Miryang Baekjung Nori (Baekjung Festival of Miryang)

Miryang Baekjung Nori refers to the play performed by farmhands who, having finished the arduous farm work, took a day's holiday from their landlords around Yongnal (Dragon Day) near the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, the traditional midsummer holiday of Baekjung, and made merry. Such play, called homi-ssitgi ("hoe-washing"), was common in farming villages south of the central region where rice cultivation predominated. In Miryang it is called Meoseumnal (Farmhand's Day), and because the players eat kkombaegi-cham, the food and drink prepared by the landlords, it is also known as Kkombaegi-cham Nori. Miryang Baekjung Nori proceeds through a rite to the farming god (Nongsinje), a mock-horse ride (Jakdumal-taki), a sequence of dances, and a closing dance. When the farming-god rite opens with farmers'-band music and the obangjin-gut (five-direction ritual), a nongsindae, a pole made of hemp stalks, is set up in the yard, with a straw-plaited dragon hung from it. The participants stand in a circle around the pole, bow three times, and kneel to pray for good fortune, while one person reads out a prayer text. Jakdumal-taki is a game in which the farmhand judged best at farming that year is seated on a mock horse made from an A-frame carrier's legs and paraded around the playing ground to the sound of farmers' music, stirring up excitement. The dance sequence opens with the Yangban Dance, performed slowly and with dignity in the manner of a yangban (nobleman) to the beat. The farmhands then drive the yangban off and perform the comic Byeongsin Chum (Dance of the Disabled), taking on the guises of a dwarf, a palsy sufferer, a pot-belly, a bent-backed old woman, a stammerer, a leper, a hunchback, a wastrel, a blind man, a cripple, and the like. This is followed by the Beombu Chum, in which two dancers take turns showing off their skill before the janggu (hourglass drum) player, and the Obuk Chum (Five-Drum Dance), a dance found only in Miryang, in which five drummers beat their drums while dancing in a circle and moving in and out of the ring — a vigorous and stylish dance. The closing dance is danced by all the players together in a spirit of harmony, its rhythm changing frequently as each dancer improvises individual movements. The distinguishing feature of Miryang Baekjung Nori is that it expresses, in comic form throughout the whole performance, the pent-up grievances of commoners and the lowborn. The Byeongsin Chum and Obuk Chum survive only in Miryang, and Baegimsae Sawi, the dance's principal movement, is notable for its vigorous motion, in which the right hand and right foot move together, and the left hand and left foot move together.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Miryang, Gyeongnam

Designation

National Intangible Heritage · 국가무형유산