Sinaboro? For those of you who have never heard of this student organization before, Sinaboro is a Korean Traditional Drumming Group on campus. Founded in 1998, the group has grown bigger and bigger over the years and perform samulnori, a type of music originally performed outdoors by farmers to celebrate good harvests, in many campus events. Now the next question you may wonder about is the meaning of this word in Korean. Well, I personally searched it online first, but did not find any satisfactory explanations until I opened the group’s official website. Okay…so it means “little by little, gradually without notice†and “the word itself is no longer in use…‖Haha…traditional enough to name this group. So, this past Saturday night, Sinaboro presented its annual concert at Mendelssohn Theater, and after watching it, I was so amazed and impressed and added the Sinaboro annual concert to my list of must-go-event next year.
The concert contained various forms of performance. I was late and missed the opening drumming show, but was lucky enough to enjoy the performance of a lovely singing group. At first it was the solo of a guy singing the theme song of the Korean drama Secret Garden, called That Women. Then a girl joined him and they performed a beautiful duet. At the end of the song, a singing ensemble came on the stage. The melancholy melody was soon replaced by a lively tone of the group. They went on to sing another cheerful Korean song and then Seasons of Love from Rent. The singing section was followed by a drumming piece. The stage was dark with a midnight blue wash, leaving the silhouettes of the drummers. I could see their body movements, and couldn’t help moving my body with the beats. And then there was this really cool dance–I apologize for not knowing the name of it–in which the dancers produced rhythmic sounds by flapping and stepping, somewhat similar to step dance.
However, what I love the most about the concert is that it incorporated every performance into a larger narrative, the parody of the 2010 Korean drama, Secret Garden. I watched that during my senior year in high school and trust me, I was obsessed with that show, and the leading actor, Hyun Bin, has been my favorite Korean man for almost ten years. The show tells the story of two young persons whose bodies got switched by accident, and in the process of getting used to their new bodies and pretending to be each other in front of other people, they fell in love with each other. The concert showed five short movie clips of this story played and filmed by the creative kids from this group. They changed the context of the story to Ann Arbor and recreated the famous scenes in a humorous way. For example, the milk foam kiss scene, the original version being that the Hyun Bin wiped off the milk foam of cappuccino on the girl’s lips by kissing her. Here, when the boy was trying to copy that romantic moment, he got slapped on the face instead and was left muttering “Wait, I thought girls liked this in dramas.†The part when the girl (now in the body of the guy) taught the guy (under the girl’s body) how to wear bras after they just switched their bodies was also hilarious.
Although I kept telling myself that I had this 3000 word paper due in three hours (yep, on a Saturday night), I totally loved this concert and was reluctant to leave early. The only thing I wanna say is: Bravo!
The videos of the concert by parts could be found under the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMYk1kN_bxqcpQ5tDSReEZw
Also, the film clips:
Part I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0vMx6vCJMw
Part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSUqUtdau0A
Part III: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z8BpOmQQrg
Intermission: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Iqeg1SPXI
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