Classical Music Record Museum (director Ro Jaemyeong).
THE SAMUL NORI PROJECT
Meanwhile, the fledgling percussion quartet continued to evolve. At each consecutive appearance at the Space Theater, the quartet began to expand and develop its repertory in an organic manner. The rhythms of p’ungmul provided the musical grammar for SamulNori’s experiments in reconfiguring their own “language”—a slick and streamlined, yet somewhat recognizable urban dialect of p’ungmul. Interestingly, these musical explorations were always informed by the sonic identifiers of place—each “piece” an interpretation or “rearrangement” of rhythmic patterns from the central, southeastern, and southwestern regions of p’ungmul performance. The members of the quartet became a de facto study group, learning and researching rhythmic patterns associated with a variety of local percussion bands throughout South Korea. For this reason, the quartet’s incipient years can be viewed as part of the SamulNori “project,” which I base in part on Alain Delissen’s “Konggan Project.”
Kim Sugŭn’s Space Theater was the perfect incubator for this project, and influential figures such as Kang Chunhyŏk and Sim Usŏng served as trusted advisers. Similar to Kim, Kang, Sim, and the Minsogakhoe Sinawi, the quartet members (even while in flux) also shared a desire to rekindle Korea’s dwindling folk arts. Founding member Kim Duk Soo reflected on this preservationist impulse in the context of South Korean history:
After the division of North and South [in 1948], our country went from being an agricultural society to an industrialized one.29 In this period of great change, our traditional culture changed drastically. When I was in elementary school, 70 percent of Korean citizens were farmers. The music that the farmers played was a natural and essential part of the life cycle; you heard the sound of the samul [four percussion instruments from p’ungmul] at feasts, festivals, ancestor worship rituals, and at funerals. But as we developed into an industrialized society, aspects of our traditional lifestyles were modified or rendered obsolete. It is because of this tremendous change that we had to bring the instruments from the madang [traditional courtyard, village common, or large open ground] to the inside. And at the same time, we had the twofold objective to “bring back what was lost” and “to show what is magnificent about our culture to others” (Kim Duk Soo interview, October 27, 2002).30
In their efforts to preserve and promote Korean music genres that were threatened because of industrialization, changing economic structures, and shifting musical tastes, the members of the SamulNori project thus engaged in both formal and informal research on Korea’s traditional arts. But in their representations of Korean percussion music, there was also a certain degree of latitude in updating or innovating “traditional” music for modern audiences. Seoul’s urban audiences were not necessarily keen on sitting through hours-long performances of noisy and rustic p’ungmul. Nor could performance venues like the Space Theater even accommodate such large performing forces. One significant change made by the SamulNori quartet—which will be discussed at length in chapter 2—was the distillation and adaptation of elements drawn from the larger sphere of p’ungmul into a condensed presentational format.
While this recontextualized indoor setting of the samul instruments would vex p’ungmul purists later on, the principal motivation behind the SamulNori project ultimately echoed the Konggan ethos. This ethos was inscribed in the very pages of the Konggan periodical. Appearing on the title page of a volume in 1976 was a working version of Konggan’s mission statement. The statement—composed in English—underwent extensive revisions over time: “We will think over tradition and history of the arts and various questions on the environment. We will try to help each Korean to know better about his nation and himself. And we will report, record and study the situation in which he lives. We are going to go forth bravely with him to the better future that is desirable to all of us” (Konggan 1976, 103).
In 1989, Konggan had further revised its mission statement, framing its vision in more urgent and global terms. The Konggan Project was no longer relevant for just Koreans; it was also oriented toward the world.
With foremost emphasis on the problems of our environment and on contemporary architecture and art, properly focused in a historical perspective, our evaluations of the past and present day Korea will enable us to understand her better and will forge a powerful vision of a better Korea for all of our readers. What does Korea mean to us here and the rest of the world, or vice versa? In each of our fresh issues, our dear philosophical readers, we attempt and answer with all our emphasis on art, architecture and environment, for when nothing is contemplated about the past, present and future in those fields of human endeavor, life might even prove meaningless. (Konggan 1989, 266)
Delissen aptly describes Kim’s Konggan Project as “Korean history without a historian,” where the assembled team of writers and contributors “strove to elaborate Korean identity through aesthetics and aesthetics through history” (Delissen 2001, 243–44). Besides focusing on art and architecture, Konggan magazine devoted critical attention to traditional Korean music genres, and often featured detailed pictorial essays of village rituals or traditional dance genres. And while most articles were written in Korean, some titles would appear solely in English—with aims to reach a wider readership: “Instrumental Music for Dure [ture: a cooperative labor unit used in Korean farming] in Kosan, Taegu”; “Character of Korean Traditional Music”; and “The Stage of Korean Folk Drama—Ogwangdae nori.” One entire issue from 1975 was devoted to the theme of preserving Korean traditional music (Konggan 1975, vol. 6). And very much in line with the Konggan mission, folklorist Sim Usŏng contributed essays on “Disappearing Heritage” (1971); “What Have We Done, and What Has to Be Done?” (1975); “What Is Gut [kut] (and What Has Been Studied over [sic] It)?” (1980). These examples shine a light on how Konggan presented research on (combined with concerns and hopes for) Korean folk music and culture to its readers. In a similar vein, the SamulNori project engaged in an intensive study of Korean rhythm. For the musicians, this was not so much a scholarly endeavor as it was one driven by a spirit of discovery.
KŎLLIPP’AE P’UNGMUL: A CASE STUDY
Here I present one compelling case for my framing of the SamulNori project. While other examples can be summoned, I highlight this one since it is curiously absent in other studies of SamulNori. Furthermore, it is directly linked to the Space Theater and underscores a key issue in the study and reception of SamulNori.
On September 29, 1980, the Space Theater gave the SamulNori quartet its own billing for the first time. Prior to this, the quartet had performed at the theater under the umbrella of the Minsogakhoe Sinawi (Folk Music “Sinawi”). This concert featured a new member—Lee Kwang Soo [Yi Kwangsu], who replaced the elder of the Choi [Ch’oe] brothers. Lee came from Yesan County in the southern part of Ch’ungch’ŏng Province, and was son to a father who was part of a professional itinerant performance troupe (Lee Kwang Soo 2009, 119–20). He met Kim Yong-bae through their membership in the Seoul-based namsadang troupe that Sim Usŏng had fostered in the 1970s.31 Initially, Kim had approached Lee about the quartet in 1978, but it was not until 1980 that Lee officially joined the group.32
If SamulNori’s premieres of “Uttari p’ungmul” (1978), “Samch’ŏnp’o 12-ch’a 36 karak” (1978), and “Honam udo karak” (1979) were inspired by the musical logic and the inflections of p’ungmul from those respective regions, then the 1980 “Kŏllipp’ae p’ungmul” program laid claim to the namsadang connections of its performers. The namsadang were itinerant troupes of male performers who traveled from village to village during Korea’s middle to late Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910).33 In exchange for food, shelter, and money, the namsadang (translated literally as “male temple group”) performed a variety of entertaining acts for locals: tightrope walking, masked
