P'ungmul: South Korean Drumming and Dance

by Nathan Hesselink

Overview

Composed of a core set of two drums and two gongs, p’ungmul is a South Korean tradition of rural folk percussion. Steeped in music, dance, theater, and pageantry, but centrally focused on rhythm, such ensembles have been an integral part of village life in South Korea for centuries, serving as a musical accompaniment in the often overlapping and shifting contexts of labor, ritual, and entertainment.
 
The first book to introduce Korean drumming and dance to the English-speaking world, Nathan Hesselink’s P’ungmul offers detailed descriptions of its instrumentation, dance formations, costuming, actors, teaching lineages, and the complexities of training. Hesselink also evaluates how this tradition has taken on new roles and meanings in the twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, investigating the interrelated yet contested spheres of history, memory, government policy, grassroots politics, opportunities for musical transmission, and performance practices and aesthetics.
 
P’ungmul offers those interested in ethnomusicology, world music, anthropology, sociology, and Asian studies a special glimpse into the inner workings of a historically rich, artistically complex, and aesthetically and aurally beautiful Korean musical and dance tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226330938
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	07/03/2006
Series:	Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Nathan Hesselink is professor of ethnomusicology at the University of British Columbia. He is the editor of Contemporary Directions: Korean Folk Music Engaging the Twentieth Century and Beyond.

Read an Excerpt

P'ungmul

South Korean Drumming and Dance

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By Nathan Hesselink The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2006 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-33093-8

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Chapter One

Assets and Contexts

A fragile South Korean nation emerged in the 1950s, the result of more than three decades of Japanese occupation (1910-45) and a devastating civil war (1950-53). The country had witnessed perhaps the largest-scale destruction of Korean culture-both material and human-the peninsula had ever known, the land and its people aching from the almost unbearable loss. The blow dealt by the Japanese was uneven and ambivalent in its effects on traditional music making, since official decrees restricting or even banning outright specific performing arts were frequently ignored or overlooked (Robinson 1988: 80-81; Killick 2001: 29-33). Authorities apparently had less trouble with professionalized genres in confined institutional settings, as attested by the existence of organizations such as the Choson chongak chonsupso (Korean "Proper Music" Training Institute), the Choson songak yon'guhoe (Korean Vocal Music Association), and the various female entertainer institutes, or kisaeng kwonbon (Song, Bangsong, 2001; Sung, Ki-Ryun 2001). In spite of distrust exhibited toward much of p'ungmul activity, owing to its close ties with shamanistic ritual (a prejudice held over from previous Neo-Confucianrule), it nevertheless survived in pockets through the efforts of such native folklorists as Song Sokha, who promoted p'ungmul performance contests in Seoul, or the American advisor Ely Haimowitz, who beginning in 1946 coordinated an annual "farmers' music" festival (see Yang, Jongsung 2003: 24; Armstrong 2003: 77).

The Korean War was more balanced in the scope of its devastation, bringing desolation to nearly all forms of musical practice regardless of historical or social-class background. Yet afterward the real threat posed to folk performing arts was a modernizing and urbanizing general population that rapidly came to view folk and/or traditional culture as "backward" and "superstitious" and that increasingly embraced anything foreign (Park, Chan E. 2001: 121-25; Hesselink 2002). Officials and academics perceived the situation as dire enough for the South Korean government to promulgate the Cultural Asset Preservation Law (Munhwajae pohobop) in 1962 in an attempt both to investigate Korea's cultural roots and to preserve and promote its heritage (Howard 1990: 241-54; Munhwajae kwalliguk 1995; Maliangkay 1999; Yang, Jongsung 2003). Ironically modeled on the parallel system established earlier by the Japanese, this document focused on both "tangible" cultural assets, such as historical sites, natural monuments, and folklore materials, and "intangible" cultural assets (muhyong munhwajae), a category that subsumed traditional performing arts and crafts and the experts who transmitted or performed them. Largely unspoken in this legislation was the emphasis on the folk performing arts: eight of the first ten music and/or dance genres designated originated in the countryside (see Munhwajae yon'guhoe 1999 for a sample listing of such assets).

