Female Speaker: From the Library of Congress in Washington,
D.C. Judith Gray: Welcome.
I'm Judith Gray, an Ethnomusicologist and Coordinator
of Reference for the American Folklife Center's Archive
of Folk Culture.
Oh behalf of the entire center staff I'd like to welcome you
to this special presentation,
which is part of our Benjamin Bodkin lecture series.
The Bodkin series provides a platform
for professional folklorists, ethnomusicologists, ethnographers,
working both in the academy and outside of it, to present findings
from their latest research.
So the series allows us to interact with cutting-edge scholars
in all manors of fields in cultural heritage,
while at the same time building the collections here at the Library,
because these lectures become part
of the Library's permanent collections
and can be developed ultimately into webcasts on the LC Web site.
So in this way the Bodkin lecture series helps the American Folklife
Center fulfill its mandate to preserve and present the folk life
and ethnomusicology scholarship that is informing
and impacting our world today.
Our archive is home to the largest collection
of one-of-a-kind ethnographic wax cylinder recordings,
the bulk of which are Native American.
When I first came to the center to work
on the Federal Cylinder Project, my work was exclusively related
to those Native American materials, but at the same time I was aware
that there were these little clusters of other recordings.
But I had no time and no expertise to be able to work on them.
And so over the years, it's been a special treat whenever we had
somebody who could inform us what we have.
And in this case we have a very special treat.
I have the honor to introduce Professor Robert Provine,
who is currently a Professor of Music at the University of Maryland.
Before that he was Professor of Music
at the University of Durham in England.
He's past President of the Association for Korean Studies
in Europe, and he's author of multiple books
and articles on Korean ritual music.
So you're about to be told a wonderful tale
about the particular wax cylinder recordings,
the earliest recordings of Korean music.
I have here the boxes, the original boxes that they were in
and before Rob starts I just want
to show you what one cylinder looks like.
This is one of the originals.
[applause] And now please let's welcome Rob Provine.
Robert Provine: Thank you very much, Judith,
for that unnecessarily kind introduction.
On Friday -- oh first let me just give you a little sample
of what it is we're going to be dealing with.
But I'll start in the very beginning with some acknowledgements.
And I think I want this to be actually playing.
There we go.
This research has involved a number of countries, a lot of archives,
a lot of books and quite a number of very helpful people.
I'd like to say particularly the Academy of Korean Studies
that awarded me a fellowship that I took last January and February,
and at the academy, Professor Iwon Bom,
a historian with extraordinary knowledge
of this particular period of Korean history.
Mr. Jung Chong Kwan [spelled phonetically],
who is a cosmetic salesman, but he moonlights
by running a recording company.
And it was his determination to have these earliest recordings put
out on CD that really kind of got me back into a project that I've come
across decades ago but never had proceeded with.
The National Anthropological Archives have the archives
of Alice Fletcher, who we will see is a major player in the story.
Dr. Bong Sun Ju [spelled phonetically] is a local archivist
who has written quite definitive works on several figures
in the late 19th century, Koreans in the United States for the most part.
Dr. Bong's work is extraordinarily helpful.
The American Philosophical Society holds the archives of Franz Boaz,
or at least part of them, and Franz Boaz is part of the story.
The Harvard Archives have the archives
of Professor Frederick Putnam,
one of the first anthropologists in the country.
He's part of the story.   The Peabody Museum of Ethnology,
also at Harvard, has similar archives.
And, of course, Judith Gray, who was kind enough
to introduce me a moment ago, without whom we'd know nothing
about any of these things.
On Friday the 24th of July, 1896, a group of at least three Korean men,
to judge from circumstantial evidence, visited the house
of Alice Fletcher at 214 First St., SE, in Washington,
D.C. There Miss Fletcher made six Edison wax cylinder recordings
of Korean songs sung either solo or in duet by the Korean men.
These recordings of 1896 antedate the next known recordings
of Korean music made in Japan in 1907 by 11 years.
And following my introduction of these 1896 recordings
of Korea years ago, they've gathered a considerable amount
of attention there, including a reissue on CD, [inaudible] CD.
Since 214 First St., SE, now lies underneath the current Madison
Building of the Library of Congress, where we all are,
these six cylinders are actually stored in this building today,
and it's clear the cylinders have only moved a few yards
since their conception in 1896.   On the surface, nearly everything
about this recording event is incredible.
