sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? it’s the community cultural exchange on south street, and we love it. totally open to us coming in and making a ton of noise? of course they were. so we packed up two kids, two sogo, two sagmo, two buk, four janggu, a bunch of handouts and coloring pages, and headed off to meet andrew and peterson, and see who else showed up!

mercedes and her kids harley and holden were already waiting for us. these were the first children to whom any of us had had to explain the mechanics of the janggu, so we were initially a little stuck, but we figured it out. obviously, we figured it out — look at this!

that’s a six year-old who had never heard of or seen a janggu an hour before, playing hwimori!

harley had such an affinity for the janggu that we gave her one to borrow and take home. she was going to tell her music teacher at school about her new adventure.

so that she could practice at home, peterson made her this:

a little later, my friend regina and her son david came by to try out some drumming. david is very young, but to see him drumming with his mom, even if they were not perfectly on beat, was pretty neat. playing poongmul with someone you care about really does give a new level to your relationship — i believe that sincerely.

we were getting some attention from passersby on the street, and some ladies even came in to watch for awhile. claudia and béla demonstrated their sangmo and sogo.

and there was art.

a few friends of andrew’s showed up and there was a big jam. we used every drum in the place, and by the end of the night, could have used one more two more!

when you plan a first-time, open-to-the-public event like this, i think you’ve got a win just in getting there. we did even better than that. if it wasn’t for the fact that i think peterson got really wet getting home, i’d call it perfect — with room for growth! we are doing it again in february and hope to see more people!

little did our friends know that the original “swing wing” — one for each kid — was in our basement, just waiting to be gifted. having seemed a little too much to handle on christmas, and having been thwarted as a kwanzaa gift when we went out of town for a few days near the end of that holiday, the sangmo were just a mysterious chapaghetti box in the basement the kids didn’t know about.

until last night. when the presence of the “swing wing” video on facebook continued to spread. we counteracted it, with this:

annnnnd this

and this!

okay. you’ve GOT to start somewhere.

we know how good it CAN look, though:

but, in our case, it was more like…

and then i found this informative video on how to put on a sangmo!

and then… oh dear.

social consciousness

building community

dedication and integrity

STYLE

i’d say this was at a perfectly “aspirational” point for claudia — JUST out of her range, but something at which she can make progress. béla’s a bit behind with the motor skills needed, but not by much.

of course, having them see things like this helps:

so now i’m planning to work up a good tutorial for a handmade sogo that kids can make, and run a workshop with a drumming lesson at the end, in sogo! i have some new outlets available and looking for programming, and i think we’ll try this out soon — maybe early in the new year. first, andrew will have to teach me a little sogo as well!

first: not very long, but wow, that’s a lot of black kids playing korean drums! i wonder how this partnership came about; i think we need something like it in philly.

and look at this — these are BABIES!

this vocalizing will probably catch my kids’ interest, particularly since they themselves are doing indian vocal scales with a drone instrument in their private lessons:

GO little girl! —

same little girl, with a lot of backup:

here are some more young’uns in a classroom setting (and i guess it’s a chilly classroom, they all have their coats on):

i can’t wait to show these to b. and c. tomorrow… 시연씨 정말 감사합니다!

we generated this audience just by unzippering our janggu cases.

it was a beautiful fall day. we spent almost six hours in the park total, eating, playing, and talking (while ben did manual labor with the other menfolk!)

someday, i will be the menfolk.

now, another historical use of poongmul is in political protest, and we do not want to let the opportunity to bring poongmul to occupy philadelphia pass us by… so look for an update about that soon and let us know if you want to join us!

week one of our three-weekend blowout of poongmul and culture events!

check out all the photos here. it was just wonderful. we were not surprised to see our 선생님 there, and people who knew our names and faces… and that is great! we had wonderful food and the kids tried their hands at a lot of traditional games.

next weekend is a chuseok event in jersey. can’t wait to see what’s there, we’re in the groove now!

hello all — you may have been brought here for the first time via a twitter by lenore skenazy, who has kindly used her twitter to ask “free range” adoptive parents to contact me for my next column in korean quarterly.

i’ve been writing my column, creation myth, since 2006. mom to an african american daughter and a korean son, i am a writer and a knitter as well as the founder of nunchi nori, which is an age-inclusive anybody-can-hang-out poongmul collective in philadelphia. links below will lead you to a video presentation and slideshow, as well as an interview, about some of what i do to incorporate my kids’ birthcultures into our lives.

if you are a free range adoptive parent — however you define that — please e mail me at nunchi.nori@gmail.com and tell me some of your stories so that i may incorporate others’ experiences into my fall KQ column. (your child does not have to have been born in korea to “count” towards this research!)

thanks!

open to some unknowns: a knitting exhibition

interview on artblog radio

a group that i’ve always used as a template for what i’d like to see nunchi nori become is philadelphia’s kulu mele. we’ve been spending more time with them, and claudia is quite smitten. béla has always been a big djembe fan, and since his first one broke some time ago, he got a new one recently at odunde.

rhythmreference.com is an amazing african drum and dance resource that i stumbled across today. i stumbled, and i stayed there. okay. whoa. poongmul NEEDS a resource like this! how awesome would it be to purchase, at low cost, mp3s of poongmul rhythms — both in the mnemonic syllables and in actual recordings of drums being played. and to think that the price of these files — which could be put on your ipod, phone, or computer — would go towards supporting poongmul programs in the US?

so for real — i’m looking for input on how to make such a resource possible. who’s on it?