earticle

영어

Epic folk songs (seosa minyo), epic shaman songs (seosa muga), and pansori are examples of epic music, which combines a story-a feature of an epic-and musical elements such as melody and rhythmic cycle. This paper will investigate the shared characteristics of the structure of these examples and the examples' individual features. The similarities of epic musics can be examined from two perspectives : the perspective of musical features and of performance style. As to the musical features, first, song and speech (or sori and aniri) alternate. The speech releases the tension of the audience, which has been immersed in the songs, in the performer's narration of the story. Also, the performer gets to rest during speech. As a second feature, inserted songs (sabip gayo) are adopted. Since sabip gayo appears in genres such as epic shaman songs and pansori, it can be seen as a tool to develop a genre into an artistic one. For instance, art music pansori can be regarded to have developed through the adoption of various sabip gayo, elevating pansori's artistic level and dramatizing its scenes. Third, in epic music, music functions as a container of the narration, thus, basic melody and rhythmic cycles are used. However, by the professional singers' efforts to avoid simplicity, pansori developed to exhibit various rhythmic cycles and dramatic melodic lines as shown in roday's performance. As for the second aspect of the similarities of the epic musics, the performance style, epic musics share songs and chuimsae. Since performing a long epic music requires that the story be well-delivered to the audience, chuimsae expressed by the audience members or the drummer functions as a sign of satisfaction.