Potential assets were and are researched by a Cultural Asset Committee (Munhwajae wiwon) made up of members from various academic disciplines, who are required to travel to the particular site and write up a "report of investigation" (chosa pogoso). The account is then reviewed by the committee in conjunction with the minister of culture, who together are given the power to accept or reject the motion for designation. The stated goal of this process is to locate the standard or "original" form of an art (wonhyong), though unofficially the item should reflect well on a sense of Korean identity and be relatively easy to promote. The previously ubiquitous influence of p'ungmul among the populace made it an early and obvious choice for consideration as a cultural asset, and it was so designated in 1966. Officially known as Important Intangible Cultural Asset no. 11, it was initially recognized under the title Nongak Shibich'a (Twelve Sections or Movements of "Farmers' Music"), with two lead soe (small gong) players from South Kyongsang province being designated individual "holders" (poyuja) of the tradition (Pak Honbong and Yu Kiryong 1965: 364-67). The name was revamped in the mid-1980s to simply Nongak ("farmers' music") to accommodate regional variations (Korea is divided into provinces, which are further divided into counties).

Five p'ungmul groups are currently recognized as Asset no. 11, listed in order of their date of designation: Chinju Samch'onp'o Nongak, from South Kyongsang province (1966); P'yongt'aek Nongak, from Kyonggi province (1985); Iri Nongak, from North Cholla province (1985); Kangnung Nongak, from Kangwon province (1985); and Imshil P'ilbong Nongak, from North Cholla province (1988). Each group is considered the representative model of a particular regional style distinguished by contrasts in rhythmic patterns, costuming, instrumentation, and performance philosophy, as seen in map 1.1: P'yongt'aek for uttari ("upper leg [or bridge]" = A); Iri for Honam udo (Cholla province "right side [or way]" = B); Imshil P'ilbong for Honam chwado (Cholla province "left side [or way]" = C); Chinju Samch'onp'o for yongnam ("south ridge" = D); and Kangnung for yongdong ("east ridge" = E). North Cholla is noteworthy in that it is the only province that claims two distinct approaches to p'ungmul, and in that its designations are determined according to geomantic principles (looking south from the "center," or the capital, Seoul, udo [right] means "west," and chwado [left] means "east"). Until only recently p'ungmul was primarily a male performance art, but North Cholla also distinguished itself by introducing in 1958 the first all-female drumming organizations (Kwon, Do Hee 2003: 185; an early photo of such a performance in the provincial capital of Chonju is found in Ch'oe Sangsu 1988: 302).

This chapter will begin with an examination of the pivotal field report written in the early 1980s that led to p'ungmul's eventual name change as a cultural asset and its subsequent expansion in scope. The discussion will then move to a treatment of the historical and social factors that contributed to my two principal drumming mentors' decisions to take up a life of p'ungmul-as revealed in personal interviews-including their respective relationships to the cultural asset system. Though the 1962 law and its aftereffects have fueled tremendous criticism of its policies and procedures, the fact remains that without such legislation p'ungmul most likely would have never returned with such force and vigor, an observation I heard time and time again from performers of all walks and regional loyalties.

THE 1982 FIELD REPORT ON TRADITIONAL MUSIC IN NORTH CHOLLA PROVINCE

In 1982 a field report was compiled by a team of researchers from the affiliated Cultural Asset Research Institute (Munhwajae yon'guso) under the title "Research on the Actual State of Traditional Music in North Cholla Province" (Yi Hogwan et al. 1982). Though technically not a "report of investigation"-this document was not written expressly for the purposes of designating a particular tradition or individual-it nevertheless exposed the richness and variety of traditional music genres active in North Cholla, a discovery that planted the seeds for the future consideration of a number of organizations as cultural assets. Of particular salience to this chapter are the report's twenty-three entries on p'ungmul, as shown in table 1.1 (the term nongak is used in the report; see discussion of terminology below). Taken as a whole, these entries are unique in their range and depth owing to their detailed accounts of specific groups and performers from a cross-section of an entire province (see map 1.2). Until this time (and since), treatments of p'ungmul tended to either deal in generalities (Kwon Huidok 1981, 1995; Kim Uhyon 1984; Ryu Muyol 1986; Chong Pyongho 1994) or to examine individual groups without reference to the surrounding regions (No Poksun 1994; Pak Yongjae 1992).

The ethnomusicologist Keith Howard once wrote: "To understand ... terms in [their] local context, and to appreciate the semantic implications of other, regional terms, is to begin to understand Korean folk music" (1990: 27). My use of the word p'ungmul up to this point has masked the existence of a constellation of related terminology surrounding this artistic practice. Nongak, the term used by the initial cultural asset report and name designation, is a combination of two Sino-Korean lexigraphs meaning literally "farming music" or "farmers' music" and was the term that dominated academia until the 1980s. Since that time, however, it has come to be hotly contested, largely for its perceived historical associations. In the last two decades many performers and academics alike have directly linked the genesis of the term nongak to the Japanese occupation, claiming the choice was born from a sinister motivation by the authorities to limit this activity to just "music" by "farmers" in order to disguise or erase its much broader use and meaning among the colonized (Yang Chinsong [1980?]: 11; Kim Inu 1993: 113; Chu Kanghyon 1996a). Unfortunately, this community is not in agreement as to the historical source of this proposition: a number of camps gravitate to either the 1931 Choson ui yonjung haengsa (Annual Functions of Korea), credited to a Japanese academic by the name of O Ch'ong (Yi Songjae 1999: 95), or the 1936 Purakche (Village Festivals; Kim Tongwon 2003: 52). Keith Howard has made these claims further problematic by pointing to the existence of some discussion of the introduction of the word nongak in the 1870s, as well as the 1902 claim by Kim Chongho (1984: 169). Both usages date to before the occupation-though Howard himself could find it in print only from the later date of 1937 (Howard 1990: 28).

