|
Musical director Kolleen Park |
By Han Sang-hee
Staff Reporter
Everybody likes new things. Perhaps it's because human nature is drawn to the new and the different, or the Internet that continuously brings in new ideas, products and culture, but the bottom line is that many yearn for the new and tend to forget their roots.
In Korea, this trend has already under way in various fields, especially music. While pop music continues to reign, traditional music has been pushed back. Various media and performance venues may offer more windows of opportunity, but "gugak," or traditional Korean music," still has a long way to go to attract listeners and further develop as an attractive genre here.
According to musical director Kolleen Park, this phase is natural.
"Wait for another 20 to 30 years. You have to go through it. People leave tradition when they taste new things. They have a taste of it, appreciate the fascination and fantasy, and then come back to their roots. But we're still in the state of experiencing all these new things. We have to wait until this passes," Park said in an interview with The Korea Times.
The 42-year-old gained recognition with her work on some of the top musicals here including "The Last Empress" "Phantom of the Opera" and "Chicago." She's currently traveling back and forth from Seoul to other provinces as musical director with the current "Chicago" tour and hosting Arirang TV's popular show "Heart to Heart."
Never satisfied with pursuing a single profession, Park has studied and worked in various fields, including playing the cello, acting, composing, flying and gugak.
"My sister took Korean dance so I followed her. I always had Korean music in my head because anything you learn young stays with you during the rest of your life," she said.
Moving back and forth between the United States and Korea, she found an interest in gugak, and after learning traditional instruments like the "daegeum" (a large transverse bamboo flute) and "janggu" (an hourglass-shaped drum), she decided to enroll in Korean traditional composition at the Seoul National University (SNU).
"I found elements of Korean music in everything I composed. There was always something traditional and I thought, 'I might as well learn it properly."'
But there was a problem. She wasn't sure if she could get into the school at all. She was at that time a college student in the U.S.
"The school didn't know what to do with me. It took two months just to figure out if I could go to school or not," she said, laughing. But the school and Park worked it out, and she enrolled at SNU, eventually earning her master's degrees.
Traditional composition was just starting to be developed as a course at SNU, so basically Park was in the middle of a shift. It was a time when foreigners were starting to show interest in Korea, and Korea started to introduce its culture through various programs in a more systemized and scholarly manner.
"Korea is the new Korea. I was here at the end of the 1960s and so I have seen it change for the last 40 years. I was here and saw Korea change into what modern Korea is now," Park said.
"The problem about traditional music is that we try to 'museumify' it. We say we have to 'protect' the classics. Leave it alone and let it develop. We try to define it, but we didn't let it develop. It has to go through tough times being mixed with K-pop and taste failure until it finds its own path. But if you keep prohibiting these experiments, you can never find its identity. This is a time when people try out new things. Let gugak go through the course. I think in 30 to 40 years, it will find its own path," she said.
Another point Park made came from concern over development: The lack of good composers in the gugak scene.
"Korean music traditionally doesn't have the idea of composition. It's not like Western music where a composer sits down and composes music. Korean music was not made by someone 500 years ago who sat down and decided to write some music," Park said.
Gugak is mainly comprised of variations, which means the performers continuously improvise during performances.
Most works that exist today trace back to just several pieces that have been handed down over the years. They all come from similar roots, namely traditional music, but lack variety and the opportunity to develop further.
"Even for 'gayageum' works, 99 percent of the structure is basically the same. It's only one percent that makes the difference," she said.
And that one percent difference is commonly made after some 10 to 20 years since it is disrespectful to change your mentor's or history's music to your own taste.
"We have fantastic performers, but we don't have proper composers. We are a world of performers, but we need composers to balance it out.
"We've been accepting other cultures so fast, we didn't have the time to work on composition ourselves. People are now starting to understand the concept of creating something new. It's going to take 30 to 40 years for gugak to catch up.
"It will happen," Park said smiling.
"We just need time."
sanghee@koreatimes.co.kr |
|
경찰, 이태원 등 외국인 밀집지역 특별관리