In 1896, almost the only Koreans in Washington, D.C., were a handful
of diplomats assigned to the Korean legation,
and all those were highly educated gentleman
with a strongly Confucian upbringing.
That a group of such Korean gentry would enter the house
of a single lady and sing a group of songs, including children's songs,
into a machine the likes of which they never imagined,
is virtually inconceivable.
For her part, Miss Fletcher, to judge from materials
and her surviving archives at the National Anthropological Archives,
took not the slightest interest in Korean music at either
that time or at any other.
It turns out that the recordings resulted from a remarkable set
of coincidental circumstances from an extraordinary collection
of interesting and influential people,
from exceptional historical events in Korea and the United States
and from a bit of serendipity.
To paraphrase Stephen J. Gould's description of the burgess shale,
you could rewind the tape of life to about 1880 and replay it millions
of times without these recordings or anything
like them ever appearing by 1900.
The recordings form one part of a wider research project
that might be described as Korean music
in late 19th century United States.
The other pieces of the larger puzzle are two museum collections
that include Korean musical instruments and the matter
of a group of Korean musicians sent
to the world's Columbia exposition of 1893 in Chicago.
All parts of this puzzle are to greater or lesser degree,
linked to the story to be told today.
To explore the people and events that led to circumstances
that set the stage for these recordings,
we need to visit a number of impressive people
and their activities through a number of contexts: first of all,
people and circumstances in Washington in the 1890s; second,
historical events and people in Korea of the later 19th century;
third, the world Columbian exposition of 1893; fourth,
collections of musical instruments; and finally,
the tangential connection to the University of Maryland,
where I happen to teach now.
Today, I propose to look only at the first two and the last
of these items, perhaps with a quick sketch of the other two.
This is research in progress, and I want to urge that point on you.
I have a lot more work to do before the story is complete and I wonder
if any of you have ever heard a lecture from anybody
that did not make exactly the same claim as that.
[laughter] Have you ever heard somebody say,
"I'm done with this project.
This is the lecture that came out of it."?
It doesn't happen.
So far I have very little news to offer in terms of data in the sense
that the data is somewhere in the obscure public record.
But what I do have to offer, I think, is a fresh linking
of the known information to the specific subject
of Korean music in the United States.
Part one, Washington, D.C. Slide.
Alice Cunningham Fletcher -- oh, by the way, there is a handout,
which I hope you all have, with a list of people and their dates.
You might find it handy to keep track of them.
They're listed in the order in which they appear.
Alice Fletcher, 1838 to 1923, is justly renowned today as one
of the great pioneers of ethnomusicology
and anthropology in the United States.
In particular, she is noted now on the ethnomusicological side
for her early use of the phonograph and the study
of Native American music, and there are several book-length studies
of her career.
As a woman she could not hold a university professorship,
but her influence was such that she was a trusted
and frequently consulted colleague for numerous important men
in anthropology, and one of them, professor Frederick Putnam
at Harvard, the second professor of anthropology in the United States,
arranged for Fletcher to receive a lifelong fellowship,
the Thaw fellowship, starting in 1891.
Her most important professional work, given the enormous effort,
mental energy and determined partisanship she gave it
over a decade, was land allocation to the Omaha Indians, the Winnebago,
the Nez Perce Native Americans in the later 19th century.
Her respect and love for Native Americans was exceptional and much
to be admired and indeed she adopted an Omaha Chief son,
Francis LaFleche, who shared her house in Washington along
with a third interesting person, Jane Gay.
Fletcher, along with a good number of other highly accomplished women,
was forbidden admission to the Washington Anthropological Society
and all other anthropological societies on the grounds of gender,
despite the genuine disdain in which they were otherwise held by the men.
Strong women that they were,
they founded in response the Women's Anthropological Society of America
in 1885, led by Matilda Coxe Evans Stevenson,
and the society held regular meetings with formal reading
and discussion of scholarly papers until times changed.
Women were admitted
to the Washington Anthropological Society from 1899 on.
Within five years, Fletcher had become not only a member
but president of the male-dominated society.
Fletcher obtained her graphophone, as it was then called, in 1891,
when she was already 53 years old
and the machinery had been available commercially for only a few years.
The collection of cylinders in Fletcher's collection in the Library
of Congress consists of 244 cylinders.
Although it's not necessarily the case that all cylinders
in Fletcher's collection were recorded
by Fletcher herself, many certainly were.
