[INTERVIEW] German professor hopes to boost appreciation for Korean traditional music

Anna Yates-Lu, an assistant professor of ethnomusicology in the Department of Korean Music at Seoul National University / Courtesy of Anna Yates-Lu

Professor and pansori performer sees huge potential in 'gugak'

By Lee Gyu-lee

Korean history has its fair share of music. However, despite all its deep-rooted traditions, the country's various traditional music genres, known collectively as "gugak," have been lesser-known compared to more contemporary music trends like K-pop, not only to people abroad, but also many Koreans.

But Anna Yates-Lu, a German-born assistant professor of ethnomusicology in the Department of Korean Music at Seoul National University (SNU), says gugak has much more potential than most people think.

Using her background as a foreigner with expertise in gugak, the professor hopes to offer a fresh perspective to the gugak community.

"I think from an outsider's perspective, I can offer a different view as well. I'm not necessarily telling people what to do, but I just want to become a different set of eyes, as someone who is kind of inside the world (of gugak), but still also kind of outside of it as well. So hopefully, people will find that helpful," Yates-Lu said in a recent interview with The Korea Times at the newspaper's office in Seoul.

The 33-year-old professor earned her Ph.D. at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in "pansori" ― a narrative musical genre performed by a vocalist and a drummer that the Cultural Heritage Administration recognizes as Intangible Cultural Heritage No.5. She not only studied and researched the genre, but has also performed on stage and won first place at a European pansori competition called "K-Vox Festival."

A picture from 2019 K-Music Festival, held in London / Courtesy of Anna Yates-Lu

She became the youngest assistant professor in the department in 2020. And since then, she has been teaching and researching how pansori is situated in Korean contemporary society, with her current focus being the roles of social and new media in bringing the genre into mainstream broadcasting.

Below is an excerpt of The Korea Times interview with Yates-Lu. It has been edited for clarity and readability.

Q. You were majoring in politics for your master's degree. What got you into pansori and further research and education in the field? What makes pansori an attractive genre?

A. Basically, it was an accident … During my master's, I ended up doing a course in the traditional music of East Asia. And it just so happened that the Korean Cultural Center in London was holding a concert with a pansori singer included in the lineup.

I remember it was showing scenes from 'Jeokbyeokga' ― one of the five surviving stories of the pansori storytelling tradition ― especially a battle scene where two boats chase each other on the river. And the guy was like shooting arrows at the other guy, and it's all being done by one person on stage with a fan. And I was like, 'How is this even possible?' It was crazy. Just from the way she was acting, you could get what was happening, like the subtitles weren't even necessary anymore … I found it really interesting so I said, 'Okay I'm going to find out a bit more about this.' And I ended up writing all my remaining assignments for that class on pansori from various different angles. And then that was it.

Anna Yates-Lu, left, poses during a promotional event of the gugak society in 2016 while attending the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Courtesy of Anna Yates-Lu

(The charm of pansori) I think is the expressiveness of the voice. You can express so many different things, just through the medium of the voice, which is fascinating … All the sounds of nature, wind, river, trees and rustling are just done with the voice. And the fact that you can do that is fascinating.

The fact that you can express such a wide range of emotions with your voice is also fascinating. As I've gone through and become familiar with the stories and songs, the stories are really interesting. I think a lot of people don't necessarily realize (the full depth of the stories) … they are just so funny or touching, which you don't necessarily hear about in the simple version.

The stories themselves really span the entirety of the human experience. They do it from the perspective of the Joseon Dynasty. But the things like the tale of Heungbu and Nolbu, where Heungbu is at the end of his tether because he cannot find a way to earn money and his family is starving, we can relate to that. It is from a different perspective, but that kind of desperation, I think especially in COVID-19 times, we kind of get where he's coming from. And all these expressions of humanity, whether you are from Korea or not, you can find something that you can relate to very easily within the stories that I find still engages me now.

Anna Yates-Lu in "hanbok" or Korean traditional clothing / Courtesy of Anna Yates-Lu

Q. You are not just a researcher in this field, but also a performer of pansori, learning to sing from the renowned pansori singer, Min Hye-sung, who is a certified trainee of pansori. How does juggling both the academic and performing aspects of the genre help your understanding of the music?

A. So, (ethnomusicology) is inspired a lot by anthropology, which has a concept of participant observation. So, observing is one thing, which is research. But you need to participate as well, in order to get that true kind of experience and be able to talk about something.

Initially, it was about learning different kinds of places that you can learn (pansori). But then it just kind of happened. It's got a novelty value. So within a year, I was standing on stage with some of the biggest performers out there. I mean, there I need to be very careful as a researcher. That is something that happens because I'm a foreigner and no Korean with one year of experience would be standing on those kinds of stages. So, I approach that from a researcher's perspective.

