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| Jeonju International Sori Festival Organizing Committee Chairman Lee Wang-jun / Courtesy of Jeonju International Sori Festival Organizing Committee |
By Lee Hae-rin
Lee Wang-jun, the chairman of the Jeonju International Sori Festival Organizing Committee, aims to usher in a "renaissance of Korean traditional music" via an annual event that kicks off, Friday.
"Amid the mounting global interest in Korean culture in the wake of the K-pop boom, it is the right time for the 'renaissance of Korean traditional music,'" Lee said during an interview with The Korea Times, Wednesday.
"And the Jeonju International Sori Festival is the platform and engine that can drive the globalization of Korean traditional music."
Born and raised in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, Lee, who also chairs the Myongji Medical Foundation, has been a lifelong lover of both Korean and Western classic music. He started his three-year term as the festival's organizing committee chairman in March, with the goal of making the event more global.
Since launching in 2001, the festival centering on Korean classical music and pansori, a Korean traditional genre of musical storytelling, has grown into the region's leading cultural event.
The festival has invited foreign artists to stage cross-cultural ensembles of traditional music to resonate with a wider audience, according to Lee. This year, the event is joined by artists from 11 countries, including Canada, Australia, Vietnam, Estonia, Uzbekistan, Poland and the United Arab Emirates.
"We can share the ethnic and traditional components of each culture … by exchanging, collaborating and expanding the music's scope by cross-cultural fusion … and go beyond geographic barriers and become more global," Lee said.
The highlight of this year's event is pansori performances by legendary human cultural assets, whose average age is 82 years. In full, each performance lasts over four hours.
"There are 10 pansori artists who are designated as human cultural assets in Korea and four of them will perform at this year's event. It surely will become a legendary stage, as the time they spent practicing traditional music in their lives amounts to 420 years," Lee said.
Lee said the festival will present "the trendiest and most innovative" adaptations of the traditional genre, encompassing top artists of all theater groups and academic backgrounds with open minds.
This festival runs until Sept. 24 and features 108 performances around Jeonju Hanok Village and 14 other cities and districts of North Jeolla Province.
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