In nongak's stead is the term p'ungmul, itself also a composite of two Sino-Korean characters meaning "wind" (p'ung) and "object" or "matter" (mul). Despite the absence of historical sources establishing its origin and meaning, according to the recollections of many older generation performers (captured in print in the translated report below), it apparently was the preferred generic term for rural drumming and dance in the early and mid-twentieth century. (One interesting theory, which I learned of in an interview with the folk music scholar Yi Pohyong, proposes that wind in Chinese legend was believed to stir humans to sing and dance, hence the name "wind objects." Yi also noted the use of the compound p'ungak [literally, "wind music"] to refer to dance music and outdoor music as well [1995: personal communication].) Perhaps the best argument for using p'ungmul instead of nongak-and the one to which I subscribe in this book-is an etymological one: as a value-neutral designation, it avoids the danger of obscuring the depth and variety of social functions and participants intertwined with such music and dance. As the report that follows will show, p'ungmul in all its guises encompasses men and women from various vocational backgrounds, in addition to ritual, confrontational, and entertainment contexts separate and distinct from communal labor and/or farming (though these last two are central to the tradition). Although it is difficult to gauge officially, nongak seems to be falling into disuse.

One more related term often found in conjunction with the word p'ungmul is kut, a concept in general Korean parlance broadly inclusive of any activity involving shamanistic ritual. In the context of drumming and dance, the word or suffix kut/-gut takes on the additional meaning of "performance" (noted in Howard 1990: 29), a distinction blurred by the fact that ensembles often perform rituals that in nature often parallel those of shamanism. One can justifiably argue, however, that ritual by definition cannot exist without performance: as the anthropologist Laurel Kendall observed, kut is "high entertainment" (1987: ix). For the remainder of my text, therefore, I will take the liberty of translating kut as either performance, ritual, or performance-ritual, depending on the specific context.

In addition to the standard use of p'ungmul, kut, and/or p'ungmulgut to denote general drumming and dance activity in this report, there are as well many context-specific terms (as the quote from Howard alluded to). We see, as examples, the use of kollip (fund-raising) p'ungmul in Kimje county (see, in this chapter, entry 2c); chongwol kollip or madang palbi (January fund-raising p'ungmul), sanshinje (village ritual p'ungmul), kimmaegi (weeding p'ungmul), and multurogagi (carrying water) nongak in Muju county (4a and 4b); tapkyo (bridge visiting) nongak in Chongup county (8a); chiwa palki (literally, "treading on the roof tiles" p'ungmul) in Koch'ang county (9a); chishim (farming) p'ungjang in Okku county (11a); and kisebae (New Year's-greeting flag p'ungmul) and nonggi ppaekki ssaum ("steal-the-farming-banner fight" p'ungmul) in Iksan county (12a and 12c). Various activities may also be coupled with the word or suffix kut/-gut (ritual and/or performance): mae (village cleansing) kut, mangwol ("moon of hope") kut, and nonmaegi (rice-paddy weeding) kut in Muju county (4a); pom sulmegi (spring wine) kut and isa (moving) kut in Namwon county (7a and 7b); ture (communal labor) kut in Chongup county (8a); mun (gate) kut in Koch'ang county (9a); and mun (gate) kut, tangsan (greeting) kut, and saem (well) kut in Iksan county (12b). In nearly all of the villages researched mae kut was performed at the end of December, chongwol kollip in early January, and kollip p'ungmul on a need-specific basis. It is interesting to note that the above dates-really the majority of p'ungmul events-continue to correspond with the lunar, and hence agricultural, calendar.

The passages I have chosen to translate in the following sections, shown in bold in table 1.1, represent entries that specifi cally address social contexts accompanied by the performance of p'ungmul. The numbering is based on table 1.1; gaps represent entries that only documented names of performers. The translations for regional subdivisions used throughout the text include -to/-do for province, shi for city (metropolitan), -kun/-gun for county, myon for subcounty, -ri/-li/-ni for village, up for town, purak/burak for hamlet, and -tong/-dong for district. The term maul is translated as "village" as well, though it represents a social unit, not a political one (Pak and Gamble 1975: 24).

