Young Masters Lee Bong-geun and Go Young-yeol Take Center Stage
August 31 and September 1 at Mapo Art Center
Mapo Cultural Foundation (CEO Song Jeyong) announced on the 16th that the 2023 5th Mapo M Gugak Festival 'Korea Rhythm Touch' will be held at the Mapo Art Center on the 31st and September 1st.
Young master singers Lee Bong-geun and Go Young-yeol will take the stage at Mapo Cultural Foundation's Gugak Festival 'Korea Rhythm Touch.' [Photo by Mapo Cultural Foundation]
The festival features young master singers leading the popularization of gugak, Lee Bonggeun and Go Youngyeol, as the main performers on stage.
'with Sorikkun Lee Bonggeun and Friends' is a special project band M and crew M formed for this festival, presenting a groundbreaking stage together with Sorikkun Lee Bonggeun. The performance opens with the festival theme song centered on traditional Korean instruments such as haegeum and piri, followed by the original composition 'Rhythm Play.'
The stage, heated up by two drums and a kkwaenggwari lead, blends traditional instruments like haegeum and taepyeongso with modern instruments such as guitar and bass, adding excitement with LED street dancers performing talchum (mask dance). Sorikkun Lee Bonggeun plans to infuse gugak colors into various popular songs including pansori.
Go Youngyeol is famous for 'piano byeongchang,' singing gugak while playing the piano. He gained public recognition as a star gugak artist by finishing as runner-up with Team Rabidance in JTBC Phantom Singer Season 3 in 2020. In Phantom Singer, he attracted attention with the pansori-specific cheonbyeonmanha vocal technique and expanded the crossover genre, which had been limited to classical and popular music, to include gugak, revealing new possibilities for K-crossover.
In this performance, Go Youngyeol will arrange and perform beloved Korean sounds such as pansori and folk songs, along with tracks from his self-written and composed album, into global rhythms fitting the title 'Korea Rhythm Touch,' together with his band.
Now in its 5th year, the Mapo M Gugak Festival 'Korea Rhythm Touch' continues fresh challenges for the popularization of our tradition and gugak, dreaming of a new future through the meeting of past and present. In 2021, it produced series such as 'Bamseom Bugundang Dodanggut Homage,' 'Rock and Roll Aeogaebonsandae Nori,' and 'Mapo Samhaeju Story,' which reinterpret Mapo's local culture in a modern way. In 2022, it gained attention for attempts to break down genre boundaries with rock, madangnori, pansori, and tap dance.
The 5th Mapo M Gugak Festival 'Korea Rhythm Touch' tickets are priced at 10,000 KRW for all seats and can be reserved on the Mapo Cultural Foundation website.
A representative of the Mapo Cultural Foundation said, "This festival will present a unique gugak stage on the 31st with the all-round sorikkun Lee Bonggeun, known as the BTS of the gugak world, along with project band M and street dance crew, adding hip excitement to the fun." He added, "On September 1st, Go Youngyeol, the 'ear boyfriend' of gugak who plays piano, will arrange popular gugak and his original songs into global rhythms and embark on a world tour of gugak with the audience, so we ask for the interest of many spectators."
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