Ikigai Daily
Menu
StillnessShared song tradition fact

Arirang is Korea's best-known folk song, sung in the North, in the South and by Koreans abroad. It exists in about 60 versions and some 3,600 variations, all sharing a refrain close to “Arirang, arirang, arariyo”, while the verses change with each singer and region.

Arirang

MusicMigrationArt

The story behind the card

Nobody knows exactly what the word “arirang” means. Many versions tell of crossing a mountain pass, and the verses often speak of parting, longing and hard work, though others are playful. The version most people know spread through Na Woon-gyu's 1926 silent film Arirang, made under Japanese rule and regarded as the first Korean nationalist film. Because the song belongs to both Koreas, it has served as a shared anthem: at the opening of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, athletes from North and South marched in together as it played. UNESCO added South Korea's Arirang to its intangible heritage list in 2012 and North Korea's in 2014, so the same song appears on the list twice.

Türkçe oku
Arirang, Kore'nin en tanınmış halk şarkısıdır; hem Kuzey'de hem Güney'de hem de yurt dışındaki Koreliler arasında söylenir. Yaklaşık 60 türü ve 3.600 kadar çeşitlemesi vardır. Hepsinde nakarat “Arirang, arirang, arariyo” gibidir; dizeler ise söyleyene ve yöreye göre değişir.

“Arirang” sözcüğünün tam olarak ne anlama geldiğini kimse bilmiyor. Pek çok türünde bir dağ geçidini aşmaktan söz edilir; dizeler çoğu zaman ayrılığı, özlemi ve zor işi anlatır, ama neşeli olanları da vardır. En çok bilinen hâli, Na Woon-gyu'nun Japon yönetimi döneminde çektiği ve ilk Kore milliyetçi filmi sayılan 1926 yapımı sessiz film Arirang ile yayıldı. Şarkı iki Kore'ye de ait olduğu için ortak bir marş gibi kullanılmıştır: 2000 Sidney Olimpiyatları'nın açılışında Kuzey ve Güney Koreli sporcular bu şarkı eşliğinde birlikte yürüdü. UNESCO, Güney Kore'nin Arirang geleneğini 2012'de, Kuzey Kore'ninkini 2014'te Somut Olmayan Kültürel Miras Listesi'ne aldı; böylece aynı şarkı listede iki kez yer alıyor.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Arirang
Get the mobile appAbout our cards

Related cards

These cards share a subject or reading mode with the card above.

StillnessMusic

Morna is the slow, melancholy song of Cabo Verde, sung in the islands' Creole to guitar, violin and cavaquinho, a small four-string guitar. Its lyrics keep returning to departure, distance and longing, shaped by island life and generations of emigration.

Cabo Verde is a group of Atlantic islands off West Africa, settled by the Portuguese and by enslaved Africans. Poverty and drought have long driven its people to emigrate, and by many estimates more Cabo Verdeans now live abroad than on the islands. Morna's central feeling is sodade, a Creole word related to the Portuguese saudade: the ache for people and places far away. The poet Eugénio Tavares (1867–1930) and the composer B. Leza shaped its classic form. From the late 1980s the singer Cesária Évora, known as the 'Barefoot Diva', made morna known around the world. UNESCO added morna to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2019.

MornaRead card
DriveMusic

Taiko, Japanese ensemble drumming, took root in North America through Japanese American groups formed in California from the late 1960s. They built drums from whatever they could find, including wine barrels, and made playing together a way of building community.

In Japan, taiko simply means drum. The style of large, choreographed drum ensembles, called kumi-daiko, took shape after the Second World War, notably with Daihachi Oguchi's group from 1951. In 1968 Seiichi Tanaka founded the San Francisco Taiko Dojo, and in 1969 members of Senshin Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles formed Kinnara Taiko, making affordable drums from wine barrels. For many Japanese Americans whose families had been interned during the war, taiko became a way to claim their heritage in public. North America now has hundreds of taiko groups.

TaikoRead card
StillnessArt

John Cage's 4′33″ (1952) is a piece of music in which the performers play nothing for four minutes and 33 seconds, so the audience hears the sounds of the room instead.

Pianist David Tudor gave the premiere on 29 August 1952 at the Maverick Concert Hall near Woodstock, New York. He sat at the piano and closed the lid to begin each of the three movements, opening it to end them. Cage recalled that wind stirred the trees outside during the first movement, rain pattered on the roof in the second, and in the third the audience muttered and some walked out. Two things led him to the piece: Robert Rauschenberg's all-white paintings, and a 1951 visit to an anechoic chamber at Harvard, a room built to absorb almost all sound. There he still heard two sounds, which he was told were his nervous system and his blood. He concluded that true silence does not exist.

MoMARead card
WonderHistory

A griot is a West African storyteller, musician and oral historian who carries memory through performance.

In Manding languages a griot is called a jeli or jali, and in Wolof a gewel. The tradition is tied to the Mali Empire, founded in the 13th century by Sundiata Keita: in the Epic of Sundiata, the griot Balla Fasséké advises the young king, and the Kouyaté family of griots, who trace their line back to him, still perform today. The role usually passes down within griot families. A griot learns genealogies, histories and praise songs by heart, often performing them with the kora, a 21-string harp-lute, the balafon, a wooden xylophone, or the ngoni, a small lute. Griots have also served as advisers to rulers, go-betweens in disputes and keepers of a community's memory of who is related to whom.

The Metropolitan Museum of ArtRead card
StillnessMusic

John Cage's 4′33″, first performed in 1952, asks the performers to play nothing for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The coughs, rustling and rain the audience hears instead become the music.

The pianist David Tudor gave the premiere on 29 August 1952 at the Maverick Concert Hall near Woodstock, New York, a wooden hall open to the woods. He marked the three sections by closing the keyboard lid at the start of each and opening it at the end, without playing a note. Cage later recalled hearing wind in the first part, rain on the roof in the second and people talking or walking out in the third. The idea grew partly from a visit to an anechoic chamber at Harvard, a room built to absorb all sound, where he still heard two sounds: his own nervous system and his blood circulating. True silence, he concluded, does not exist; there is only sound we did not intend.

John CageRead card
Next card in the archiveQawwali is the devotional music of the Sufis of South Asia. A lead singer sings a line of poetry, a chorus answers, and handclaps, harmonium and drums build the repetition up until the whole gathering is swept along together.Read next →