[KS] leaf

Mon Mar 20 07:41:41 EST 2006

My copy of the Akhak kwebom, Kug'o' kungmunhak charyo chongso' #10, 1965 shows the leaf in volume 7, page 31, under the tite ch'ojo'k  [reed pipe;a grass blade vibrated between the lips] and above a guitar-pick-outline-shaped picture labelled cherry bark, about which the leaf was to be wrapped and played. 

  Doc Rock

Keith Howard <kh at soas.ac.uk> wrote: 
        Lauren,

  Akhak kwebom has a picture, but it is nothing more than a flat leaf, front and back (in Yi Hyegu's 1979 modern Korean version, vol.2, p.147). The description talks about mandarin orange and citron tree leaves, although I encountered mandarin orange leaves being used in Chindo ... much as you describe, placed laterally between pursed lips, with one leaf being folded back on itself to create a double reed, leaving a section jutting out from the mouth that was bent slightly upwards. Akhak kwebom also talks about using peach leaves, but the drawing appears to be birch. Robert Provine, in his entry in the New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, talks about an 'obsolete tubular kazoo'; to a Brit like me, it is rather like the comb and paper children use to create a similar sound, but without the relatively strong frame (of the comb), and hence, as saliva affects its constituency, it has a short life span.

  There is also plenty of information about what Laurence Picken in a 1977 arricle in Chang Sahun's SNU festschrift calls 'stripped-bark pipes', variously known as hodugi, hodulgi, holtaegi, hoettoegi, hoettigi, hwottaeggi. Here, bark is detached from the wood pulp/core by twisting and an integral 'reed' is fashioned. While I once thought (on the basis of discussions with Korean musicologists) that this instrument was no longer played, in 1992 I encountered an old woman in a subway just by Pyongyang Station trying to sell blades of a thick grass that she had made into a similar type of reed pipe.

  Although I have one picture of an old genleman playing the leaf back in 1983, calling it the ch'aegum, I haven't encountered any photographs in Korean books.

  Keith

  I'm curious about what the process looks like. Any photos?     As a child we were taught to pluck a sturdy, bu pliable "weed" (looking more like a mini bamboo leaf) and, holding it along the length and between two thumbs with bent first joint, we were able to blow on it and make a sound. Successful, it was "fuzzy" like a daegum with it's membrane.

Thanks.     Lauren
-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Howard
Sent: Mar 16, 2006 1:14 AM
To: Korean Studies Discussion List
Subject: Re: [KS] leaf
  Kevin  
  There's plenty of tradition for the leaf. I wrote about this in my Korean Musical Instruments: A Practical Guide (1988) and also mentioned it in Bands, Songs and Shamanistic Rituals (1989/1990). Akhak kwebom shows the leaf and details how to make and play it as an instrument -- so that takes us back to the 15th century. There are two commercial recordings available featuring the leaf:  taken from SPs produced between 1929-1950, 'Taegum. T'ungso/ P'ulp'iri ui myongin. Myongin myongch'ang sonjip 8 (Jigu, JCDS-0472, 1994), and contemporary recordings, 'Myongin myongch'ang 4: podul p'iri myongin Pak Sanil (Jigu, JCDS-0613, 1997). The folk music scholar Lee Bo-hyung also has a huge number of field recordings featuring the leaf, and I recall, but cannot find a reference for, an album he put out with his Han'guk koumban yon'guhoe journal that had some leaf recordings.  
  Keith  
  This is going to sound a bit odd, but i've recently seen some nice video of a Daegum player. He's a pretty fine player and plays some  sanjo type passages on the Deagum and when he's done he plucks a leaf from a plant and plays Milyang Arirang on the leaf. I can't say that i have ever seen such a thing. I know that in some areas there are unusual instruments in some coastal places and islands like in Cheju-do, etc. But, is there any tradition of playing the leaf in Korea? Or is this just a goof?

cheers,

kevin

  --  Dr Keith Howard
Reader in Music, SOAS,
Director, AHRC Research Centre for Cross-Cultural Music and Dance
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG
Tel: 020 7898 4687; Mobile: 07815 812144; Fax: 020 7898 4519  Website: http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/users/kh/  

Lauren W. Deutsch
835 S. Lucerne Blvd., #103  Los Angeles CA 90005
Phone: 323 930-2587
e mail: lwdeutsch at earthlink.net  

--   
  Dr Keith Howard
Reader in Music, SOAS,
Director, AHRC Research Centre for Cross-Cultural Music and Dance
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG
Tel: 020 7898 4687; Mobile: 07815 812144; Fax: 020 7898 4519
  Website: http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/users/kh/

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