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FIGURE 1.6 The SamulNori quartet performing p’an kut inside the Space Theater. Photograph courtesy of Sim Usŏng.
SAMUL NORI’S BIG BANG
What was it about the music or the performances by the quartet that so captivated early audiences? As already mentioned, Kang Chunhyŏk suggested that it was the novelty of SamulNori’s seated position, which focused the spotlight on the diversity of rhythms in p’ungmul’s regional variants. For others, what piqued interest was the exploratory musical journey on which the quartet embarked—with each concert came a new attempt at creating fresh arrangements from vintage materials. Suzanna Samstag, an American expat who became SamulNori’s first managing director, reminisced about the word-of-mouth effect that drew in SamulNori’s crowds: “After word got out about SamulNori, the [Space] theater would be totally crowded, standing room only. People would tell their friends to come, and pretty soon there was this group of true believers who were trying to find something sacred” (Suzanna Samstag interview, November 22, 2005).
While the Space Theater remained an important venue and base for Samul-Nori, demand for the quartet grew exponentially. By 1981, the SamulNori quartet received invitations to perform at other theaters and venues, such as the Cecil Theater (Sesil Kŭkchang), the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts (Sejong munhwa hoegwan), and the UNESCO hall in Seoul. And the group started to receive fees that would mark their move toward professionalization. In 1982, SamulNori made their international debut with a series of events in Japan, beginning in June in Tokyo (SamulNori Hanullim t’ansaeng samsip chunyŏn kinyŏm saŏphoe 2009, 58). This was co-organized by the South Korean government and the Mindan (Korean Residents Union in Japan). Later that year, the quartet traveled to the United States for the first time, performing at music festivals and at theaters in Florida, New York, Boston, Virginia, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles. On November 19, the quartet traveled back to the United States to participate in the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC), where they made an indelible impression on attendees and fellow percussionists. As SamulNori’s success began to extend beyond national boundaries, the quartet garnered both fame and notoriety within South Korea. But rather than narrating the next decade of SamulNori’s history here, I turn instead to the quartet’s positive reception that fed into SamulNori / samul nori as a global phenomenon.
Journalist Ku Hŭisŏ (or Ku Hee-seo) was an avid fan and supporter of the group. Her writings shaped much of the early reception of SamulNori for the broader Korean public. She was also one of the appointed contributors for Kim Sugŭn’s Konggan magazine. Ku’s essay “Korean Spirit, Korean Rhythm”—written in 1983 for Konggan—provided the context for readers first encountering SamulNori through the printed word. She narrated SamulNori’s development at the Space Theater as an experimental quartet into a rigorous study group intent on researching and reinterpreting Korea’s musical heritage. SamulNori’s 1982 U.S. tour highlights were also provided as evidence that the quartet was making headway in American cities. For this, the Korean public should take heed, Ku noted:
Whether it was by attempting to theorize and actually organize the regional characteristics of nongak’s rhythmic cycles, or participate as performers in a kut pan [kut ritual gathering] for several months in order to learn the rhythms associated with shamanistic music, these performers’ efforts are testimony to tears shed during the learning process.
As a result of these valiant efforts, not only have the stereotypical myths about the triteness, monotony, and noisy clatter of nongak (and other traditional percussion music) been completely shattered, but [we hear] the rhythms that have long lived within our minjung [people]—this elegance has entered into hearts today and awakened our own voice. (Ku 1983, 98–99)
In the English-language publication Koreana, Korean musicologist Han Myung-hee [Han Myŏnghi] echoed this nationalistic sentiment but placed the SamulNori phenomenon in a more sociohistorical context:
By the end of the 1970s, many Koreans had come to an important point in the process of self-awareness, which included growing interest in Korean Studies and the traditional performing arts. Politically the power structure was pressing heavily on the people’s consciousness. Tear gas–filled university campuses, anger, frustration and low morale characterized the consciousness of citizens. It was during these times that SamulNori made its debut and spread its message through the seeming madness. The music provided an antidote to the heartbreak of the era. But interest in the music was not momentary. The music provided a release, an experience of group ecstasy and a way, through nostalgia for the past, for us to find ourselves. (Han, Myung-hee 1993, 35)
To Suzanna Samstag (an important figure in the story of global samul nori), what appealed most about the SamulNori quartet were the electrifying performances. On hearing a particular arrangement for four changgos (“Samdo sŏl changgo karak”) in 1982, Samstag recounts that the music “literally tore through my body” (Lee, Katherine In-Young 2004, 37). The four musicians were more or less equal in terms of their training. Onstage, this synergy of talent sometimes resulted in the young musicians trying to one-up each other. The audience became spectators to what was transpiring in performance; witnessing this explosive “turf war” left one breathless with anticipation. Samstag admitted that she was similarly impressed by the physicality of the dancing and the sheer athleticism of the performers—who despite being thin were at the top of their form.
Another “foreign” opinion of the budding quartet came from Beate Gordon (1923–2012), former director of programming at the Asia Society. In an interview I conducted with Gordon at her New York apartment, she mentioned the course of events that led her to invite SamulNori in 1983 to be part of an Asia Society–sponsored tour. Gordon explained that she had heard about the group only indirectly, from a fellow presenter who had observed the quartet perform live at PASIC (Percussive Arts Society International Convention) the year before. Since she was keen on bringing in talented performers from Asia for her series, she decided to take a chance. The risk proved to be one well taken:
I thought they were superb. I think that their virtuosity, their technique was so thoroughly embedded. I mean, it was just unbelievably strong. You didn’t really have to worry about them at all…. In German, one says, er sitzt, “it sits.” It’s in there, it’s solid. And they had that.
They were very much the thing that I thought would communicate. And they had that tsuchikusai [in Japanese, “rustic earthiness”] thing about them. And I thought that this would come through very strongly, and it did. People were enraptured by them. (Beate Gordon interview, November 23, 2010)
Gordon’s sponsorship of SamulNori in 1983 under the auspices of the Asia Society tour stands as the singular launch pad for SamulNori’s entry into the “world music” scene in the 1980s. The tour also bore SamulNori’s first internationally issued recording, Samul-Nori: The Legendary Recording by Original Members, in 1983 on the Nonesuch label.42
As evidenced by the sponsorship by powerful individuals such as Kim Sugŭn and Beate Gordon—impresarios both dedicated to the performing arts—auspicious encounters helped to facilitate and propel the SamulNori quartet’s development and rise to fame from 1978 until 1993, the year when the quartet disbanded. Modeled after the same tenets of Kim Sugŭn’s Konggan Project that aimed to reevaluate Korean culture and history in the face of modernization, the Samul-Nori quartet negotiated an emphasis on the traditional and regional roots of their own musical research collaborations with a changing urban audience. It was in the Space Theater’s culture of innovation that they were given the creative license to undertake such an endeavor. In the process of researching the regional rhythms of p’ungmul, they increased the likelihood that native Koreans would find familiar elements in the sounds of their arrangements. But it was also the “foreign” audience’s enthusiastic reception of their dynamic performances