On the other hand, though, being in the theaters, being in performances, and seeing what's going on backstage is super helpful for me to understand. Because that's a whole different kind of culture and learning about things like how you deal with a hanbok (traditional Korean attire) and how you do your hair and make sure you don't sweat … how you care for these (performing) materials, and all this kind of knowledge, if you are not actively performing, you have no reason to know about that … I could never possibly hope to compete with the professional performers and that's not my intention either. But it's a great learning opportunity (to gain so much knowledge) and it's just fun as well.

A scene from the music video of BTS member Suga's song "Daechwita" / Screen captured from the music video

Q. More recently, gugak has been gaining more attention as it broadens its horizons to incorporate more contemporary elements, like BTS member Suga's song "Daechwita" sampling the traditional military music genre into K-pop and the alternative pop band Leenalchi's album "Sugungga" showing a modern interpretation of traditional pansori. What is your perspective on the attempts to contemporize gugak to reach pop culture audiences?

A. The concept of 'making it popular' is mentioned a lot when people talk about pansori, like 'where should it go?' But the issue I have with it is that, who are those audiences? I see this in cultural policy, too. But when you talk about promotion and marketing, it's pretty much talking about the same audiences that are already consuming K-pop because that's your biggest audience base. But what I wonder is that there are so many other people in the world as well outside of this quite narrow demographic … there are lots of other people out there.

For example, France is a really fascinating case for me because my teacher, Min Hye-sung, has been going there every year for more than 10 years now, doing pansori workshops. And there have been people going to those workshops for those 10 years and more people are coming each time. So now, when you go to pansori performances in Paris, the people are way better at making sounds than those in Seoul. They know how to listen to pansori and how to enjoy it and it's just fun for them. Yet, a large proportion of them are not K-pop fans.

(However, through the recent trend with gugak,) they are seeing how gugak can be used as a source material to create new things, something interesting, something that is different from the stuff that's out there. And I think it's something that wasn't there before. People often say how K-pop is different from normal pop. And by adding this kind of factor, you're showing that this clearly is a very different (distinction). So that has a lot of potential. Obviously, I think gugak, the traditional stuff, needs to continue to be preserved because you need to get the good source material from someplace. But I think the fear of using gugak is disappearing.

Anna Yates-Lu presents her work at the International Council for Traditional Music in 2019. Courtesy of Anna Yates-Lu

Q. The Ministry of Education is in the process of adjusting educational curriculums for elementary and secondary schools by the end of this year. And this incited anger among people in the gugak scene, as the draft for the music education curriculums took out gugak as a requirement and omitted using terms to specify the gugak genre in education.

A. So most of the school educators don't have training in gugak and they are supposed to teach it to students. It's hard. I get that. But what happens is that this new potential curriculum is omitting the requirements to include it. Once that's not required, nobody is likely going to do it. Another thing is losing these specific vocabularies. Use of the proper words is really important (in gugak) and this is really important in terms of how you educate people about gugak as well … If we gradually work on promoting gugak in society, then I don't really see that as being much of a problem.

This is the thing that I find to be such a shame about the potential direction the educational system. We are teaching our children, who do not think that way initially, that gugak is hard and boring. So we're passing on the prejudices of us adults to our children. We don't need to do that ― (the children) would be just happy to be exposed to it and see it as being fun if we let them. I think for me the important thing is letting kids decide that for themselves.

If you want to think about the knock-on effects of the potential for the continuation of the Korean wave and want the popularity of Korean content to continue, you need to bring in new stuff. And gugak is this huge well of untapped potential … I think if you just don't shut that down, there's so much potential for great things to come out of it or just for people to have fun with the culture.

Anna Yates-Lu, left, performs pansori in Germany in 2016. Courtesy of Anna Yates-Lu

Q. What motivates you to keep going and what impact do you hope to make in the gugak scene?

A. It's the feedback from the students (that motivates me). I especially love getting emails like, 'I'm really curious about this, can you point me to more places I can look to find out more?' I love that I'm starting to get contacted by people overseas, asking for suggestions on where to go for research. And that for me is super meaningful and makes me feel like all the hard work is paying off.

(Aside from lecturing at the university,) I think a big thing that I'm doing these days is mediating … People from overseas will contact me and ask, 'We want a person doing this or that.' And I set them up. Or I have students, who say, 'I want to come do this research' … I think probably that's the most useful thing I can do in terms of my skill set, my understanding of the content, as well as linguistic (capability).