A Song of Sorrow, A Thread of Strength
As a child, I’d curl up in our living room, the old Victrola crackling with Puccini’s La Bohème or Verdi’s La Traviata. Maria Callas’s voice trembled with raw power; Pavarotti’s golden tenor pierced the static. Their arias stirred tears I couldn’t name, emotions too vast for my young heart to grasp.

Opera was my father’s passion, alongside his cherished Glenn Miller records. I was too young to follow the stories, but the music seized something deep within me. How could a human voice hold such weight—grief, love, defiance, surrender? I felt it before I understood it: beauty woven through pain, threading my earliest memories with sorrow’s quiet strength. Reading Bono’s memoir, Surrender, I nodded at his own opera-soaked childhood, his father’s records echoing mine.

Recently, captivated by South Korea’s rich culture, I watched Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born, a drama about a young woman training as a pansori singer in post-war Korea. Pansori—a raw, soul-stirring form of musical storytelling—struck deeper than opera’s polished crescendos. Its weathered, trembling voice cut through me, elemental and unyielding, braiding sorrow with resilience. I yearned to unravel its power.

The Heart of Pansori
Born in the village squares of Korea’s Joseon Dynasty, pansori blends song, narration, and gesture to weave epic tales. Its name marries pan (a gathering place) and sori (sound or song). A sorikkun (vocalist), wielding a fan, embodies every role—lovers, warriors, grieving daughters—while a gosu (drummer) drives the rhythm with the buk drum, its pulse a living heartbeat.

Once spanning six to eight hours, these performances demanded superhuman stamina. Legend holds that a true sorikkun trains their voice to rival a waterfall’s roar. Of twelve traditional story cycles, only five endure: Chunhyangga, Simcheongga, Heungbuga, Sugungga, and Jeokbyeokga. Each threads love, sacrifice, and resistance, laced with Confucian ideals and biting social critique. To hear pansori is to touch Korea’s soul—human, unadorned, heavy with unspoken weight.

The Weight of Han
At pansori’s core lies han—a sorrow forged in centuries of occupation, division, and loss, yet radiant with defiance. In Simcheongga, a daughter’s sacrifice restores her blind father’s sight, her voice amplifying han’s aching beauty. A master singer once said, “You can’t teach han. Life’s hardships do.”

Unlike opera’s refined elegance, pansori’s sori seong—a raw, husky vocal style—springs from tensed cords and a pushed diaphragm. It doesn’t weep; it resists. Once denied to women, pansori now thrives through voices like Jin Chae-seon and Kim So-hee, who claimed a stage that once mocked corrupt officials and uplifted the common heart. Han is not despair—it’s survival, a cry that refuses to be silenced.

Roots of Resilience
I hear that same unyielding spirit in my Brazilian roots. Growing up, I absorbed stories of quilombos—communities of escaped enslaved people who carved freedom from oppression. Their samba, capoeira, and whispered oral histories carried pain without surrender. Like pansori, their art was never mere mourning—it was a refusal to be erased. In Korea and Brazil, grief found a voice: fierce, alive, enduring. Art turned sorrow into survival.

The Singer’s Burden and Liberation
Pansori demands everything. “It takes so much energy,” says Heo Ae-sun, who trained months for Simcheongga, fearing a full performance might shorten her life. The toll is physical, emotional, ancestral. Yet for many, it’s also liberation—a surrender to han, to memory, to a nation’s pulse.

In my theatre classes, I felt the tremor of embodying a role. But pansori asks more: not just performance, but presence, a raw communion with story and spirit. Growing up in the West, I never knew this sound. Its absence now feels like a quiet theft—something my soul was meant to hear.

A Living Tradition
Pansori endures, not as a relic, but as a living art. Censored during the Japanese occupation and Korean War, it was named a South Korean Intangible Cultural Property in 1964 and a UNESCO Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage in 2003.

Today, it pulses anew. Films like Seopyeonje and bands like Leenalchi fuse pansori with modern genres, captivating younger hearts. At the Jeonju International Sori Festival, performers like Song Bonggeum weave jazz and sharp social critique into their songs. Music therapists even use pansori to ease depression, proof of its enduring resonance.

A Song That Endures
I dream of hearing pansori live in South Korea—perhaps in a small Namwon village or a Seoul theater. It’s like hearing a country’s heartbeat, quiet but unbreakable. Pansori takes pain and forges strength. I imagine the singer, fan in hand, their voice rising above the drum, carrying ancient stories that prove nothing is truly lost if someone keeps singing.

If this stirs something in you, set aside any bias and give Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born a chance. Let their voices linger.