denominator stuff is at any festival in the world. When it sucks, I’m hardly surprised. The beatbox people doing Britney Spears songs, for example, did not come as a shock to me.
Still, it’s true that there was no outdoor market this year, or at least not enough of one to deserve the word “market”; and the attendants were even more ridiculous in their handling of festival attendees, at one point telling Lime and I we had to leave the theater because we were chewing gum… or, rather, because we were early and chewing gum, since dozens of other people arrived with gum later. At one point we were stopped at the door because I’d forgotten to conceal my water bottle inside my backpack. They were actually trying to prevent us from sitting so that they could note the seat number and give back the water, and we just stomped off ignoring the silliness, which was even crazier considering the show was just about to start.
There was, of course, the standard provincialism of the audience at some — not all — of the shows, with the biggest applause coming not after amazing performances but after some non-Korean managed to call out a vaguely-recognized greeting or expression of gratitude in Korean. Restrictions against the admission of children seemed, from one friend’s report, to be more tight than the previous year, even to shows designed for children (such as the Pansori Animation show)… although, as a serious concertgoer, I dread the idea of dozens of families being allowed into expensive concerts with children without the understanding my friends have that, if the baby starts making noise, it’s time to leave. Cell phones going off in quiet moments during performances, of course, and idiot photographers allowed in but not being told to turn off the focus-beep on their cameras… these things momentarily enraged me.
But you know what? All in all, in my opinion, it was still an excellent experience. Maybe it was just having a pass to all those shows (an honorarium for editing translations of the booklet content); maybe it was the chance to see so much live music from all over the world in one shot, in a place where international concerts are decidedly rare. But I enjoyed almost everything I saw, and when I didn’t enjoy it, I always had a chance to go see something else, which I invariably did enjoy. I don’t know; given Jeonju, it’s still pretty damn cool to me that a festival of this quality and proportions could be pulled off. I was glad for it.
Anyway, for your reading enjoyment, here is the writeup I am submitting. (If I am asked to cut or edit in any major way, I’ll repost here.)
I was fortunate enough to have a chance to attend a majority of the performances at the Jeonju Sori Festival 2005, and each of the times I was asked to give my opinion of the festival, the same words passed through my mind. They’re from a poem called “City Lights