Wednesday, October 12, 2022
Korean singer Jaram Lee on reinterpreting Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea
Jaram Lee dives deep into the story of The Old Man and the Sea for a unique pansori retelling. Christopher Conder reports
Jaram Lee and Jun-Hyung Lee performing The Old Man and the Sea (photo: Wansung Playground)
During a burst of creativity in 1951, American writer Ernest Hemingway wrote: ‘Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.’ The Old Man and the Sea was inspired by his years living in Cuba and tells the tale of an elderly fisherman as he struggles to recapture the prestige of his past.
Meanwhile, 13,000km away, Korea was mired in war. Armistice negotiations had begun, but weren’t to be completed until 1953. The peninsula was divided and South Korea lay in ruins. Like the old man though, the Koreans didn’t focus on what they were without, but what could be done with what was still there. Remaining cultural treasures were identified, protected and supported. Important traditions, from ancestral shrine music to the traditional method of raising ginseng, were codified into a list of Intangible Cultural Heritages. Number five on that list, enshrined in law in 1964, is pansori.
Jaram Lee performing The Old Man and the Sea (photo: Wansung Playground)
The stark sound of pansori – which traditionally features a single singer accompanied by the buk (drum) – is gradually becoming better known in the West. Often referred to as Korean folk opera, the singer can perform for hours as they recount one of the five traditional tales in the canon or, increasingly, a modern composition.
One of the most celebrated composers and singers of new pansori is Jaram Lee, and she is returning to British shores in October to perform her latest work, a retelling of The Old Man and the Sea.
I have the pleasure of interviewing her over Zoom, with translation help from professor Hee-Sun Kim of Kookmin University. “What was it about The Old Man and the Sea,” I ask carefully, “that made you think it would work as a pansori?” Jaram looks panicked for a moment. “I don’t know!” She bursts into a fit of giggles. “My instinct?”
Jaram is an artist who has always followed her instinct. Her parents, father Gyu-dae Lee and mother Yeon-gu Cho, made up the folk-pop band Bubble Gum. “My father was always composing something in the house. When I was three, he heard my singing.” Inspired, he wrote and recorded a duet between the two of them for his next album. It was called ‘My Name (Yesol!)’ and became one of the biggest hits of 1984. “I became a famous popular singer when I was four years old,” she laughs. “Everybody knew her!” confirms Hee-Sun.
Jaram Lee and Jun-Hyung Lee performing The Old Man and the Sea (photo: Wansung Playground)
At the age of 11, still widely known as the adorable character of Yesol, she was booked for a recurring segment on a Sunday morning TV show in which she was taught pansori by master singer Hee-Jin Eun. Having been bought up with pop, the sound of pansori was very different from what she recognised as music at that time. “When I first heard his voice, I thought it weird and ugly. But he was so charming!”
Jaram became Hee-Jin’s student, both on-screen and off, until his death at the age of just 53 in 2000. Jaram continued her tutorage, initially under Hee-Jin’s master Jeong-Suk Oh (1935-2008) and then with performer and ‘pansori philosopher’ Soon-Sub Song (b1939). Hee-Sun interjects to sing Soon-Sub’s praise: “I love his gestures, he is very elite and very elegant. At Jaram’s performance a month ago, I saw that elegance in her.”
Jaram was gaining a reputation as a pansori singer of note, but it took an open commission from the Chongdong Theatre in Seoul to establish the next phase of her career as a composer. “The theatre suggested to me that I make a new piece. Anything that I wanted. So, I tried to find someone to work with me and found the director, Inwoo Nam.” Together they produced Sacheon-Ga, Jaram’s retelling of The Good Person of Szechwan by German playwright Bertolt Brecht, which debuted in 2007. Her follow up, Ukchuk-Ga, was another Brecht adaptation, this time based on Mother Courage and Her Children. The tale of a woman who tries to profit from war but ends up losing her three sons to it, the show was, in her modest but confident words, “very, very, very successful.”
Ultimately these grand projects, with full bands and theatrical staging, overwhelmed her. “The scale, the peoples’ interest… everything was too big for me. I needed some small piece of my life.” Her next works were much more stripped back. In a version of Gabriel García Márquez’s short story ‘Bon Voyage, Mr President’ she was accompanied by just buk and guitar, and now, for The Old Man and the Sea, she has returned to a traditional two-person format.
She brought this show to London in October as part of the K-Music festival. I ask what her audience can expect. “I wanted to make the staging of this piece simple and clean in order to relay the old man’s story of hardship, solitude and triumph on the sea more effectively. Therefore, I decided to perform only with a drum accompaniment. We use very few stage props – a Korean traditional mat for me to stand on and a small and low tea table to put the water on for the performers.”
Pansori can be hard to appreciate outside of a live setting. The mixture of speaking, singing, screaming, onomatopoeic outbursts and ululation might sound unhinged, but an expressive performer like Jaram draws the audience into her world. She is in constant motion, acting out the story as the old man greedily chews on a fish or his line spins out of control. Her hapjukseon (folding fan) is in her hands at all times; her one prop in this physical theatre, it becomes a bank statement, a flying fish, a knife. Her long-term gosu (barrel drum player), Jun-Hyung Lee, is an unobtrusive companion, but his sparse beating and barked interjections serve to illustrate the story.
Rather than simply translating Hemingway’s text, she retells the story as if she is a new observer to the same events. On occasion she breaks the fourth wall to speak directly and humorously to the audience, telling of her struggles to find Cuban food in Seoul or suggesting wasabi to accompany the old man’s fish dinner.
Jaram is currently studying for a PhD and writing a dissertation on her staging of The Old Man and the Sea. “When I am creating I use my instinct,” she reiterates. “Now I want to find my own process and put it into words, but it’s not easy. I’ve realised that the ‘old man’ and I share something in common. While the old man tries to catch marlin for his entire life, I, as a sorikkun (pansori singer), kept training myself and battling with pansori from the age of ten. I guess that is why I didn’t appreciate the narrative of this single encounter with the marlin as being the greatest battle of his life. For me, this is one of his many experiences as a fisherman. I’m sure he will continue to live his life and go back to his usual routine to catch marlin.”
What is the next battle? “I want to find it,” she says. “My PhD paper makes me crazy, but after I have finished I can think about it.” Instead of composing, she has been focusing on a series of performances that consolidate her career so far. “They are kind of gala concerts, in which I present highlights of both traditional and my own pansori pieces on stage. Each show runs about 90 minutes without intermission, and the reception has been fantastic. I wanted to make shows that are more accessible to people who are reluctant to spend their time and money on pansori in more formal settings, and for these series to be the gateway towards their future pansori experience.”
For Hee-Sun, who has dedicated her career to the study and promotion of traditional Korean music, these shows were a revelation. “I was really happy to see that a normal, public audience bought tickets; it was a full house even with her [Jaram] singing original pansori. They all cried. It’s amazing! I thought, ‘this is the power of pansori, this is the real popularisation of gugak [Korean music].’ Everyone can enjoy it.” Jaram beams at the praise. “We all fell in love with her,” Hee-Sun continues. “Now the audience in London will too.”
This interview originally appeared in the October 2022 issue of Songlines magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today
