Tradition Revives in Modernized KayagumOld Meets New to Create Contemporary Harmony
(The Korea Times 04-11-2007 21:12)
By Chung Ah-youngStaff Reporter
Chun Ik-chang, a modern kayagum maker and player, performs on an electric kayagum, which is designed to play all kinds of music including Korean traditional music and Western classic and pop music. /Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul
No one would argue with the need to preserve and pass along tradition for posterity. But when it comes to how, a debate spurs.
Traditionalists often clash with revisionists regarding to an oddly ambiguous meaning of ``tradition’’ in the current context.
Chun Ik-chang, 54, has solitarily struggled to revive the traditional musical instruments to reach out to a wider audience.
Chun is a modern ``kayagum’’ maker and player. Since 1973, he has been producing modern versions of the kayagum.
He changed the 12-string instrument to 23-string and 25-string kayagum, which are a more advanced form of North Korea’s 21-stringed kayagum.
Chun even invented an electric kayagum in 1973, which allows the playing of any kind of music _ Western or Eastern _ with the magic of a single bow.
The electric kayagum is designed for Chinese, Korean and Western renditions.
He has also been making restored instruments of different prehistoric periods from bone-pipes to Neolithic, Iron-age and ancient Silla stringed instruments.
Chun said that his instrument reinventions, which have continued for over 30 years, drew little attention from the traditional music mainstream in which traditionalists have dominated.
``I started changing the kayagum when I played the instrument along with Western music troupes in the 1970s. But it was difficult for me to perform because its tuning was very unstable and shaky,’’ Chun said in an interview with The Korea Times.
He also invented a new technique using 10 fingers to play the modern kayagum. To play the traditional kayagum, a player uses three _ thumb, index and middle _ fingers.
``Many people said that I am destroying traditional music. But I don’t think so. What we think traditional today is not our real tradition. Tradition evolves naturally toward better conditions over time,’’ he said.
Kayagum, or Korean zither, which is similar to Chinese ``cheng’’ and Japanese ``koto’’, has long been thought of as a Korean women’s instrument, especially for ``kisaeng,’’ female entertainers.
But he argued that the belief only started only 100 years ago driven by the culture of kisaeng. He said that the instrument has a longer history, dating back to more than 6,000 years ago.
``Before the Choson Kingdom, the kayagum was played by men, instead of women as shown in clay dolls in museums nationwide,’’ he said.
He researched throughout the museums to restore more accurate traditional forms of the stringed instruments.
According to the existing historical records, ``Samguksagi’’ (The History of the Three Kingdoms) shows that the kayagum was made by King Kasil during the Kaya Kingdom around the 6th century and was developed by Wu Ruk in the time of King Chinhung during the Silla Kingdom.
However, Chun said that it was created much earlier than the time of the Silla era, as the result of the historical investigation.
``The historical official records say that kayagum design was influenced by Chinese instruments. But even before the period, we Koreans had already our own native traditional form of stringed instruments without Chinese influence,’’ he said.
``I just want to show that our nation has had our own cultural identity through the evolution of our traditional stringed instruments,’’ he said.
He explained that there are no string instruments whose patterns have not changed over time.
In China or Japan, their traditional instruments have been modernized as tradition develops in accordance with times. But Korea still retains the old concept of tradition.
Chun has had to face much trouble from mainstream traditionalists who call him a heretic.
``Over more than three decades, I was ignored and even threatened from the established traditionalists. I worry my son would get into trouble in the same way I suffered,’’ he said.
Chun has taught and groomed his son, Sae-bit, who began playing the kayagum at the age of seven, as the only heir to his knowledge and skills.
Sae-bit plays two kayagums _ 23-stringed and 25-stringed _ at a time, using ten fingers and requiring more than 400 different techniques.
He shows flamboyant arpeggios with the modern kayagums, which are designed to play low, middle and high tones together.
His modernized instruments include the ``changgum,’’ which has solved all the problems kayagum has for modern performances.
The changgum has the same appearance as a kayagum and comes in three different kinds with different sound and tone. It can be played either with a bow, like a violin, or with fingers while the kayagum can only be plucked.
He also invented a new scale system called ``3-Line Staff Theory’’ in 1986, which is based on three lines instead of the usual five lines _ the result of 20 years of lonely efforts by a self-taught music theoretician.
The basic concept of his theory is an integration of the improvements of both the pentatonic system of the Orient and the septatonic scale of the West.
The consonants and vowels of the Korean alphabet substitute for Do, Re, Mi in this new musical scale system, which is applicab!le to the 12 key modulation of Western music and ``nonghyon’’ or curved melody in Korean music.
The folk tunes each characterized by the unique music mode of its place of origin can be reproduced exactly the same as the original sound under his system, he claimed.
chungay@koreatimes.co.kr 04-11-2007 21:12
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