Healing Rhythms: The World of South Korea's East Coast Hereditary Shamans

Simon Mills

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351931489
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music History & Criticism

Still today, in South Korea, many people pay for the services of mudang - the intermediaries of Korea's syncretic folk religion. The majority of mudang are called to the profession by gods; their clients are individuals or small groups and they focus on the use of spirit-power ('possession') for diagnosis and problem-solving. There is, however, a tiny minority of mudang who are born or adopted into the ritual life and who have no spirit-power. These ritualists perform in large family groups, conducting rituals for whole communities. They focus far more on the use of music, dance, and song to provide healing experiences. In this book, Simon Mills provides an in-depth analysis of the East Coast hereditary mudang institution and its rhythm-oriented music, focusing particularly on the Kim family of mudang - the government-appointed 'cultural assets' for the genre. It is the first English language book to study this tradition in any depth, using materials from fieldwork (1999-2000) alongside interviews with two key family members, Kim Junghee and Jo Jonghun. Throughout, Mills includes numerous quotes from the ritualists themselves to help reveal their characters, opinions and beliefs. He documents the family's history, the decline of the hereditary mudang institution and its kinship customs, and the family's changing relations towards 'outsiders'. Mills also details ritual procedures, musical structures, playing techniques, instruments, and learning methods both of the past and present; as non-ritual musicians become increasingly aware of the powerful ritual rhythms, the music is finding new life in non-ritual settings. Downloadable audio resources featuring Kim, Jo, and Mills accompanies the book, each track corresponding to the equivalent chapter in the text.

Chapter 1
Tŭrŏnggaengi – Who are the East Coast Hereditary Mudang?

Kut: The Ritual Context

For many villagers living in coastal communities by the Eastern sea, hearing the sound of tŭrŏnggaengi being played in the distance must invoke great excitement. The shimmering sound of the hand gongs (kkwaenggwari), rumbling tones of the hourglass drum (changgo), and the resounding reverberations of the large gong (ching) function as a signal that a rare form of entertainment-healing event is just beginning. The villagers duly head down towards a prearranged location – the village community centre or, more commonly, the beach, where a tent will have been temporarily erected.

Illustration 1.1 A ritual tent

At the far end of the space, there is an altar (chedan) upon which various offerings have been laid out according to village tradition: fruits, rice cakes and, sometimes, the head of a cow or pig. There are also many beautiful paper flowers (chihwa) on the altar, and colourful paper lanterns (tŭng) hanging on either side. Sitting on the floor, just to the side of the altar, are a group of women numbering from three to ten, dressed in distinctive costumes. At this point, while tŭrŏnggaengi is being performed, they are just talking amongst themselves, occasionally checking their appearance. However, soon they will be taking it in turns to stand before the altar, singing, dancing, leading prayers, and performing a multitude of ritual activities. These women are mudang, a type of Korean ritualist whose main professional objective is to relieve people’s psychological tensions by patching up relationships between gods, spirits and the living, and by providing a forum for entertainment, cathartic behaviour, and discussion. As elsewhere in South Korea, the mudang’s ritual is called ‘kut’.

The musicians – exclusively male and numbering from four to about twelve – sit directly in front of the altar, playing their instruments as the villagers gradually congregate around them, filling up any available space. These men will provide musical accompaniment for the officiating mudang’s songs and dances throughout the whole proceedings. They will also play key acting roles during episodes of pantomimic theatre. In the East Coast region, these ritual musicians are generally referred to as ‘yangjung’, ‘hwarang’ or ‘hwaraengi’.

Illustrations 1.2a and b An East Coast ritual in progress

One can immediately see how emotionally close-knit the troupe of mudang and yangjung is. In fact, as the villagers well know, the troupe members are all interrelated by blood, marriage, or adoption. This is a family troupe composed of several generations of ritualists, the younger ones learning from their older relatives. Traditionally, it has only ever been such extended families of hereditary mudang (sesŭmmu), living and working in the East Coast region, that have performed this particular style of kut, with its distinctive vocal melodies, instrumentation, musical structures, dance movements, texts, ritual procedures and so on.

The troupe has been invited to the village to perfom kut and, as always, tŭrŏnggaengi constitutes the very first item of their kut performance. It not only serves as a signal to people far off that the ritual is beginning, but also functions as a ‘cleaning agent’, cleansing the ritual space in preparation for the ensuing activities. Over the course of the kut, a variety of gods will be addressed and, accordingly, the ritual space should be clean. Tŭrŏnggaengi also serves as a good warm-up opportunity for the male ritualists and a chance to check that the musical instruments are all working well. This is of great importance because, for these ritualists, music is a crucial tool for healing the community.

