By: Sunhong Kim
If you have ever played any kind of musical instrument or sung songs, you might have encountered a moment where you wonder how much musicality you have. Even among music scholars within music scholarship, there have been debates on whether one’s musicality is something that is innate or nurtured (Alerby and Ferm 2005: 178). The former position is called absolute musicality, and the latter is relativistic musicality. That is, absolute musicality underscores one’s natural ability to perform music, whereas relativistic musicality presupposes that musicality can grow in one’s nature. My first-hand experience in discovering my musicality led me to realize that community outreach, musical practices, and a passion for music are the primary determining aspects for one’s musical growth. I advocate for a relativistic musicality to advance musical competence.
This short paper centers on my personal experience of how non-professional musicians or non-culture bearers can discover their own musicality through continued engagement with musical activities. By unpacking my personal practice in teaching Korean percussion instruments from 2022 to 2023 in the US, I argue that relativistic musicality is applicable to performance practices, which has shown to be true in students’ musicality as well as their presentations. Their musicality can be developed through multiple aspects such as performance techniques, continuous capacity to learn, and one’s aspiration. My motivation to work on public musicology is: who gets to decide who has musicality?
First off, there are three major events for me that came to practice public musicology, from obtaining my education in teaching native Korean music to changing my geographical location. Specifically, my geographical shift, from being national to transnational, has gradually influenced my own idea about musicality and my circumstances convince me to support relativistic musicality, rather than absolute musicality. I will narrate how I reached my musical competence in the Republic of Korea (hereafter, South Korea), and how that musical competence became a way of taking initiative to start teaching native Korean music in a different country other than South Korea. Then, seeing those who perform native Korean music without the exposure to it during their earlier education in my first-hand experience helped me to realize that my previous advocacy for absolute musicality was wrong. What matters to measure musicality is not one’s unchangeable status of ethnicity, familial heritage, and geographical attachment but one’s own willingness to learn and the environment where the resources of music (e.g., music score, teaching method, knowledge, etc) are available. What I could do with relativistic musicality was the latter part, where public musicology kicks in.
As a wind multi-instrumentalist with a focus on native Korean music, I taught p’iri (a Korean double-reed instrument) in private lessons back in college until I joined a PhD program in ethnomusicology. I always struggled with what I felt was a lack of musicality as described to me by my acquaintances. When I was learning p’iri during my formative years in secondary school, most of the curriculum consisted of various genres of native Korean music (e.g., court music, folk music, symphonies for Korean instruments, etc.). My harsh self-judgment became a hurdle on my chosen path to becoming a professional musician in Seoul. Although I had made up my mind during secondary school to become a professional musician, my belief in absolute musicality made me question if I had enough talent in spite of my hard work, motivation, and my cultural background as a Korean. I mostly engaged with performance practices of native Korean music by learning court music, folk music dating to pre-partitioned Korea, and contemporary composed ensemble pieces. Although I proved myself by winning second place at the National Gugak Competition (온나라국악경연대회) in 2016 in South Korea, I still felt incompetent even with the accomplishments and recognition I gained in the field. In retrospect, perhaps, I had believed that musicality was related to inherent talent. As a result, I focused on mastering the p’iri’s performance techniques and the quality of p’iri sound rather than finding musicality.
My constant aspiration to perform p’iri by learning pieces for a folk/court music ensemble helped me understand how the repertoires of Korean music have been developed for a melodic instrument, p’iri—despite my disbelief in my own musicality. I kept informed of other instruments’ roles being supportive of the piri’s melodies in ensembles, which is also exemplified in both North Indian music and symphony orchestra. Just as the relationship between conductors and instrumentalists in a symphony orchestra is complementary through knowing their musical roles well, singers and instrumentalists in North Indian music know each other’s parts passively (Brinner 1995: 35). Although each musician cannot actively perform the musical techniques on another’s instrument, they are aware of how other parts function together as one coherent ensemble on stage. Likewise, native Korean music works in a similar way as the p’iri and changgu (double-head hourglass drum) play lead roles in ensembles. While the changgu takes a leading role of one set of rhythmic cycles by deciding the pace and tempo, p’iri takes the melodic line with the rich sound on top of the rhythms that the changgu player sets. These two prominent instruments depend on each other simultaneously.
Thus, playing p’iri helped me to acquire “passive knowledge” (Brinner 1995) as I was aware of how the rhythmic cycles of percussion are carried out by percussion instrumentalists. This passive knowledge is how I could muster the courage to start mentoring a Samulnori percussion ensemble in the US. Although I have not performed Samulnori (a set of four Korean percussion instruments) on a stage as a percussionist, my active position as a p’iri player helped me obtain passive knowledge on percussive instruments which were always present in ensembles.
After I moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan to pursue a doctoral program in ethnomusicology in 2020, what led me to re-engage with native Korean music performance in the US was the need to present native Korean music (Samulnori) at the annual culture show hosted by the Korean American Student Association (KASA) at the University of Michigan on April 22, 2022. Students at KASA wanted not only to learn Korean instruments but to present the music on a concert stage. This was important as it shows that K-pop is not the only Korean music genre. With the support of Nam Center for Korean Studies, I took up a position as a mentor to teach undergraduate students for one semester. It was a good place to test out whether musicality can be nurtured in a location where there is a relative lack of exposure to native Korean music. I taught and arranged easier versions of Korean rhythmic melodies with existing instruments. These instruments were stored in an office at Weiser Hall and had not been touched for more than a year and a half due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They had been left by previous members of Sinaboro (시나브로, “gradually”), an undergraduate student club at the University of Michigan, which was deactivated at the start of the pandemic.
