Abstract

This study is an analysis of Handol Heung-Gun Lee’s Tarae, which is a coinage combining the Korean words for “playing an instrument” and “song”, in terms of narrative and aesthetics. The components for analysis are the phenomena and nature of binary oppositions between nature and human beings, between alienation and interest, between division and unification, and between diaspora and people of the national community. Tarae in the period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s described the experience of pain and loss from non-resistance and disobedience in protest against social problems that emerged during the era of miliary dictatorship, such as industrialization, urbanization, reckless development, Westernization, university-oriented education, the gap between rich and poor, human alienation, and the conflicts arising from the division of the nation. After Handol overcame the lack of creative motivation with self-reflection and effort, Tarae took the form of a diaspora epic meta-narratives integrating the “sound of nature and his true nature” and “the awareness of diaspora and the spirit of the Korean people”. The epics of the homeland, the national soil and the people, which began with “Teo”, became more intense in terms of a sense of diaspora as they shifted their focus from an origin to a path with “Hanmoejulghi” as the turning point. Handol seeks inspiration in the source of narrative rather than in music. His Tarae focuses on “adding rhythm for lyrics”. For this reason, the semiotic features of Tarae have a limitation in that its extrinsic phonology is simple even if its intrinsic meaning (i.e., emotion of sadness) is profound and subtle. In order to elicit sympathy from the audience and impress them, it is necessary to strike a balance between the implicit (semantic) part and the explicit (phonological) part. To share the emotion of sadness with more people, it is necessary to strengthen phonological elements. Sympathy for sadness and deep impression on the audience are more often induced by the mood of similar sentiments than by the stories of the same experience. The aesthetics of sadness in Tarae began with the narratives of past experience which were expressed in the contexts of loss, loneliness, and poverty that Handol had experienced since childhood. However, the aesthetics of sadness, deepened over the period of a long hiatus in Handol’s career as a composer, formed the narratives of ultimate salvation, embodying even the diaspora experience of others (e.g., displaced people, overseas adoptees, ethnic Koreans in Russia, victims of Japanese military sexual slavery, etc.). This gave Tarae the potential to go beyond the limits of the ethnic group of Korea. Tarae, as a “dispersed sound”, can benefit from the appeal of deep sadness at the point of contact with other forms of world music. It may form a global diaspora discourse because Tarae is oriented towards interculturalism rather than anti-multiculturalism. The future challenge and goal of Handol’s Tarae would be to continue to find areas of sympathy and broaden the horizon of awareness as diaspora music.