Pocheon Menari

Pocheon Menari is an agricultural labour song sung while weeding rice paddies in the area of Gasan-myeon, Pocheon-si, Gyeonggi Province. Several kinds of labour songs have been passed down in the Pocheon area, but the menari sung while weeding paddies is especially distinctive, and so Pocheon's labour songs came to be grouped together and named Pocheon Menari. Menari is the name of a tune, and it is also widely sung as a paddy-weeding song in Gangwon Province. There it is usually sung in call-and-response (gyohwanchang), round-singing (yunchang), or solo (dokchang) style, but Pocheon's menari uses a distinctive method in which the singers are divided into five parts. In musicology, menari is also used as a term for the musical style of the eastern region of the Korean peninsula. Pocheon Menari is structured to follow the stages of farm work. There is the jajin-ari, sung by farmers climbing the hills to gather brushwood leaves, and the jigekkun-sori, sung while carrying loads down the mountain on an A-frame carrier (jige); there is also the horisori (oegyeori), a plough-driving song sung while working the ox to plough the paddy. At rice transplanting, the yeolsori is sung, belonging to the hanasori family widely sung across the Gyeonggi region. The first weeding, ainonmaegi, is done with a hoe, during which the gin-bangahtaryeong and got-bangahtaryeong (kkot-bangahtaryeong) are sung, and the saejjotneun-sori (bird-chasing song) closes out the weeding. The second weeding, dubeolmaegi, is done by hand, during which menari is sung — and it is this menari, sung in a method unlike menari from other regions, that draws particular attention. The singers are organised into five parts, each with its own role: the leading part (maegineun-sori), the calling-out part (jireuneun-sori), the receiving part (badneun-sori), the offering part (naeneun-sori), and the concluding part (maetneun-sori). For example, one musical phrase is divided as follows: leading part, "this paddy has good water rights"; calling-out part, "ieieieieie"; receiving part, "this paddy"; offering part, "water rights"; concluding part, "good".

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Pocheon, Gyeonggi

Designation

Provincial Intangible Heritage · 시도무형유산