Others made far more recordings than she did.
Francis LaFlesche, for example, recorded a remarkable set
of 254 cylinders documenting only [unintelligible] rituals
and the famous Francis Dinsmore [spelled phonetically],
a great admirer of Fletcher, recorded about 2,000.
These are Fletcher's cylinders.   There are two anomalies in it.
One is something known as European classical music -- [laughter] --
and can anybody spot the other one, which is the odd person out?
Fletcher's diary entry for July 24, 1896,
is unfortunately rather uninformative.
Oh, this is the specific entry in the federal cylinder project to do
It's nearly illegible.
Her handwriting is inimitable, but there we are.
She records only that she wishes to write to five people.
The first word you see is "write."   It's very hard to read.
Anyway, that's just a rescript.
So "Write Dr. Daniel Brenton," who happens to be the first professor
of anthropology in the United States,
in Pennsylvania, "Write Mrs."
-- possibly Linean, I'm not sure -- "Mrs. Penny" -- I'm not sure --
"Mrs. Trumbull" and "Professor Putnam," remember, her benefactor.
And in the archives up at Harvard I found the letter she wrote him
at 8:30 that morning.   I think Lizzie in the afternoon
at six o'clock is probably the cleaning lady, but I'm not sure.
There is no mention in the diary or in the letter to Putnam
about anything to do with Korea or making recordings on Korea.
Fletcher took a few notes about the Korean recordings,
recopying some of them.
And while these contain no ethnography whatsoever,
they're still informative in some ways.
There are Romanization of the names of three men involved.
You'll see some of them here if I can get the attention of the cursor.
This one, which looks like Jong Lick Ahu [spelled phonetically]
as it is sometimes rendered, but this is the Korean surname Ahm
and this is an "s" in Miss Fletcher's inimitable style.
So this is Ahm Jong Sheik [spelled phonetically] as it turns out.
And the others are Ehe Chull and someone who's very hard to identify
and she calls Sung [unintelligible].
But from evidence to be presented later,
we now know that the first two are Ahm Jong Sheik and Ehe Chull
and the other is a matter of conjecture.
But for fun, how do we look through some of her notes?
Here's a rescript of that one.
Korean songs, we see the performer, and the second recording,
abbreviated "Plum Tree," and here is the text content, "Out of the Valley
of Many Mountains older than [unintelligible] dynasty,"
which was the Cho-sun dynasty dating back to 1392,
which is 500 years and more old.
First recording, "Prayer That All Good Men," third a patriotic song.
Here's another one.
And you can see what she does is identify the box,
which is right here, the date
and a little more information about each recording.
Again, in rescript, this is Ahm Jong Sheik again and some
of the same pieces again.   Here's another one.
This one is in two voices sung by Ahm Jong Sheik and Ehe Chull.
And the piece is called "Ah, Rah, Run" in her rendering of it.
One would guess that this is the famous song "Ariran,"
Here's another one.   How many of you can read this?
[Laughs] It's taken me a lot of work.
So it's the first recording, "Catching the Swallows," myth song.
And Miss Fletcher was interested in recording myth songs
of the Native Americans so I think she probably asked for this one.
And the singer, not linger, is Ehe Chull.
I think this is the last one I'll show you.
This is a repeat of another recording.
And then there's some beats.
It took me forever to work this one out, "Showing Rhythm of Interlude."
Here we are.
And a love song that's a jovial song sung by two voices.
Searching through Fletcher's archives, I found,
much to my surprise, a number
of transcriptions relating to the Korean cylinders.
The "Song of the Moon" is there in several versions from draft
to fair copy scribbled on scraps of staff paper and the blank backside
of some transcriptions of Native American music made
by notorious composer John Comfort Fillmore.
Looking at Fletcher's archive realizes she used any scrapbook
paper that was lying around, anything at all.
If it had blank space on it, she used it.
So I don't know what use she had for the Fillmore transcriptions,
So to understand the significance of the transcriptions, we have to look
to another impressive woman of the time.
And the next person on my list is Anna Tollman Smith, 1840 to 1917.
Like Fletcher she was a member of the Women's Anthropological Society
of America, where the roles listed has Miss Annie T. Smith.
Smith worked at the United States Bureau of Education,
forerunner of the current Department of Education and was outspoken
about numerous important issues of the day, including co-education,
the role of religious education -- and her view was mix religion
and science in the classroom -- race psychology and the principles
that should govern the content of public education
in the United States, issues could have it going away.
