"Classic" Korean Music

Korean classical music is very complex, and rests on a history longer than the age of my nation.

I was recently invited to a classical Korean music concert on the Ewha campus that included (and you will hear in the videos):

• The Gayageum, a zither-like instrument that can have 13, 17, 18, 21, 22, or 25 strings.
• The Haegeum, best described as a vertical fiddle with two strings, played with a bow.
• The Daegeum, a large bamboo transverse flute with buzzing membrane that gives it a special timbre.
• The Janggu, double-headed hourglass-shaped drum generally played with one stick and one hand.

The music professor in charge of the concert was KIM, Yusun, pictured here with me after the concert. She holds a Ph.D. in Korean Traditional Music. I received specific permission from her to post these videos.

Musical selection #1 is a calm, reflective and peaceful triptych, pieces played in the royal palace. 

Musical selection #2 is a surprise! Mozart's Concert for Flute, Harp and Orchestra (K.299), arranged for Western flute, gayageum and piano.

Still with me? Number three is a beautiful Arirang Medley (I recently blogged on this song).

Finally, a North Korean Gayageum music piece called "The Spring of Choso"

Thank you for considering Korean music!

Marc

The Long Denial: Truth Delayed, and Truth Denied

The Long Denial:

Truth Delayed &Truth Denied

The need to let suffering speak is a condition of all truth. For suffering is objectivity that weighs upon the subject. -Theodor Adorno, 1966

The Comfort Houses were our Killing Fields. -survivor of forced sex slavery by Japan in WWII, 2016

To politics falls the tasks of taking care of the present; and history is the act of remembering the past in the present. Both are art forms. 

Politics oftentimes finds history to be inconvenient truths, especially when current political chaos is rooted in history. As I write this (July 2016) in Seoul, several current events vie for our political attention, and because they intersect with history and memory, we ever-revisit them because the two-way conversation between the past and present is missing.

(1) The epidemic of US law actually failing, if not outright killing, African Americans is a clear-cut case of a heated political situation not willing to listen to the full sonic forces of U.S. history. Our chaotic story of racism is never fully addressed on countless levels, from the personal to the social, the economic to the political. To pull just one thread of a story of racism (and its denial) and hear just it without hearing the justice in the full range of other stories, is to wind up today in the USA with "Black Lives Matter" seen as an enemy of the status quo maintainers. As long as the full range of stories remain untold or denied, there will be no peace. Guaranteed.

(2) Here in Korea, among the many unheard stories, are 50,000 - 300,000 persons' histories that began, for our purposes, when they were teen-aged girls. Japan was the ruler of this country, and in World War Two its military strategy was to become a world power. We know how that ended. Along the way, however, acts of war require often unspeakable crimes.

They were called "Comfort Women" -- teen-aged Korean girls forcibly or deceptively ("You'll get a job at a place like Paradise.") taken from their homes, shipped to front lines across Asia, and forced into sexual slavery in Japanese "Comfort Stations". Sexual violence - rape - was a military strategy used by the Japanese.

Above and below:
Statue dedicated to "Comfort Women" of Korea outside the main gate of Ewha Womans University, Seoul

Japan lost the war. And from these surviving women, there was shame, silence and secrecy. Until 1991... 

For these fifty years, I have lived, by bearing and again bearing the unbearable. For fifty years, I have had a heavy, painful feeling, but kept thinking in my heart about telling my experience some day ... As I try to speak now, my heart pounds against my chest, because what happened in the past was something extremely unconscionable ... Why does the Japanese government tell such a lie to deny its knowledge of the comfort women system? Actually I was made into a comfort woman, and I am here alive. -Kim Hak-Soon-Source

Thus the log jam of historical secrecy broke open into ... politics. The political tilt of Japan since the war, and still today, is to deny culpability and apologize. (Maybe the Japanese feel Nagasaki and Hiroshima afford them this privilege?). Instead, Japan waits out the deaths of their former sex slaves (average age: 89), perhaps hoping that when the last survivor dies, their voices will re-enter history and leave the political field.

• That waiting takes place every Wednesday outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul (Click for images here.)
• That waiting takes place in an untold number of private places across Asia where former comfort women (Korean and other nationalities) still live in secret and in shame.
• That waiting takes place at The House of Sharing near Seoul, where 60 other Ewha students, professors and I visited yesterday.