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Entry 2a: Iri Nongak Group

In Iri, p'ungmul was often done on a large scale centered on the village of Saeshil. In recent times, the Saeshil Village Nongak Group has collected together musicians from the city of Iri and the nearby counties of Iksan and Kimje to form the Iri Nongak Group. In 1981 Iri Nongak entered the p'ungmul tournament held in North Cholla province and won. Today it is composed of around thirty members, including Kim Mundal (lead small gong [soe]), Yi Sunam (second soe), Paek Won'gi (lead large gong [ching]), Kim Hyongsun (lead hourglass drum [changgo]), Kim Kaptong (second changgo), and Kim Panghyon (lead hand-held drum [sogo]).

Entry 2c: Kim Mundal Nongak

Kim Mundal (b. 1909) today lives in Kajon village, Paekku subcounty, Kimje county, where he was born. Starting at the age of seventeen, Kim studied lead soe for three years in Kimje with the lead soe player Kim Tosam; when he was thirty-seven, he played second soe for eight years under the lead soe player Kim Kyongch'on (a native of Puan) in Kimje's Paekku Nongak. After Kim Kyongch'on's death, Kim Mundal was active as Paekku Nongak's lead soe player: he directed the group, took them touring around the various provinces, and engaged in fund-raising [kollip] as well as participated in p'ungmul tournaments [see figure 1.1]. Kim also led female p'ungmul in the 1960s, when such groups were prosperous. He has recently been directing Iri Nongak.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from P'ungmul by Nathan Hesselink Copyright © 2006 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Author's Note
Introduction: On Visiting
1. Assets and Contexts
2. Historical Texts
3. By and For "The People"
4. Transmitted by Mouth, Taken In by Heart
5. The Repertoire
6. Timely Reflections
Appendix: Individuals Cited
Notes
Bibliography
Index-Glossary

Editorial Reviews

In a style detailed yet accessible, Nathan Hesselink’s P’ungmul leads us to a sense of the ways in which participation in this rural percussion tradition fit into the flow of contemporary Korean life. Distinguishing between p’ungmul’s various contexts as a form of entertainment, ritual, and labor, Hesselink addresses performance aesthetics, ensemble interrelationships, and ensemble-audience expectations. Other highlights in this study include his explanation of the incredible array and succession of patterns that constitute performances, clarification of right and left playing styles, and extensive translations of interviews as well as narratives of his mentors. This book is an important addition to the burgeoning study of Korean music beyond Korea.”—Bonnie C. Wade, University of California, Berkeley

Bonnie C. Wade

Written with authority and sensitivity, P’ungmul offers an intimate understanding of Korea through one of the country’s most ubiquitous music and dance traditions. Nathan Hesselink reveals his profound respect and knowledge for the music and musicians by providing effective channels through which Korean musicians can speak of and for themselves. By translating and interpreting oral interviews with musicians and literary sources that have influenced their musicianship, he enables readers to delve into the formation of their thought processes and begin to approach an understanding of their worldviews. Textual sources on music come alive through Hesselink’s own experiences with the tradition, and in this way, he projects South Korean drumming and dance as a vibrant and creative expressive culture.”—Tong Soon Lee, Emory University

Tong Soon Lee

"A great achievement. [The book] is written in a very accessible style and offers a wealth of unique insights and accounts regarding the tradition and practice of p'ungmal in contemporary Korean society. . . .Hesselink manages to maintain an engaging narrative that incorporates many interesting (and often funny) anecdotes."

Asian Ethnology - Roald Maliangkay

"This monograph is especially valuable for its translations of literary sources and oral accounts from South Korean scholars and drummers. . . . An evocative portrait of a lively local scene of p'ungmal practice that is often presented as a romanticized imaginary of a national South Koprean tradition."

Ethnomusicology - Yoonjah Choi

A great achievement. [The book] is written in a very accessible style and offers a wealth of unique insights and accounts regarding the tradition and practice of p'ungmal in contemporary Korean society. . . .Hesselink manages to maintain an engaging narrative that incorporates many interesting (and often funny) anecdotes.

— Roald Maliangkay

Asian Ethnology

This monograph is especially valuable for its translations of literary sources and oral accounts from South Korean scholars and drummers. . . . An evocative portrait of a lively local scene of p'ungmal practice that is often presented as a romanticized imaginary of a national South Koprean tradition.

— Yoonjah Choi

Ethnomusicology