She was best known as an expert in foreign educational practices and,
in particular, she wrote in 1912 a substantial article that introduced
to the United States Montessori system of education.
In February 1896, the year of the Korean recordings,
Fletcher was president of the Washington Association
of Anthropological Society of America, and Smith was its director
of the section on psychology.
Somehow she got the idea to present a paper to Society in 1896 or 1897
about Korean nursery rhymes.
And in late 1897, this paper found its way to print
in the journal of American folklore.   Some nursery rhymes of Korea.
Oh, here we are, Women's Anthropological Society,
and this is where you see that Miss A. Tollman Smith was the director
of psychology, and Alice Fletcher was the president at the time.
So some nursery rhymes of Korea.
The article quickly gives us information
about the Korean students who gave her information
and about the recordings made by Alice Fletcher.
So here you see in the middle of the page the Korean students
from whose lips the songs were taken.
Assured me this that and the other thing,
and the discussion of rhythm versus rhyme.
At the bottom of the page, in the footnote,
we find the paper was delivered to the Women's Anthropological Society,
but it doesn't give a date.
And the surviving records of the society are not very complete.
One of the things that she shows is a little lullaby in Korean.
There's a transcription for those of you who can read Hondu
on the right [unintelligible].
Translated over here, there's an attempt at a kind
of phonetic rendering of the Korean original, which allows us
to reconstruct it pretty well.
And most Korean children know this still today.
Some of Anna Tollman Smith's comments here,
syllables which received varied slur and emphasis and what not,
there's a kind of physiological description here,
but what's really interesting is the footnote that says these songs
with several others were recorded by the graphophone and transcribed
into our notation by Miss Alice C. Fletcher.
It is the first attempt that has been made in this country
[laughter] Such were the immediate circumstances surrounding the 1896
recordings, and perhaps the veil of disbelief that I expressed
at the beginning is starting to lift.
Young students are willing to do things that older people are not
and a particular scholarly purpose was being served by the recordings,
and there were at least two strong personalities, Smith and Fletcher,
pushing the students to cooperate.
So that brings me to part two: Historical context
in Korea and United States.
Late in 18th century Korea, or rather the 100-year-old kingdom
of Choson, was stagnant in many ways.
It was nearly closed to foreigners.
Its economy essentially agricultural,
as it had been for centuries.
Its social structure was defined by Confucianism
and a repressive class system.   And its governmental system,
also derived from Confucian principles was conservative
and difficult to change.
In many ways the government was based on the Chinese model
and to a degree was subservient to China.
Japan by contrast had opened her doors to the outside world
with the Magee restoration of 1868
and was making rapid progress toward modernization
and importation of Western thinking.
Both Japan and China wished to control Korea
and in due course they both installed military forces in Korea,
particularly within the capital city Hanseong,
which is what we now call Seoul.
The Korean government, especially those officials under the influence
of Queen Min and her family,
in part leaned conservatively toward China while those few
who favored progressive ideas with some support from the king,
King Cojung, looked to Japan as a model.
There arose a group of young activist Korean intellectuals known
as the enlightenment party, or progressive party,
who were determined to bring Korea out of her stagnation and bring
in modern ideas from outside Korean borders.
This period of Korean history is one of the most researched
and variously interpreted, and it has drawn the attention of Korean
and foreign scholars for decades.   The secondary literature is immense.
In 1882, emission of inspection was sent to Japan to learn,
among other things, about Japanese agriculture
and recent modern developments to see whether
such ideas might be applied in Korea.
Two members of the mission were Kim Polkun and Yung Su, 1861 to 1891,
both important members of the progressive party.
Also in 1882, a treaty done under some force, shall we say,
was signed with the United States.
So the centennial relations with Korea was 1982.
Big celebrations.
In 188, a further mission was planned and approved by the king,
this time a special mission to the United States and,
as it turned out, Europe as well.   Important members of the mission,
again taken from the progressive party, included an adoptive relative
of the queen named Min Yung It [spelled phonetically]
as Minister Plenipotentiary, Soh Quan Bun [spelled phonetically]
as Secretary, and You Gilt Jun [spelled phonetically] and the
above mentioned Yung Su as attach.
I'm sorry about all these names, but you've got them all in the hand out.
