Park Chan Mourning Becomes Song

School of Oriental and African Studies University of London SOAS-AKS Working Papers in Korean Studies No. 30 ‘Mourning Becomes Song’: Revisiting the Ritual Origin of Korean Vocal Music Chan E. Park http://www.soas.ac.uk/japankorea/research/soas-aks-papers/ ‘Mourning Becomes Song’: Revisiting the Ritual Origin of Korean Vocal Music Chan E. Park (Ohio State University) © 2012 From pre-industrial to cyberculture, local to glocal, abandoned to anointed, the sociocultural adaptation oF the story-singing tradition oF p’ansori continues. As was the case at the threshold oF the twentieth century, p’ansori at the entrance oF the twenty- First century is a primary agent oF innovation in music, literature, and theatre. Korean music inclusive of p’ansori is methodically acquired and rehearsed For preservation and creative perpetuation. However, the musical proFessionalism cultivated among the great majority oF singers today is substantially removed From the very Fibres oF the Folk liFe that had nurtured it in the past. My current ethnographic as well as perFormative work is to discover, living or memorialized, the ecological liFe oF Folk Korean music making. Departing From the discussion oF contemporary production and consumption such as the industrialization oF Korean music ‘contents’, I return to its Folk origin by way oF imagining the environmental as well as poetic association oF Field with stage and ritual with entertainment, largely inhibited with the advancing modernity. In this paper, I Focus in particular on the rituals oF dying and mourning to examine the organic connectivity shared between Korean livelihoods and Korean music making oF the past. In so doing, I attempt to bring to light the challenges oF revelation oF the connection Korean vocal music has with Korean ritual singing tradition. As evident in the recordings oF prominent chanters and singers, in death and dying Koreans exercised the best oF their musical and poetic sensitivities. I discuss the musical semantics and the pragmatics oF Korean ritual oF death and dying, with a textual and vocal comparative analysis oF mourning in ritual and in p’ansori. In-between centre and margin The study oF Korean music is again at a crossroads of preservation and progress, and it is impossible to understand one oF these without understanding the other. In considering the modern transFormation oF Korean vocal music, I take to imagining origins in the Folk and ritualistic context. Closer revelation oF the past-present connection in vocal music is complicated by the psycho-historical conditions Koreans today have inherited. Since the beginning oF the twentieth century, through the Formative years oF its modernity, Koreans have been traumatized by colonizers and foreign intervention. On the ashes oF one oF the most gruesome wars in human history, Korea miraculously recovered its ‘Mourning Becomes Song’ 4 economy, inFrastructure, and global standing. The people’s recovery oF their psycho- cultural makings was been less than seamless: in avoiding ancestral roots, modernity overlapped with what is Western – that is, being modern meant following Western trends and beliefs. Korean indigenous systems oF Faith have been marginalized as superstition. Today, in keeping with the deconstructionist trend in the Western avant garde, Korean theatre and composers actively – oFten excessively – reintroduce elements oF shamanic and other rituals oF death, Funerals and mourning as a main ingredient For creativity. ‘The shaky conceptualization oF han as an essential Korean sorrow either contributes to this phenomenon, or is co-symptomatic oF a larger psychological problem modern Koreans have toward their historical past.’1 In vocal music, the connection between origin and modern transFormation is obscured by the musical hierarchy of the Korean music world. This has established that the primary origin and inspiration of p’ansori is muga, ritual songs oF shamans from the south-western Chŏlla provinces. The recognition oF this connection is presented alongside the sociocultural marginalization oF the indigenous shamanic ritual past and present. The kinship p’ansori has with an indigenous ritual musical tradition continues to be a popular subject for anthropological or musicological inquiry. Not every practitioner of p’ansori, however, welcomes being publicly associated with shamans or with songs the Korean mainstream does its best to avoid. The government policy of preservation, effective since the early 1960s, has contributed to substantially diFFusing the socio- musical hierarchy by increasing the exposure of Korean music, shaman music included, to the middle class. The elevation oF Korean music to ‘intangible cultural assets’ comes with elevation oF its designated heirs to ‘human national treasures,’ a misnomer that is in wider circulation than the oFFicial title oF poyuja, ‘preservers’ of the assets. Anointed ‘human national treasures,’ perFormers must play the part. An individual, claims Erving GoFFman, comes to believe in the impression oF reality that he attempts to engender in those amongst whom he finds himselF. A human national treasure with the mission oF preserving and representing Korean traditionality would have to be convinced ‘that the impression oF reality which he stages is the real reality.’2 For the designated heirs oF Korean music, exercising political savvy and correctness in current society largely translates as keeping a safe distance from indigenous ritual tradition. They strive to accommodate the national vision oF tourism and globalism by providing ‘cultural heritage while satisFying Western commodiFication.’3 I reserve For later study how the heirs oF Korean shaman ritual construct their identities as human national treasures through that which is disdainFully or suspiciously regarded by mainstream Korean society, while also accommodating national tourism and cultural promotional needs. Traditionally, Korean music oF Folk or ritual origin was practiced among kisaeng (Female entertainers) and kwangdae (male entertainers), along with mudang (shamans) who occupied the bottom strata oF the Neo-ConFucian social hierarchy. Diverging from ritual singing to story-singing entertainment centuries ago, p’ansori independently accumulated its own myths oF authentic Filtering through its marginal existence. These include the agonistic journeys taken by legendary singers, the ordeal oF vocal cord bleeding, the cultivation oF abdominal strength to subdue gushing waterFalls, the http://www.soas.ac.uk/japankorea/research/soas-aks-papers/ ‘Mourning Becomes Song’ 5 romantic tales oF patronage by royal princes and powerFul nobles, and the emotive powers of sori wielding unwieldy ghosts.4 These myths mediate p’ansori’s modern and postcolonial representation, the singer-protagonist’s art-for-art’s-sake quest For han – han being oFten Fetishized as the essential Korean sorrow – at all cost in, For example, the blockbuster movie, Seopyeonje (1993). But skeptics from postcolonial and indigenous studies warn against media representations oF what is authentic or indigenous. These ‘”speak” the indigene within a construction whose legitimacy is grounded not in their practice but in our desire.’5 From another angle, the Republic oF Korea is a small country with a highly developed inFrastructure that contributes to diffusing what little remains oF regional musical characteristics. Korea’s centralized system of government and broadcasting coupled with ease oF travel to Seoul and back have pushed Korean traditional music practice towards standardization and uniFormity. With the implementation oF a local government system in the 1990s, regional centres of music were one by one inaugurated in locations outside Seoul. Beyond carrying out policies set by the main center in Seoul, development initiatives to Facilitate local inventions have yet to take root in regional centres. As much as the national stage and the national media Feature music From various regions, this is also where they assimilate. The assimilated musics make return trips to regional communities, there assimilating any remaining regional stylistic traits. Some locals complain about such musical intrusion in their villages. Others accept it as inevitable. Hence, on the island oF Jindo, at the Injiri Village Festival in Summer 2010, a group oF samullori percussionists from outside the island gave a perFormance. Blending and cross-Fertilizing regional rhythmic styles oF p’ungmul percussion bands, samullori has been seen and heard everywhere during the past Four decades. Under the dictatorial military regimes oF Pak Chung-Hee, Chun Doo-Hwan and Roh Tae-Woo, the sound oF p’ungmul came to symbolize Korea’s Fight For democracy. It spread around the globe, crossing the PaciFic to America to represent ‘Korean culture and Koreanness whether it is played in multicultural shows or in antiwar protests.’6 The samullori group at the Injiri Festival looked standard, but the locals at the Festival saw much more, and disapproved. ‘On Jindo, we don’t wear headbands like that … and we have our own groups that do it right!’7 The concern oF this commentator was that young players on the island would imitate the costumes and stylistics oF outsiders and shed their own. The ethnography of Jindo ritual singing As a student oF p’ansori, I was From the start instructed to avoid minyo folksongs or even YukchaBaegi, the south-western style oF Folksong woven around a speciFic song in a six- beat rhythm that closely resembles the six-beat chinyang rhythmic cycle in p’ansori.

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