KOREAN BARREL DRUM: Korean musical instrument

The Korean barrel drum is a traditional musical drum that is found in Korea. While the term is a native word that is used as the general name for drum, the term is most often used to refer to a shallow barrel-shaped musical drum that has a rounded body that is covered on both extremes with the use of animal skin. The musical instrument are categorized as hyeokbu that musical instrument that are manufactured with the use of leather, and has been used for the court music of Korea and the folk music.

The version of the barrel drums that is used in the court music are often attached with the nails on the rims, while the versions of the musical instrument that are used in the folk music are often knotted up with leather straps to form the shape of the musical instrument. Players in the court music often beat their musical instrument with the use of drum stick called bukchae on one hand or two hands together, while players of the musical instrument in the folk music generally beat their musical instrument with the stick on their right hand as beating the other side of the musical instrument with the bare left hand.

The musical instrument has been used for Korean music since the era of the three kingdom of Korea, in light with moral portraits in Anak Tomb of Goguryeo and archives of Book of Sui on the Kingdoms, Goguryeo and Baekje. In the third of Anak Tomb, two versions of this musical instrument are portrayed in the paintings called Juakdo and Haengryeold, like ipgo and damgo simultaneously. The ipgo is the version of the musical instrument that the players beat as standing up, while the damgo is the version of the musical instrument that the players of the musical instrument strike as carrying the instrument on their shoulder.

During the Unified Silla era, keunbuk that means ‘ a big drum’ was used together with a percussion musical instrument called bak in a music performed by Samhyeon samjuk that compromises samhyeon,  3 string musical instruments like geomungo, gayageum, and hyangbipa and also samjuk like daegeum, junggeum and sogeum.

In the Joseon era, the scores of the musical instrument were used for royal court music incorporating the gyobanggo, janggu, jwago, nogo, jingo, jeolgo, yonggo and some others. Among all of them, the janggu was also used as a folk musical instrument and later it became the most popular musical instrument.

While there are about 20 versions of the barrel drums that are currently used in the Korean traditional music, most commonly and widely used barrel drums are the jwago that is used to perform samhyeon yukgak, the yonggo used for marching music, the gyobango that is used for bakchum, the beopgo that is used in the Buddhist ritual ceremonies, the sogo that is used by Namsadang and some street players of music, the soribuk that is used for the pansori, the maegubuk that is used for nongak and the motbanggo that is used by the farmers while they are working.

There are two main forms of simple barrel drums that are used in the Korean folk music; the version of the musical instrument that is used to accompany pansori that has tacked heads is known as sori-buk, while the version of the musical instrument that is used to accompany pungmul music that has laced heads is known as pungmul- barrel drums. The sori-buk is performed with both a stick that is manufactured with birch that is held in the right handand an open left hand, with the stick of the musical instrument striking both the right hand drum head and the wood of the instrument’s body. The pungmul-buk is one four musical instrument that are used in the samul nori, a contemporary version of pungmul. It is performed by striking a single stick of the instrument on only one head of the instrument.

Because of the similarities in construction and shape, thee yonggo, which is a barrel drum that have an attached head ornamented painted dragon designs and used in the military wind-and-percussion music that is known as daechwita, is occasionally also classified as a version of barrel drums. This musical instrument is struck with the use of two padded sticks.

A contemporary set of the barrel drums is known as modeum buk. These instruments are characteristically placed horizontally on some wooden stands and performed with the use of sticks.