All were young men, aged 23, 24, 27 and 22, respectively.
Soh Quan Bun and Yung Su are especially important
to the story today, and they're going to keep reappearing.
So remember those two at least.
In July and August 1883, the mission stopped over in Japan and there,
on only four days notice,
they employed a young American named Percival Lowell, 1855 to 1916,
who happened to be located in Japan at the time,
to serve as their foreign secretary and counsel.
Percival Lowell was a member
of a Boston aristocratic family of considerable stature.
Why are these things not in the order I thought they were in?
I think what I was supposed to do --
let's hold it on Percival Lowell for the moment.
I was going to show you that in the Smith article,
she publishes in a very clear copy
of Alice Fletcher's transcription of the "Moon Song."
Here's the rest of it.
And there's also a prayer for good people not to grow old,
known in Korean as "Tonga" [spelled phonetically],
but it hasn't been transcribed in quite a way
that we would recognize it as a tonga.
And you can see the author, Anna Tollman Smith, at the bottom.
But let's look at this -- and those of you
who read musical notation can have a little fun with it.
I don't think Miss Fletcher would have passed my transcription class
at Maryland, but nevermind.
The idea is good and thanks to Mr. Jong Jan Juan,
who I mentioned earlier, I have a kind of transcript
of what the text probably is.
Just quickly to give you an idea of what it is, it's "moon,
moon, bright moon" [Korean].
The second line is a classical allusion.
[Korean]. So this is the Chinese poet Leebo [spelled phonetically]
playing under the moon, basically.
[Korean]. So Over there, over there, underneath that moon," and so on.
So it's a kind of children's lullaby or children's song.
So let's hear it and watch her transcription.
What I'm going to give you is the original copy,
if there is such a thing.
So this hasn't been processed digitally at all.
All right so let's go on.   This is Percival Lowell.
There we are.   Not as a young man.
Lowell's brother, Abbot Lawrence Lowell,
was president of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933
and as it happens I lived in Lowell House, named for him,
for three years as an undergraduate.
And his sister was Amy Lowell, who's quite notable
as an important lesbian poet
who also possessed a strong interest in Japan.
In the view of Minister Plenipotentiary Min Yung It,
"Mr. Lowell is not only well acquainted with the customs
of this country, but is a man of sagacity, of clear intellect
and without the assistance of such a person, things cannot be brought
to such a successful determination," referring
to the special mission to the United States.
And since Lowell was the one writing almost everything written in English
for this group, I think he probably wrote that as well.
So let's go back to Lowell as a somewhat younger man,
and here you seen him with the members
of the 1883 special mission to the United States.
There's some doubt
about identification of some of these people.
Lowell's clear enough.
The translator is apparently this Chinese gentleman here.
There's still a bit of space to be filled in on all this.
And this is almost certainly Yung Su,
and we'll hear of him again later on.
This one is of Lowell and three of the most distinguished members
of the group, to include Soh Quan Bun, who I think is this one.
Oh, back in this one, Yu Gilt Joon [spelled phonetically] very quickly
wanted to effect Western ways,
and you'll see he's wearing a Western suit.
These photographs were apparently taken in New York.
Lowell was himself quite a photographer,
but he didn't take photographs of them that I know
Right. In the United States for about two months in late 1883,
the mission visited San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York
and Boston, among other places, and various newspapers,
including The New York Times, occasionally picked up on them.
So here are the intelligence in The New York Times, last paragraph.
Min Yun It, the Korean ambassador, Soh Quan Bun, our hero,
Yu Gilt Joon, who dresses in Western clothes, and Yun Su,
who will come back, of the Korean embassy and Ensign George C. Folk,
who is another interesting character in the story,
although we won't deal with him very much.
So the mission stayed in Washington for a few days,
but in fact President Chester Arthur wasn't there
to meet them; he was in New York.
So they took off to New York and returned later
on to Washington for a much longer stay.
Part of the group, Min Yung It, Soh Quan Bun and Jung Su,
proceeded via New York to Europe for a tour,
accompanied by Ensign George Folk, and most of the others returned
to Korea by way of San Francisco, accompanied by Percival Lowell.
In France, by the way, Min Jung It was apparently referred to as
"mignon" for what that's worth.
[laughter] Yu Gilt Joon alone remained in the United States
to study at Boston University
and that's another interesting story not to be told here.
