Making Waves by Frederick Lau

Author:Frederick Lau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chŏngga Akhoe: New Korean Chamber and Vocal Ensemble

Taking rather different approaches in their new Korean music, the chamber and vocal ensemble Chŏngga Akhoe in the early 2000s was a group evolving in membership and in artistic direction. From early on, the group leader, Ch’ŏn Chae-Hyŏn, and composer, Yi T’ae-Wŏn, required of Chŏngga Akhoe members that they have no other major professional commitment in the music world. Musicians who were members of any of Korea’s traditional music orchestras (which play ch’angjak kugak) or held full-time teaching positions were also excluded from membership. Ch’ŏn and Yi decided to limit membership to only those who could foreswear the financial benefits and aesthetic compromises required of formal academic or orchestral positions. This constraint severely limited membership, of course, as many talented musicians sympathetic to the aesthetic directions taken by Chŏngga Akhoe were simply unable to survive on the very meager earnings of the group, whose little-known music and aversion to commercial recordings made it wholly unthinkable as a viable profession, particularly for anyone with family to support. During the early 2000s (until 2005) only four musicians were officially “members,” coming faithfully to rehearsals (at their own expense) and performing (often for little or no fee): Ch’ŏn Chae-Hyŏn (leader and kŏmun’go player), Yi Sŭng-Hŭi (haegŭm player), Yu Hong (taegŭm player), and Yi T’ae-Wŏn (composer and frequent vocalist, also kŏmun’go player).13 Other parts, vocal and instrumental, were taken by “guests,” who rehearsed with the group on an invitational basis and received no more or less recompense than members for concert presentations.

The group’s self-image is articulated by Ch’ŏn Chae-Hyŏn and Yi T’ae-Wŏn in a book, Kagok ŭi Saegim, devoted to this unique group, consisting of interviews, articles by group members, as well as concert reviews and reissues of articles about the kinds of traditional vocal music (especially kagok) the group has long favored (Chŏngga Akhoe 2003). On the very first page of the preface, Yi T’ae-Wŏn asserts that Chŏngga Akhoe is not a representative kugak group, standing at some distance even from most other younger generation kugak musicians (ibid., 5). They are disenchanted with most academic ch’angjak kugak, finding it hopelessly dry and unable to touch the emotions. They stress their desire for “sharing and communication” (nanum kwa sot’ong). And while some of their major concerts drew criticism for failing to share or communicate well with more than a handful of sophisticated audience members, they did not reject wholesale the idea of popularity (taejungsŏng). But in contrast to many more popular fusion groups, who publicly profess to be seeking to popularize traditional Korean music but do so by offering hybrids that often consist basically of Western-style pop music simply decorated with traditional Korean instrumental timbres, Chŏngga Akhoe eschewed the use of pop music instruments (electric guitars, synthesizers, etc.) and offered its audiences music that was always strongly based in Korean traditional instrumental performance style, and sometimes vocal style as well (which is hardly ever emphasized in more popular fusion music), seeking to maintain a largely traditional artistic quality (yesulsŏng).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.