Abstract Summary/Description
The composition "Variations of Arirang" was crafted by the North Korean violinist-composer Gosan Baek (1930- ). The work is based on Gyeonggi Arirang, a traditional Korean folk melody. Gosan Baek was born in 1930 in Pyongyang, prior to the Korean peninsula's division. As a musician, he endured the hardships of multiple historical periods, from Japanese colonial era through the Korean War, and witnessed the painful division of his homeland. The aim of my performance is to decolonize emotion by interpreting the music from the theoretical lens derived from Smith's (2022) Decolonizing Methodology. In Korea, there exists a unique emotion shared only by Korean people, different from universally shared emotions like happiness, or sadness. It's called "Han (한)." According to Park (1999), Han (한) is defined as a deep sense of suffering accompanied with anger, emerging from injustices inflicted on individuals or collectives. This emotional term naturally emerged as Korea experienced sorrowful history such as Japanese colonial era and the Korean War. Although Baek's Arirang uses a Western instrument, violin, I believe the indigenous sentiment embedded in the music richly expresses the indigenous emotion of Han. I aim to perform without confining the emotion of 'Han' to specific boundaries, hoping that people from different countries with different cultures can relate it to their own national identity and feel emotional commonality. I believe that the moment we share and empathize with decolonized emotions can be the first step toward uniting us and making the world more peaceful.
