Every time I go to one of the many cultural events I have been to recently, I have a fabulous time (yes, I did say fabulous), but I always feel sad that I have no part in the beautiful culture, beyond being an awestruck spectator. I felt this way at Persian night, at the Indonesian Gamelan Cudamani performance, at the Singaporean Makanmania and, once again, Saturday night, at Shimtah’s “My Big Fat Korean Wedding.” Shimtah, roughly translated to mean “sound that touches the heart,” was awesome. I have no other way to say it. It. Was. Awesome. There was a palpable energy in the room — in the performers and the audience, who whooped and catcalled the entire time. My Korean friend translated a few of the audience’s shouts for me — they were all along the lines of “oh, look how pretty, everything is so beautiful.”

The performance was framed around a mock Korean wedding, but the actual performances stole the show. The mock wedding was fun but not taken entirely seriously (almost none of the wedding party could keep straight faces). It was interesting to see the basic proceedings of a Korean wedding, and the ceremony had some funny moments — some intentional jokes, the obvious irony of the thoroughly white groom and some accidental water spillage. Still, the performances, between the wedding rituals and during the entire second half, were far and away the best part of the evening.

All five performances were beautiful, energetic, well rehearsed and musically engaging. The first half of the show included a “duet” with large hourglass-shaped jang-gu drums, a group of eight drummers using smaller and deeper wooden bhook drums, a “fusion” with a drum, a violin, a cello and piano and, finally, a seated performance by ten people. The performance also had some synchronized chanting, which the audience clearly knew and sang along with, and a few moments of a wooden recorder-like instrument. I was greatly amused by two large gong players calmly tapping out the beat, eyes closed, while everyone else went nuts.

For the second half of the performance, the chairs were removed, and the audience sat around the edges of the room, while the entire group skipped a procession around the space, with audience members joining in at will, and shoving dollar bills into the chin straps of the performers. This is called a goot, performed to unite the people, express solidarity and relieve hardships. Several short sub-performances followed — two guys did a short ribbon dance (ribbons are attached to rotating sticks on hats and moved by bouncing the head and body), several girls danced with small hand drums, one performer danced with a much longer ribbon, kicking his legs, lying on the floor and pretending to be bored while keeping the ribbon going with his head and, finally, two guys spun dishes on sticks.

The night ended with the daedong goot, in which the audience is encouraged to jump in, grab an instrument and start dancing. I was handed one of the bhook drums, but my teacher told me to stop playing and listen to the music first. I started playing again, and he told me to hit the damn thing harder (I don’t think he used those exact words, but it was loud, and I really couldn’t tell).

In any case, it was a lot of fun to get to join in, and I can say for sure that I will be at the next Shimtah performance. And all ya’ll should be there too!