The waiting game is political: (1) In 2012 Japanese Prime Minister Abe said before the Diet that "there was no evidence that the 'comfort women' were abducted or taken by force."

(2) In 2013, the placement of comfort women memorials in Korea was quoted to be in "conflict with the views of the Japanese Government."

(3) In 2015 Prime Minister Abe said that "Japanese military 'comfort women' issue is not a political or diplomatic problem.

(4) In December 2015, an "agreement" occurred between Japan and Korea, whereby Japan acknowledged almost everything except their culpability, offering apologies and remorse for "immeasurable and painful experiences" and "incurable physical and psychological wounds." But for critics of the deal, Prime Minister Abe’s apology statement was not specific or convincing enough. He did not acknowledge the extent of official Japanese military involvement in the forced prostitution program nor detail the specific atrocities committed by the Japanese military.

A good video response to that "apology" by the survivors is just below. 

(5) Japan also refuses to include their stories in public school history textbooks. 

It felt a little bizarre to sing and dance with these survivors yesterday, but as I wrote in the last blog, the untying of "Han" might-need to include the arts. Here is a video I shot yesterday.

Maybe a "condition of truth" is to let suffering sing, and dance.

Full-spread documentary on the Comfort Women is just below; every one of its 52 minutes is good and worthy. Click even if
you have just five minutes right now: 

Thank you for reading, and Considering Korea.

What are ARIRANG and HAN?

When I sing Arirang, I always feel at ease. It's like I carry my own home wherever I go. -Jazz vocalist NA, Yun Seon

I have mentioned both the traditional song Arirang (unofficial national anthem of Korea, North or South) and the idea of Han (feelings of unsolvable pain, loss or guilt) before in this blog. Why these two Korean words together? 

Han, first.

However, this blog just can't do it: the printed word alone does not bring the non-Korean reader anywhere close to the understanding of Han that a Korean will share with this concept. Who in the readership has had their country repeatedly invaded and colonized by foreign imperial forces? (Probably none.) Who among us has truly had their head forced underwater continually (and for generations) and by ever-ready forces of class hierarchy, or race, or gender (Perhaps a few.)

Han is a most difficult concept to explain in this antiseptic blog setting. So I must ask forgiveness; to translate Han (like key words of any language) robs it of its culturally embedded meaning. This is not a put-down of my readers, but I doubt the long- and out-standing sorrow, rancor, regret, grief, persecution, injustice, lamentation, and reproach that is Han has made personal visits to many of our lives. I speak of such feelings that so marinate in the active and passive recipes of oppressive life until they become the very breath, blood and soul-ache of a person, a family, a clan, or even a nation. Han is the collective trauma that one wakes up with every morning, that gets no resolution in the waking hours, nor does its visitation in one's dreams bring relief. 

Even though rooted in the historical, han has modern and universal applications. Han is experienced by the anyone marginalized, by the single parent struggling to support children, by the bullied student, by the worker with an unfair boss.

Occasionally there are reprieves of joy, release and lightness of being. But these are not as frequent as the daily assignments of Han. 

From such a cultural crucible, one can only imagine the effect that the psychological landscape of Han has made upon the arts: painting, dance, music, and songs. To resolve, sublimate and "untie" Han is a task of such arts. To name something with art is hope to endure. It is a mercy in the ever-present shadow. To accompany Han with artistic expressions is to share Han collectively. To share means to survive.

Thus, Arirang, the second term of this blog.

Let's first listen to it, one of four versions:

1. Jazz musician George Winston

2. Yuna Kim the figure skater competing to the song

3. Simple and traditional

4. If you view only one link, THIS is it! This video gives history, context and a sense of the layers of meaning attached to Airirang.

Lyrics are diverse and thus many interpretations abound. Here is one:

Here is the score of the most popular version today.

A movie called "Arirang" from 1926 is now thought to be irretrievably lost. It concerned a freedom fighter from the 1919 rebellion against Japan in Korea (Japan was the colonizing, imperial power in Korea from 1905 - 1945). This commemorative stamp is from that movie.

For good reasons the song Arirang was selected in 2012 by UNESCO as is an "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" from South Korea, and in 2014 as the same Cultural Heritage from North Korea. The UNESCO video from the North Korean citation is well worth the time.

This blog will have more on Han soon, in relation to the group of so-called "Comfort Women" created within South Korea. Until then, know of my thanks for your reading.