Featuring recordings dating back as far as 1896, the Archives of Traditional Music’s Korea Remixed digital exhibition traces the history and evolution of some of Korea’s most iconic musical traditions such as pansori and sanjo.
(Note: IU CAS credentials are required to access some of the content in this digital exhibition.)
Age: The cylinder was released 2016 (5 years); the original recordings were captured on July 24, 1896 (125 years).
Short Description: This cylinder is a commercial re-release of arirang, a national folk song of Korea originally recorded by Mrs. Alice Fletcher at her home in Washington, D.C. on July 24, 1896.
Curatorial notes: This cylinder is the most recent cylinder in ATM’s holdings, released in 2016 (the oldest cylinder in ATM’s collections was recorded in 1893)! This yellow molded plastic cylinder is a commercial reproduction of the earliest known recordings of “Arirang”, which were recorded by Alice Cunningham Fletcher on July 24, 1896 at her home in Washington, D.C. The three performers, An Chŏng-sik, Yi Hŭi-ch'ŏl, and Yang Son-[full name unknown], were three Korean students who sang three different versions of “Arirang,” a Korean folk song that has been added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List. The original cylinders made by Fletcher are housed at the Library of Congress.
The Archives of Traditional Music has over 7,100 cylinders in its holdings, including recordings from nearly every continent. The majority of the cylinders are in field collections (recordings made “in the field” of research, rather than commercially produced) although some, such as this cylinder, are commercial releases of original field recordings. Another early recording of Korean music at ATM is in the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv Demonstration Collection, of which the ATM has two separate sets, one of which includes a recording of a Korean soldier singing the folk song, “Sorimka,” during his internment in a German prisoner of war camp during World War I (83-899-F, SCY 5292).
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Age: Recordings 50 years (recorded 1971); CDs 16 years (released 2005)
Short Description: A performance of Chunhyangga [춘향가] by Park Bong-Sul [박봉술] (1922-1989) a master of pansori performance.
Curatorial notes: This CD set includes performances of Chunhyangga [춘향가] by Park Bong-Sul [박봉술] (1922-1989), who was a master of pansori performance. Chunhyangga is one of the most famous works of Korean pansori (storytelling to music), and this album includes Park’s full cycle of Chunhyangga. The recording of the Chunhyangga cycle itself was recorded in the 1970s, and was just released as this CD set in 2005. The goal of this album was to show Park’s performance of the pansori, a style from the Jeolla Province in the southern part of Korea, to a wider audience, and to allow performers and learners of Korean pansori to love and practice Park’s version more widely.
Pansori as a genre is prevalent in the Archives of Traditional Music’s Korean holdings, with over 40 recordings featuring pansori repertoire of various stories and representing various regions of Korea.
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Age: Recordings 28 years (recorded 1993); CD 15 years (released 2006)
Short Description: This CD includes sanjo [산조] works performed by young musicians, as well as an improvisational sinawi [시나위] performance by all of the musicians.
Curatorial notes: This CD is a re-release of sanjo performances recorded in 1993. Sanjo as a genre is a Korean traditional music form that features a solo instrument accompanied by drumming. This CD includes a haegum sanjo, daegeum sanjo, and an ajaeng sanjo, as well as a sinawi [시나위]. Sinawi is the origin of sanjo, and the work on this CD is an improvisational ensemble performance by all of the solo musicians that expresses grief and sorrow.
The Archives of Traditional Music has many commercial Korean recordings of traditional music, 80 of which mention or include “sanjo”. This CD serves as an example of newer (in 1993) sanjo works for three different traditional Korean instruments.
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Age: 53 years (1968)
Short Description: This 10” disc is a guided listening with a Korean narrator through selections from speeches that are important in South Korea’s history.
Curatorial notes: This vinyl disc contains short selections of recorded speeches related to key events in mid-20th century South Korean history (up to 1968). It is an example of the breadth of subject matter in ATM holdings. Despite music being a central part of our name, we have historically also collected spoken word materials, particularly oral histories, interviews, and various forms of verbal art.
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Age: 13 years (2008)
Short Description: This CD is an example of gugak fusion by the ensemble Maru [퓨전 국악 앙상블 마루].
Curatorial notes: Gugak [국악] is a broad term, encompassing the entire range of Korean traditional music, with many subgenres and subcategories. Once such subgenre is that of gugak fusion, or creative gugak, which is newly composed gugak that typically features a fusion of Western and Korean musical styles and instrumentation. In this CD, the fusion is of traditional Korean instruments such as kayagum, ajaeng, p’iri, and haegeum performing upbeat rock and funk rhythms. Additionally, track two (광화문 국악사) features JinOOgi rapping about traditional music history and instruments of Korea, which each instrument being featured playing in the background during its verse.
Gugak fusion, now more commonly known as creative gugak [창작국악] is a growing genre in Korea, and the Archives of Traditional Music has many recordings of Korean folk and traditional music, and increasingly more recordings of creative gugak. Most of the Korean CDs, such as 퓨전국악앙상블마루 : 하늘을닮은사람들 in the Archives of Traditional Music’s holdings were gifts from Jung Changkwan, Vice President of The Society for Korean Discology.
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Age: Approximately 58 years old.
Short description: This collection contains two open reel tapes, acquired from the Korean Broadcasting Station ca. 1963. They include folk songs, instrumental pieces, and court music of Korea, and feature various traditional instruments.
Curatorial Notes: These recordings were originally owned by Hong Sik Yun, a Korean student at Indiana University. Yun acquired them from the Korean Broadcasting Station, and gave the tapes to Byongkon Kim, who proceeded to deposit them at the Archives of Traditional Music. Notes about the works present on the recordings, compiled by Byongkon Kim, state that some of the pieces are in Chinese style, or blended Korean and Chinese styles, with excerpts of lyrics for some of the vocal works.
Byongkon Kim (ca. 1929 - 2009) was a graduate assistant at the Archives of Traditional Music at the time (1963-1966), while pursuing his Master of Music (1964) and Doctor of Music (1968) at Indiana University. Kim continued on to join the composition faculty at California State College Los Angeles, where he taught and influenced many composition students, as well as founding the Pacific Contemporary Music Center to promote and provide a venue for music from countries in the Pacific Rim.
These two open reel tapes demonstrate a variety of styles, but also connect the ATM to the music and popular consumption of media via Korean radio broadcasting by way of two Korean scholars pursuing their Masters and Doctoral degrees at Indiana University.
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