An Introduction to the Mudang and her Practices

Hereditary mudang have long been associated with two particular, culturally distinctive, areas of South Korea: the south-western provinces (North and South Chŏlla) and the eastern provinces (North and South Kyŏngsang and Kangwŏn). North of these areas, with the Han River often being thought of as the dividing line, the northern provinces have seldom been associated with hereditary mudang. Rather, they are thought of as the home of charismatic, non-hereditary, mudang (kangshinmu) (See, for example, Kim T’aegon 1982: 38; Ch’oe Kilsŏng 1992a: 139; Kim Seongnae 1998: 26; Kim Inhoe 1985: 78; Kim Tongwŏn 1998b: 25; Walraven 1994:4).

Figure 1.1 A map of Korea showing the river Han

Although these regional associations persist today, they do not accurately convey the true distribution of the two types. The charismatic mudang have spread throughout the whole country and the hereditary mudang have dwindled into minorities in their traditional territories. In the East Coast region, while there are no more than a couple of dozen hereditary mudang still performing their style of ritual, there are literally thousands of charismatic mudang living and working.¹

Charismatic mudang have ‘spirit power’ (yŏngnyŏk) – the ability to become vehicles for the gods’ self-expression. The focal points of their rituals are when they establish and maintain a receptive mental state – sometimes termed ‘trance’² – during which the gods come from the spirit world and enter into their beings, delivering oracles (kongsu) via their mouths and acting via their bodies, and sometimes even performing supernatural feats such as dancing on agricultural blades.³ These mudang are often called to the profession by the gods themselves during a period of intense spiritual sickness (shinbyŏng), the symptoms of which would be understood by non-believers as akin to those of serious mental illness.⁴ After finally accepting the calling, they learn how to control the deities and conduct ritual from an established mudang who acts as ‘spirit mother’ (shin ŏmŏni). Hereditary mudang, on the other hand, very rarely possess spirit power; they have no direct connection with the divine and are unable to act as vehicles for the gods’ self-expression. For them, knowledge of the gods and ritual skills are inherited entirely from human sources – generally, the individual’s senior relatives. These mudang perform a more priestly role in their rituals, leading the congregation through a strictly prescribed programme of propitiatory activities. They also place much heavier emphasis on the subtle use of music and the arts as a means of providing their clients with the healing emotional fulfilment that they desire.

Despite the immediately apparent differences in style and emphasis, the mode of thinking that permeates ritual, ritual structures and the basic methods for establishing harmony are much the same for both types of mudang. This predicament enables occasional instances of stylistic cross-over: charismatic mudang performing in hereditary mudang-stylt ritual and vice versa (discussed in more detail later in this chapter).

The mode of thinking concerned is referred to by scholars, and also by some ritualists, as ‘mudang customs’ (musok). From the state’s point of view, this mode of thinking is synonymous with ‘superstitious belief (mishiri) (See Howard 1998a: 3-4 and Kim Seongnae 1989: 212). In Korea, as elsewhere, a person is termed superstitious when he/she believes that disparate events, actions or entities are causatively linked by powers, either unnamed or named, the existence of which is thought to be inconsistent with the current understanding of ‘experts’ regarding how the world operates. In Korea, the ‘experts’ are those who regard interaction between entities as purely mechanistic and those who follow the established ‘higher’ religions.

Nevertheless, methods such as divination do suggest a fundamentally different relationship with the world from that of non-believers. The belief that spirits are directly responsible for influencing the behaviour of people and objects in the here- and-now is particularly at odds with conventional mechanistic rationale.⁵ Events that non-believers might consider to be the results of mechanistic chains of events are often accounted for by the intervention of spirits, the latter expressing their pleasure or, more often, displeasure at the believer’s earlier actions (see, for example, Canda 1983: 21-30; Kim T’aegon 1998b: 89-123; Kister 1997: 30-33; Yu Tongsik 1983: 63; Chŏng Chinhong 1985: 97-107). Divination constitutes a particularly useful means for discovering the grievances of gods and testing efficacy since it establishes a direct correlation between physical and metaphysical realities; provided human agency is sufficiently reduced, gods can express themselves through the configurations produced by seemingly randomized objects. In a particular section of East Coast hereditary-style ritual, each client pulls reeds out of a cluster held by the mudang herself or dips a forefinger into a bowl of rice so that grains stick to it. Using this information – the number of reeds extracted or grains of rice on the fingertip – the mudang works out diagnoses and solutions. To test ritual efficacy, the East Coast hereditary mudang set alight pieces of paper (soji); if the paper rises, then the ritual has been successful and the messages/offerings have been received in the other world.

It is largely because of this type of world-view that mudang are often considered to be ‘shamans’. In the case of the more common charismatic mudang, the use of trance to establish direct communication with gods, being called to the profession by the gods, and their symbiotic relationship with the divine constitute other points of commonality with so-called shamans elsewhere. As will be detailed later, mudang also have a typically shaman-like status as Others’ within society; they are recognized as being different and are treated as such by the community.⁶

Mudang conduct ritual according to what is deemed necessary and what the client is willing to pay.⁷ Ritual can focus either on the individual (or family unit) (kaein kut) or the whole community (maŭl kut, tongshinjë), with the following purposes being the most common: to prevent the spread of psychological and/or physical illness (pyŏng kut, uhwan kut), to bring good luck (chaesu ...