Over the course of three months, I taught them how to play four percussion instruments, kkwaenggwari (a small hand-held gong), buk (a barrel drum), changgu (double-headed hourglass drum), and ching (a big gong); and how to read a box notation (Jeongganbo), etc. I rearranged some rhythmical elements by looking into previous scores that former members of Sinaboro had used and incorporated the melodies from previous scores with those easier melodies to honor the history of Sinaboro’s existence on the Ann Arbor campus since 1998. There are different rhythmic patterns such as chil-chae (lit. seven strokes), yuk-chae (lit. six strokes), byǒldal-gǒri, etc. Despite the origin of Samulnori’s melodies, which are a mixture of several rhythmic patterns from different regions, ch’ilch’ae and yukch’ae are mostly representative of the mid-eastern area, whereas byǒldal-gǒri is from southern east part of South Korea. I combined these patterns together into one piece for Sinaboro, lasting for eight minutes. As an excerpt of the entire repertoire, I include one score that previous Sinaboro members used for the chaanggu part below (Example 1). Example 1 also shows the rhythmic variations created by Sinaboro members.
This example reflects well on their transcription, showing their attempt to make it ‘Korean’ instead of transcribing in Western staff notation. In this box notation, one box represents one beat and the score is read from left to right. In each box, the symbol of Korean words determines softness/loudness, performance techniques for hands, and the volume of each stroke. The highlighted words mean stronger beats. One of the significant changes they made was to replace (marked as highlighted and underlined) by including the word Sinaboro in their chant. Additionally, they used Korean words to describe musical notes instead of symbols such as circle, etc. The chant is sung by members in Korean in between playing the rhythms, and these chants are the highlights of this rhythmic pattern.
Example 1: Byeoldal-geori (score provided by former Sinaboro members)
하늘 보고 별을 따고 땅을 보고 농사짓고
Look at the sky, grab the stars, look at the ground, farm
Ha-neul-bo-go, byeo-reul dda-go, ddang-eul bo-go, nong-sa jit-go
올해에도 대풍이요 내년에도 풍년일세
This year is abundant, so is the next year
O-rae-ae-do, dae-poong-yi-yo, nae-nyun-ae-do poong-nyeon-il-sae
달아 달아 밝은 달아 대낮같이 밝은 달아
Moon, Moon, bright moon like a daylight
Da-ra-da-ra, bal-keun-da-ra, dae-nat-ka-chee, bal-keun-da-ra
어둠속에 불빛이 시나브로 비춰주네!!!!
In the darkness, the light shines Sinaboro
Euh-doom-sok-ae, bool-beet-chi, Si-na-beu-ro bi-cheo-joo-nae
In Example 2 below, I changed the Korean syllables in each box into symbols such as circles, vertical bars, etc., for English speakers. Those symbols are more visually indicative of dynamics by the size of symbols, two hand positions (left, right, or both) for changgu, and grace notes for more detailed rhythmic division in one box.
Example 2: Adapted version of traditional Korean music notation
While preparing to perform this piece in April 2022, I saw how the students who performed at the culture show were able to work on their memorization. Brinner relates that automaticity to one’s consciousness through rote memorization (1995: 38). Likewise, students memorized several rhythmic patterns that I tailored for them through rote memorization. Then they internalized various paces within those patterns. By not depending on the score but memories, students were able to project what was in their mind. Rehearsing for two hours every week helped them memorize rhythmic patterns. These three months of mentoring non-major students further motivated me to reactivate Sinaboro again on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan in the fall of 2022. The students who performed at the culture show were curious about other rhythmic patterns that I had not taught. The Nam Center for Korean Studies at the University of Michigan offered funding for a one-day workshop at the Korean Performing Arts Institute in Chicago in February 2023. I organized an excursion for two days in Chicago and we joined a five-hour workshop by a percussionist, Suwan Choi, who specializes in the original form of Samulnori, p’ungmulnori (farmer’s music). He offered another repertoire of Samulnori, more melodies from the southeastern area of the Korean peninsula. What I did for the students in the group was to continue bringing in resources that they were unable to access on their own. This satisfied their needs at an advanced musical level.
In sum, the rhythmic arrangement that I tailored for the students in Sinaboro helped to foster US students’ musical sensitivities of native Korean percussion. Sinaboro became a place where students could build up their musical competence, practice performance techniques, and pursue their inspiration to further develop their musicality. This community was not just a space for students with Korean heritage, but where anyone with passion, regardless of heritage or age, could grow their musicality through native Korean music. My personal narrative manifests relativistic musicality, which emphasizes the importance of practical engagement and community involvement in shaping musical abilities. What public musicology means to me is that I take some actions to lead, teach, or organize where I am to keep fighting for what I believe in: relativistic musicality.
Bibliography
Alerby, Eva and Cecilia Ferm. 2005. “Learning Music: Embodied Experience in the Life-World.” Philosophy of Music Education Review 13 (2): 177-185.
Brinner, Benjamin Elon. 1995. Knowing Music, Making Music: Javanese Gamelan and the Theory of Musical Competence and Interaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.