US professor ups 'gugak'
During an interview with The Korea Times at her office, Wednesday. / Korea Times photos by Shim Hyun-chul
Hilary Finchum Sung, a professor at Seoul National University, poses with her “haegeum.”
By Park Jin-hai
Many Koreans do not doubt that “gugak,” or traditional Korean music, is distinguishable from other types of music. Yet, just as many people question its popularity both at home and abroad.
Hilary Finchum Sung, 42, a blue-eyed American professor teaching gugak at Seoul National University, has a lot to say about this. She said people often ask her why she came to Korea to study gugak.
Recalling the night she first heard “sinawi” or improvisational ensemble performance during the master of art course at Indiana University in 1996, she said she was totally caught off guard.
“l thought that Korean music would be similar to Chinese or Japanese music. But the timbre was so unique. It was very earthy and raw,” she said.
According to Sung, if Chinese music is bright and flashy and Japanese is subdued and quiet, Korean music sounds like “breathing.” Intrigued by the music, she listened for hours that night.
That experience became her passion and set the course for the rest of her academic years. After she earned a master’s degree in folklore, she went on to earn her PhD, majoring in Ethnomusicology with an emphasis in East Asian Studies at Indiana University. During her course of study, she also learned about the language, literature, sociology and history of Korea.
“When I came here in 1999 to study Korean, I was really shocked to see how indifferent Korean people were toward gugak. It had relatively little standing in Korean society at that time,” she said.
One incident in particular demonstrates how even Koreans abroad often value Western music over native Korean music. When Sung participated in Asian Cultural Day at the Asian Culture Center at Indiana University in 2001, many people were invited to perform traditional music. Children and adults danced or sang representing their countries. But when a Korean child got her turn to perform, she played Mozart on the flute. The coordinator of the event asked Sung, “Is Mozart Korean?”
She thinks this incident says a lot. She feels that to some extent, among many Koreans, gugak is still not perceived highly compared to western classical music.
So, as a non-Korean, she studied for more than 15 years, researching how to make Koreans embrace gugak more easily and put it on par with K-pop music, which currently enjoys global popularity as part of “hallyu” or the Korean wave. She says Psy’s “Gangnam Style” sensation couldn’t have happened if the homegrown popularity of K-pop music hadn’t existed.
She says encouragingly that things have changed drastically since she came here in the 1990s. As early as 2008, when she returned to Korea and talked about what her interests, people seemed to know gugak and asked if she likes Hwang Byung-ki, a “gayageum” (12-string Korean zither) virtuoso. Consequently, Sung says, gugak has a future, which lies in its uniqueness and tradition.
“Nowadays, many musicians perform fusion gugak, which encourages many people to become interested in gugak. But since western musical structures and aesthetics are used in fusion, it can obscure the uniqueness of gugak,” she said.
In her opinion, taking the “haegeum” (two-string fiddle) and playing it like a violin cheapens it. “When you play haegeum, you should show how it can do what a violin cannot.”
Therefore, to make Korean traditional music part of hallyu, she believes, Korea needs to strengthen it domestically. Korean people should take pride in gugak and embrace it wholeheartedly before it can be exported successfully to other countries.
In that sense, her recent attention focuses on the educational part of gugak, because indifference to Korean music among older generations is attributable to the lack of knowledge and exposure to the music.
“Still, gugak education in public schools is sporadic at best. I want to have a system where every student from kindergarten to high school has a music teacher specializing in gugak, so that kids could have some exposure to gugak and appreciate it every year,” she said.
Asked about her role in promoting gugak, she responded that she sees herself as a bridge in many ways because she introduces Korean music to people with little prior knowledge of traditional Korean music.
“Every summer I do workshops and teach classes on Korean music for scholars and students from many different countries, including Korea. A Canadian student from last year’s SNU International Summer Institute Korean music class e-mailed me to say she took a ‘samulnori’ (percussion ensemble) class this spring and she thanked me for introducing her to Korean music. That’s what it’s all about,” she said.