David Tizzard is a professor at Seoul Women’s University, holds a PhD in Korean Studies, and hosts the Korea Deconstructed podcast. He has lived and worked in Seoul for more than two decades. Reach him at datizzard@swu.ac.kr.
Lee Hee-moon: shaman of Seoul
Courtesy of Lee Hee-moon's Instagram
By David A. Tizzard
Many find gugak difficult to enjoy. Hard to understand. It feels slow and opaque. Perhaps we are too modern for it. Or perhaps we’ve grown used to music that does most of the work for us.
But, if you are searching for something that is Korean, something that sings to the soul of this nation, the wrinkles and warts of this culture, you needn’t look much further. For Koreans love singing. And the song of the people is, quite literally, "minyo."
This week I was invited to a spell-binding event. Part concert, part ritual, part cultural cosplay. A performance by famed singer Lee Hee-moon at the National Theatre of Korea. He began in the shadows. A dark staged flanked by six musicians dressed in all white revealed a hint of a silhouette. There, at the back, you could just make out what seemed like a towering figure. A gat adorned the head. The sleeves hung low. The shoes high. It was inhuman almost. Made all the more indescribable by the voice that emanated from the darkness. We stared into the abyss looking for the source of the sound. It almost felt like it was coming from the past.
That you hear Lee before you see him shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. He has become one of the most recognizable voices in the world of traditional Korean music, propelled to international fame by the incredibly popular gender-bending upbeat psychedelic sounds of "SsingSsing" and a Tiny Desk concert that has 10 million views. It is always interesting to note how any foreigner with an interest in Korean music and culture knows "SsingSsing" yet, at the same time, none of my Korean university students or friends do. It has achieved immense popularity abroad, and yet here the audience was much smaller.
But together, despite our size, we listened. Lee’s voice filling the room. A somber lament. Rising through the octaves in intervals that were as unexpected as they were uncomfortable. There was no autotune to hide behind. Just the sound of minyo — Korean folk music — and the tradition of expression. Not singing into the wind or waterfalls tonight, but rather the theatre.
The word minyo is originally a loan term, arriving from the German ‘volkslied’ via Japan. One of the earliest usages in Korean dates to the mid-1910s. By the mid-1930s, it was described in a newspaper like this: “Minyo come from the masses. They are songs passed down from the distant past, without known composers, and we do not know when they were created. To talk about their creation is very difficult. ... They are songs which we love deep down in our hearts; the reason we appreciate them is their deep roots.”
And people certainly did enjoy it. While K-pop is known for its lightsticks and fan chants, and international touring musicians regularly speak of the “daechang” (loud Korean singing), traditional music is the origin of all this: the "chu-im-sae." This is the technical terms for the exclamations and whoops that come from the drummer or the audience during a performance. From all around me in the theatre I heard different people let out a “jalhanda” (good job) as the evening progressed. One man behind me kept producing a low baritone bass note to accompany the music. It certainly wasn’t a night for sitting quietly on one’s hands but for shouting, and yelling.
The elderly women clapped gleefully in unison. Everything was in three. It was a waltz writ large. A galloping quality. Far removed from the 4/4 of modern pop music. And everyone seemed so friendly, welcoming. They all asked if I was coming back next time once the performance was eventually over. You would be forgiven for thinking it was a church at some point.
But if minyo are the folk songs of the past, the grit and grime of the commoner, why were all those in attendance seemingly closer to the "yangban" of the present? The National Theatre is a sanitized space, far from the bustling marketplaces or the rice paddies where these songs first took breath. So seeing this once apparently “low" art form of the masses consumed by a relatively "high" audience felt like a strange form of class tourism at times. Was it a genuine search for roots, or a safe, curated nostalgia for a struggle the modern person no longer has to endure? I kept wondering what it would have been like to witness all of this outside under the hot April sun of the 1700s, my body aching from slave labor, and makkoli burning my throat. Instead I clapped and shouted in my Italian shirt and felt the cool air conditioning soothe us.
Lee complicates this comfort. To classify him as merely a singer is a mistake; he functions more as a modern-day shaman — the one assigned to take the people on a trip. The master of ceremonies. Though the use of a gendered male term would miss the point as the entire thing was so queer coded you might forgive yourself for thinking it was San Francisco rather than Seoul. Lee takes the history of the oppressed, the queer, and forces it into this prestigious space. The sexuality and gender of the evening was continually ambiguous — all spectrum and sound. Maybe that’s why the women loved it. It felt gay and safe?
Jocelyn Clark describes Lee as possessing a “lava lamp quality,” floating between the eum and yang, the high and the low. He subverts things, reminding the audience that the soul they are searching for was born from the very people their ancestors likely looked down upon. He haunts them with the ghosts of the people who were once marginalized for singing these very songs.
Yet, at the same time, the Gyeongi Minyo we were witnessing was lyrical and light. The melodies often take small, comfortable steps up or down rather than making large, jarring leaps. Lines often resolved by resting on the fifth note of the scale (sol). The musical equivalent of a soft landing. A friendly, conversational pause. Arirang is one of these minyo. Roald Maliangkay draws parallels of the Gyeongi Minyo to the iconic sounds of the Japanese geisha. They are the yin to the yang of the darker and more emotional Namdo Minyo (southern provinces folk songs).
However, there’s a dark past. Gyeongi Minyo are now normally performed almost exclusively by women, making Lee somewhat unique. And with that, he sees a heavy responsibility: “The history of minyo culture contains a world of painful memories for female sorikkun. During the period of Japanese colonialism, for women who were socially looked down upon because they were gisaeng, or female entertainers, being a minyo was more a way to earn a living than an art form. And so, as a male performer, I turned my gaze to the history of oppression of women in the art.”
And his performance encourages women in the 21st century. The "yeobek" of the white curtains gave way to a disco celebration. Women lined up to greet him after the performance and have their photos taken with him. He smiled, and beamed, his facial features disappearing into creases as the cameras flashed away.
We eventually escaped into the night, seeking makkoli and pancakes. Something to maintain the vibe. To forget the social media, managed appearances, and inevitability of capitalism as tomorrow’s alarm clock clicked closer. For one night we imagined what is was like to live in a Korea of the past reinvented through the lens of the future and the genius of Lee and his collection of artists. But what does it mean that the soul of the nation must now be staged, ticketed, and performed?
Minyo is no longer the unmediated voice of the people. Tonight it was closer to a carefully staged encounter between modern people seeking solace and a reconstructed past that probably never existed. Lee Hee-moon exploits this. He destabilizes and celebrates. And he does it so very wonderfully.