¡°Lifting Up the Sound:¡± Ujo Seongeum and Performance Practice in Pansori Tradition

While researching and studying pansori for the past ten years, one of the most common words I heard with regard to pansori¡¯s aesthetic standard was ¡°seongeum.¡± One might say, ¡°ya! gye seongeumi giga makhyeo, meaning, ¡°hey, that person¡¯s seongeum is incredible!,¡± or, ¡°ayi jeogeon seongeumi aniya!,¡± ¡°nah, that¡¯s not seongeum,¡± meaning the person is not properly conveying seongeum. Audience members, musicians and scholars alike all refer to seongeum but what constitutes ¡°seongeum¡± is not explicit and quite often elusive. Any serious discussion of seongeum focuses on what is ¡°heard¡± in performance, and singers interpret seongeum through the sound itself. Thus, seongeum is the quality and timbre of sound that is heard and understood as the ideal musical aesthetic, the totality of a performance that includes all the subtle aspects of performance practice. The article focuses on the performance practice of ujo in pansori and considers how pansori singers create the ideal ujo sound or seongeum, ¡°lifting up the sound,¡± reflective of ujo¡¯s grand and majestic character. This analysis is based on my fieldwork with several pansori singers who can immediately assess if an appropriate seongeum is being used as the music itself is being performed. They base their assessment on the delicate balance of three parameters: 1) vocal timbre, vocal production, and technique; 2) articulation, vocal phrasing and ornamentation (sigimsae); and (3) text setting (buchimsae) and phrase structure. When all parameters are in balance, the essential character of ujo seongeum, ¡°lifting up the sound,¡± is revealed in the music.