Yale Community Experiences the Sounds of Korea at a Gayageum Workshop and Performance
Music offers a way to connect languages, cultures, and experiences. One traditional Korean instrument, the gayageum, embodies this connection through its distinct expressive sound and deep cultural roots.
Three accomplished musicians from Korea led a workshop on the history and culture of the gayageum instrument for an audience of predominantly Korean language students and language lectors. The talk was given in Korean, translated in real time by Sophia Lee, the Council’s Program Coordinator. Senior Lector II Angela Lee-Smith hosted the event with the Council on East Asian Studies.
The oral presentation was led by Jongchan Park, with accompanying musical demonstrations by Yeseul Yoon and Jeongeun Park. The three met while studying in the same year at Seoul National University and have been playing together for over ten years.
“We think of gayageum as a plate that holds Korean society and changes with it over time,” Jongchan Park said. He encouraged audience members to reconsider their typical associations with Korea through a deeper understanding of the instrument. Park told a series of stories detailing five facets of the gayageum’s story: humans, history, instrument, scenery and heart.
Humans
“We spend so much time together that we are like family now,” Park said. “We can recognize each other by the sound of breathing alone.”
Though it is a string instrument, playing the gayageum does involve an element of breath control. In the 6th century, when it was first developed in Korea, scholars saw playing the gayageum as a way to gather scattered thoughts and cultivate character. Through deep breathing techniques, musicians restrained themselves from showing emotion in their music to produce the “stoic, majestic sound, [that they were] aiming for.”
History
Over time, and in part due to Western influence, Korean interest in expressing emotion in music started to grow. To accommodate a wider range of notes and match the quicker rhythm of the time, more strings were added, doubling the count from twelve to twenty-five. Musicians started experimenting with traditional Nonghyeon (pressing down on the left side of the instrument) to imitate human crying and laughter.
Park explained that King Sejong the Great, of the 15th-century Joseon Dynasty, standardized written notation for music and was rumored to have perfect pitch. Park said that the king exerted his authority through music: “Bringing about order in music is how he brought about order in the world.”
Instrument
The gayageum was designed to symbolize the world itself. The traditional design features twelve strings, representing the number of months in a year. The strings represent the sky, while the anjok, or wooden bridges, holding up the strings represent the people. The long, wooden plate that the anjok rests on represents the earth. The bottom, external-facing side of the instrument has carved shapes for sound to escape through, representing the sun, moon, and clouds.
Scenery
Next, Yeseul Yoon and Jeongeun Park demonstrated the distinct “dialects of sound” of four core regions in Korea: the center, south, east, and north.
Center: Home to Seoul, the capital of South Korea, Central gayageum music mimics the speech patterns of the city’s people. Jongchan Park described it as restrained in emotion, but pure, cheerful, and definitive. It employs a five-note scale to create soft, lyrical melodies in keeping with traditional folk music.
South: A “completely different sound,” Southern gayageum music is more dramatic, made distinct by a wide vibrato created by “shaking” a note while going lower and “bending” while going higher.
East: The East is characterized by tall, rugged mountains, mimicked by a series of cascading notes Park described as “falling from the top of the mountain to the bottom of a valley.”
North: The poignant sound of the North and Northwest possesses more of a nasally quality and a thinner vibrato.
Heart
Finally, Park discussed the Korean spirit in relation to its history as a nation that has experienced thousands of years of foreign invasion, war, and poverty.
He introduced the term han (한), an untranslatable cultural concept which represents a deep, collective feeling of grief and sorrow, mixed with resilience and perseverance.
“Korean traditional music starts slowly, comforting the sorrow, and as it goes faster it gathers energy and excitement, ending in joyous celebration,” Park said. “This power that turned tears into laughter is what allowed Koreans to survive all of these years.”
“After today, we hope Korean music will remain in your hearts as something with deeper emotion.”
Following the talk, audience members were invited to come up to the stage to get a closer look at the gayageums and play the instruments themselves. Yeseul Yoon and Jeongeun Park showed participants how to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” drumming up interest for the following evening’s musical performance.
The Council on East Asian Studies provides an interdisciplinary forum for academic exploration and exchange related to the study of China, Japan, and Korea. Through lectures, cultural events, workshops, and more, the Council has promoted education about East Asia at Yale for over sixty years. See their website for more information regarding the Council’s offerings, including their Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) and Master of Arts (M.A.) programs.
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