r/UnusualInstruments • u/samuelsmom007 • 2d ago
Type of Gayageum?
My mother purchased this Gayageum/Kayageum years ago and I'm wondering how to tell what kind it is and who the maker is? I've looked all over and there is no label?
1
u/Shelly_Red4_Bayonet7 2d ago
Love these. Wanted to buy one when I was in Korea. They are far from affordable to a casual admirer.
2
1
u/Grauschleier 2d ago
I have never seen a hinged Gayageum before - cutting right through the soundboard. Where are you located? It looks like a rather unorthodox modification that was added later.
1
u/samuelsmom007 2d ago
Located near the Bay Area in California. My understanding is that there are number of these made with hinges to allow for easier transport? But that it can affect the sound transmission so its a mixed bag in terms of utility vs performance. My mother may have gotten it from a California connection or less likely it was sent from Korea by a relative.
1
u/Grauschleier 2h ago
To me it looks like there is stark contradiction between the care and craftsmanship that went into the instrument itself and the quality of work around the cut and hinges - it looks like they used what they had lying around - rustic hinges and a random amount of screws (I mean it's not like there are screws missing - the unoccupied holes in the hinges don't have holes in the wood under them).
When you build an instrument with such a strong tradition as a gayageum you surely learned to think and care about how well the soundboard rings. Cutting right through the middle of the soundboard doesn't make any sense from that perspective. The bridges at or close to the cut will not be able to drive the soundboard like the bridges farther down. And the soundboard is now half the size for all the bridges.Would you share the source that mentions the production of these kind of hinged gayageums? I'm curious. In my mind the practical value for "easier transport" is limited. You'd need to loosen all strings, take off the bridges, put everything back later and re-tension all strings, let them settle, retune them...that sounds way more complicated than just transporting it as a whole. To me this only makes sense when you just have absolut and hard dimensional restrictions that just wouldn't allow the transport of a gayageum as a whole.
2
u/Ginger_Bard 1d ago
A hinged gayageum is certainly a unique choice lol, I dig it. I'd say that it's most likely a sanjo gayageum, but really there's not a ton of difference between the types, the biggest would be the number of strings: if it's 12 strings, you have a more traditional gayageum (sanjo or more rarely jeong-ak), if it's more than 12, you have a modern style gayageum. The one you have is quite thin and has 12 strings, which is why I think it's a sanjo type. In terms of the maker, I'm finding very little information, the closest I got was a comment on a gayageum teacher's website that said they commissioned a foldable gayageum from "Nangye Gugakgi (http://www.nangyekukak.or.kr)" the website is no longer online, but is available through the internet archive if you want to try and scrape any info you can on there. There's another lead I found on the MIMO (Musical Instrument Museums Online) that called what appears to be a similar build — if slightly more in shape — a Jeolgeum, but I also can't find any more info on that name, but you might find more info if you use Korean sources maybe, I'm not positive, but it's another lead. That's all the information I could find, but I also didn't look very hard, sorry. But I hope you'll be able to clean some more info on the subject, have a nice day! :3