Back in Korea, the group of young Korean intellectuals set
about pulling Korea out of its stagnation
and into a productive relationship with the rest of the world.
Lowell remained in Korea for about a year --
I'm not absolutely sure about that, yet --
where he studied and came to respect the country and he wrote books,
such as Choson: The Land of the Morning Calm, 1886,
and articles on significant events in Korea,
as well as taking a substantial number of photographs.
Later, he returned to the United States
where he established the Lowell Observatory near Flagstaff, Ariz.,
and spend the rest of his career as one
of the preeminent astronomers of the age.
He is the one who discovered the canals
on Mars postulated the existence of an advanced civilization there
and wrote books and articles to that effect.
The young Korean intellectuals found themselves struggling
against enormous conservative political forces and were unable
to persuade the government to bring itself out of its stagnation.
Eventually, under the leadership of Kim Ok Kuhn,
who was on the Japanese mission in 1882, and with apparent support
from Japan, the same people we've been discussing so far,
plus some others and some hired assassins,
carried out a coup d'tat in December, 1884.
Six high officials on the conservative side were assassinated
at a banquet contrived for just that purpose,
on the pretense celebrating the opening
of the first Korean post office.
The Koreans adoptive relative, Min Yun It, of whom we heard already,
who had originally been sympathetic to the progressives
and led the mission of 1883 to the United States,
was also seriously injured in a bungled assassination attempt.
Soh Quan Bun was one of the main leaders of the coup, and Yung Su,
whose government post gave him steady access to the king,
was stationed in the palace with the king
and queen while the fateful banquet took place.
The attempt to force Korea out of its slumber was a disaster,
and it failed in only three days.
The Chinese reestablished control for some time and a number
of the conspirators, including Soh Quan Bun and Yung Su,
narrowly escaped to Japan.
Some conspirators remaining in Seoul, well, remained there
and were tortured, and I don't mean water boarding here,
and were put to death.
Lowell for his part contributed an acerbic piece
to the Atlantic Monthly, describing the coup d'tat carried
out by the men who knew closely during his time accompanying the
1883 special mission to the United States.
So that brings us back now to the United States.
Japan was strongly pressured to return the conspirators
for punishment, but Soh Quan Bun and Yung Su managed, independently,
to escape to the United States.
Soh became a United States citizen in New Jersey and eventually moved
to Washington, D.C., where he held various jobs
and formed strong friendships.
One of his jobs was at the Bureau of Education
where inevitably he met Anna Tollman Smith and answered her questions
about educational systems in Korea and Japan.
He served as a consultant for various purposes,
such as identification and commentary on Korean collections
in the Smithsonian museums, and he wrote articles
on Korean children's stories.
Political Korean power in the 1890s was -- or in the early 1890s --
was in turmoil and it shifted rapidly back and forth
between conservative and progressive factions.
In 1894, despite his role in the 1884 coup d'tat,
Soh Quan Bun was invited back to Korea, an American citizen now,
and given a high government post.
But by February 1896, he was posted back to Washington to serve as head
of the Korean legation as reported in The Washington Post.
Soh Quan Bun was referred to as Pom Kay Sall [spelled phonetically],
He held that position only until September
of the same year before being relieved by a new head of legation
who came in an opposing fashion back in Korea that had come to power.
Does anybody remember the recordings at this point?
[laughter] The recordings occurred right during Soh Quan Bun's brief
tenure as Korean minister in Washington.
And now we can observe that Soh certainly knew Anna Tollman Smith
and was interested in Korean children's stories.
This is the point at which serendipity appears on the scene.
Seven Korean students studying
in Japan decided they would rather study in the United States.
They managed to escape and got as far
as Vancouver before running out of money.
Yes. Have a look at some of this.
Howard University has had several recent accessions from the Orient.
Wonderful terminology isn't it?
They're Koreans, none of whom can understand a word of English.
The history is wild and romantic.
Noble families, we could expect that.
Vancouver, they telegraphed the Korean minister,
that's Soh Quan Bun, and so on.
And on the next page, the interpreter took his departure
after seeing them safely bestowed.
That could have well been Soh Quan Bun himself.
Six of them were tall.   One is small and slight.
They all have straight, black hair and the narrow eye of the Mongolian.
But what catches my attention is the next paragraph.
Social gatherings of the student took place on the night
of their arrival and the attended in a body solemn state and observing.
In the course of the evening, they were surrounded
by a dozen persuasive damsels --
[laughter] -- who begged them to sing.
