What is this drama about?
A young girl from a seaside village loves to sing. She has an extraordinary voice, but her mother for some unexplained reason forbids her from doing so. One day she meets a great pansori star. After watching the performance, the girl dreams of joining a group of artists and starting to earn money singing to support her family. Against her mother’s wishes, she goes to the city and competes in the elimination rounds.
I didn’t plan on watching this drama. I don’t like dramas set in the mid-20th century. I saw a lot of good reviews about it and decided to watch at least two episodes and I have to say that I got hooked. The drama tells the story of a young girl, but above all it shows the world of artists performing amazing traditional performances and singing pansori. Pansori is a part of Korean culture, a bit like Chinese opera in China. Both forms are connected by a specific way of singing, but when it comes to Chinese opera, my cat loses control and looks at me with judgment :)). It’s not easy to listen to. Pansori is definitely better. The great advantage of this drama is that we see very extensive fragments of these performances and you can feel like a viewer sitting in the audience.
I like such stories, during which I can admire the traditions of Asian countries. It constantly fascinates me. The acting is at the highest level. Kim Tae Ri in the main role once again created an amazing character. Her Jeongnyeon comes from the countryside, is a loud and unmannered girl, but ambitious and good by nature. We accompany her and other girls in singing lessons and rehearsals, we see their ups and downs, dilemmas, ambitions and hard work. This is a unique story, above all for people who like to root for the heroes to achieve success, but also for those who are curious about the unusual part of Korean culture.
SPIOLERS!!!
In my opinion, the ending is perfect and very moving, but in such a positive way. As always, I wonder what this drama wanted to tell me, and in this case it will be: “Live your own life”. These are the words that the director said to Hye Rang. Each character had to choose the path they would take and either they consciously made compromises, gave up their dream life (FL’s friend, FL’s mother) or they didn’t give up and fought for their dreams (FL, Yeong Seo).
The director is one of the wisest women in dramaland. She has the wisdom of life and the sensitivity of an artist, she is full of empathy, understanding and strength, thanks to which she managed to keep this group together for so long. She was defeated by the coming times, new media, opportunities for actors, faster and bigger money offered to them. But despite this, she believed in her girls and gave them a worthy show, which is supposedly the end, but can also be a great beginning.
Overall, this drama is made up of wonderfully created characters who aroused huge emotions. You can discuss them and their choices for hours. Apart from the accountant, everyone was multidimensional. The biggest disappointment of this story for me was Moon Ok. It seemed like a good person, but from the beginning I felt something vain in her. It’s her constant tiredness with the wonderful reality. The girl stopped developing, looked only at herself and in a very selfish way decided to leave leaving chaos behind.
I don’t want to write about all the characters here, because it would take up too much time and space, but I think it’s worth watching this extraordinary drama. I’m glad that thanks to it I had the opportunity to get to know and admire a piece of Korean tradition. I’m still not a fan of this way of singing, but despite this, the performances made a huge impression on me.
The acting was amazing! Kim Tae Ri and Ra Mi Ran are a guarantee of the highest quality, but the rest of the girls did a great job too. It’s worth watching just for them.
