World SamulNori Festival 2008 - Part II

MEXKOSA samulnori team from Mexico City - posing for pictures

It took me a while to decompress from and begin to process the SamulNori Festival in Buyeo last month. My former experiences with working as the Overseas Coordinator for SamulNori Hanullim coupled with a festival management team that was entirely short-staffed was cause for me to end up working full-time as volunteer and interpreter for the foreign teams in attendance. One of the things I've come to realize here is how certain "insider" privileges come with deeply embedded sets of obligations and duties.

In one of my "process" days, I decided to set up a Facebook group for the foreign participants of the festival. I figured that it would be an easy way to share some of the photographs that I had taken during the workshop and festival with those who were already on Facebook. In the weeks following, the group has more or less taken on a life of its own. Festival participants have Facebook befriended each other and have gone ahead and uploaded their own photographs to share with the group. And my News Feed regularly notifies me of the recent wall postings exchanged by newly made friends, reflecting on their time spent in Buyeo and inquiring how life is in their respective countries. I'm delighted that so many of the participants have been able to keep a line of communication open, post-Festival and post-Korea.

In many ways this virtual KIT* activity has reminded me of a much earlier, dare I say, ancient time when I would actively correspond with friends made at summer piano camps during my junior and high school years. Back then, we actually sent letters and pictures in the mail! But funnily enough, several months ago, I was reunited with a former YKAA Oberlin piano camper and was also invited to join the Interlochen All-State Piano Alumni group, all on Facebook.^^

*circa my junior high school years, for, like, "keep in touch."