One at last managed to signify that he could not sing in English,
but they were sure that this did not matter and after more urging,
the program of "Sewanee River" and like songs was diversified
by specimens of real Korean melody.
All right, I think the circumstances are clear apart from the details.
Was Anna Tollman Smith there?   Did someone tell her about it?
Did she drag the Koreans kicking and screaming to Alice Fletcher's house?
We don't know the details, but it's pretty clear
who all these people are, and they are the ones making the recordings.
So Soh Quan Bun got the students installed at Howard University,
and they sang the real Korean melody
and from other sources we know the names of the students
and sure enough they include Ahm Jong Sheik and Ehe Chull,
whom we've encountered before Here's a very bad photograph
of Korean students at Howard with, I think, this is Miss Rankin,
probably a relative of President Rankin
of Howard University at that time.   The various reproductions I've seen
of this assign different names to different people.
So it's -- I'm not quite sure of who's who yet.
But Ahm Jong Sheik and Ehe Chull are in there somewhere.
I'm hoping to get a better copy of this from Howard University soon.
So although details are missing, the general background
of the 1896 cylinder recordings should now be clear.
A group of young Korean male students arriving in Washington,
D.C., in 1896 were under the care of Soh Quan Bun,
head of the Korean legation.
And somehow this led to existing contacts with Anna Tollman Smith
to Alice Fletcher and thence to the recordings.
Without Soh Quan Bun, a progressive who had traveled abroad
on the mission to the United States in 1883,
conspired in the coup d'tat in 1884, become a much-respected figure
in Washington, D.C., been chosen for a high governmental post in Korea
in 1894 and been appointed head of the Korean legation in Washington
in 1896, the Fletcher recordings would never have happened.
Ordered to return to Korea after being relieved at the legation
in September 1896, Soh knew what would happen if he did so
and he stayed on in Washington on grounds of health.
In August 1897, Soh took a vigorous bicycle ride in the streets
of Washington aggravating his chronic tuberculosis,
and he died on August 13 at the age of 38.
This is the report.
There's numerous newspaper reports of his passing,
but this is the one from The New York Times.
It's clear that he was very highly respected and liked in Washington.
The other escapee, with whom Soh seems
to have little contact during the time in America, was Yung Su.
But 1887, Yung's English was good enough that he could enroll
in the Maryland Agricultural College,
which was now the University of Maryland.
He graduated in June 1891, delivering the student address
at his graduation ceremony, and he is now reputed
to be the first Korean to graduate from an American college.
He obtained employment with the Department of Agriculture
and wrote a substantial article on the agriculture of Japan,
calling on his memory of the 1882 mission of inspection to Japan.
In October of 1891, four months after graduation, Yung Su was struck
by a train of what was then called College Station
and died of his injuries.
This extraordinary full life lasted 30 years.
The University of Maryland is proud of this part of their history,
and the Yung Su room at the Student Union is a permanent commemoration
of his presence there.
I can't resist showing you a few slides here.
This is Yung Su and his Maryland military uniform.
And if you go up to Greenbelt, just off of Route 1,
you'll find a cemetery where there is one quite remarkable tombstone.
Different from all the others.
And he wrote his name "Pen Su" for some reason --
it's actually Yung Su -- and this is his memorial monument.
And it was put up May 2002 as part of a commemorative exercise.
Here's what it has to say about him.
It's the same information twice, once in Chinese
and once in Korean writing.
And it tells us that he held a post in the royal library,
the Cu Jang Got [spelled phonetically],
and that his family was the Wan Ju Yung [spelled phonetically] family,
given name Su, and this is his grave.
This is the original tablet put up by his friends
from the University of Maryland.
And you can see he was a Korean attached to the first embassy
to the country, graduated at the Maryland agricultural college,
June 1891, killed by a locomotive at College Station, October 22, 1891.
And his friend managed to carve his name incorrectly at the top.
It's not very clear here.
But he took the spelling "pen" and rendered that in Korean writing.
So it's not Yung, but pen in this case.
This is College Station where the accident happened.
When I gave a similar presentation in Korea I mentioned at that point
that I often ride my bicycle by this location in the morning.
I got a huge laugh; I'm not sure why.
[laughter] This will now kind of summarize, I think you've got this
in your handout, what we found out.
The cylinders recorded on July 24, 1896,
are apparently the earliest recordings of Korean music.
It's barely conceivable that earlier recordings of the Korean musicians
who performed at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
The 101 surviving cylinders recorded by Benjamin Hives Gillman
at the exposition were recorded in September 1893,
but the Korean musicians were only present for a short time
in May 1893 just after the opening of the exposition,
so Gillman was probably not there.
The musical instruments used by the Korean musicians formed part
of the Korean exhibition at the exposition, and were purchased
by Edward Sylvester Morse, who had been the teacher
at Boston University of Yu Gilt Joon, back to the 1883 mission,
one of the members of that special mission.
Much of the Morse collection went to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem,
Massachusetts, where the musical instruments remain today.
Here you see a very handsome,
young scholar with hair examining one of the instruments.
Of the 19 Korean musical instruments preserved at the Peabody,
10 came from the Chicago exposition by way of Morse.
Two instruments, one from the exposition and one
from a separate purchase, appear to be unique
with no example surviving in Korea itself.
The one I'm examining here is called vego, which translates
as thunder drum, has six faces and originally was
in a very elaborate frame.
None of these survived in Korea, and reconstructions
in Korea don't bear very much resemblance to this.
There's no question what it is
and there's no reason there would every have been more than two
in the entirety of Korean history, so one is now in Massachusetts.
The other instrument is an authentic Korean mouth organ,
rather like the Japanese sho or the Chinese sheng.
And no Korean mouth organs survived in Korea.
All right?   Where am I?
Here. Fletcher and Putnam were important figures --
this is another summary slide --   in the anthropological exhibits
at the Chicago exposition, along with Franz Boaz.
These three, in turn, were associated
in musical endeavors along with Gillman
and the infamous John Comfort Fillmore,
as criminal in the ethnomusicology as Fletcher is heroic,
despite their close association and similarity of views.
The history of recordings made at the exposition is
yet to be told fully, but it would appear that Gillman and Fillmore,
fierce enemies, were the ones who were interested in music
from around the world, while Fletcher,
Putnam and Boaz had ears only from Native American music in general
and for the Kwiakiutl tribe of Vancouver Island in particular.
Gillman's positive reputation
in ethnomusicology is probably deserved.
Fillmore's foul reputation almost certainly is not.
There are also a number of musical instruments in the Smithsonian,
primarily those in a remarkable 1884 collection by Ensign J.B. Burnadoo.
That's a topic for the future.
I'll just show you one instrument here; this is a Korean homango,
with six strings and a number of frets.
The photograph was taken from an article by Walter Hough,
who was a friend and admirer of Alice Fletcher and the author
of an obituary of her in 1923.
In summary, the 1896 recordings of Korean music made
by Alice Fletcher preserved amateur singing of three Korean students,
and she also made what may be the first transcriptions of Korean music
into Western staff notation.
While several people associated with Fletcher, such as Anna Tollman Smith
and Walter Hough took a strong interest in Korea,
Fletcher herself left no indication that she had any interest whatsoever
in Korea and apparently carried out the recording
and transcriptions merely as a favor to a friend
and colleague, Anna Tollman Smith.
The recordings would never have occurred were it not
for a remarkable set
of circumstances created unintentionally by a combination
of extraordinary people, all intending to do,
and still famous for, quite different things.
Thank you very much.
[applause] Judith Gray: We can probably take a couple
of questions if people would like.
And otherwise you can come up and take a look
at the cylinders themselves,
or let's see if there are a couple questions.
Male Speaker: Could you comment further on the reaction of Korea
to the discovery of these recordings.
Robert Provine: That was a rather strange reaction.
I went to the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts,
as they call themselves in English, and gave this lecture.
And there was absolutely no reaction whatsoever that I could tell.
There were a number of experts there who were really very helpful
in commenting on the recordings as they heard them,
but apart from the group that was there, nothing happened.
But about ten years later, 2006 or so, somehow it was picked up.
And suddenly my name was splattered all over the Korean newspapers
and on the Internet, too, along with the other one of me,
who'd written a book about laughter who's up at the University
of Maryland-Baltimore Country, the other Robert Provine
in the University of Maryland system, right?
And his book was translated into Korean.
Big splash.
So I got a lot of credit for that, too.
But, suddenly, it attracted a lot of attention.
And there is a group that calls themselves the Society
for Old Recordings in Korea.
They picked up on it, and they had already issued a lot of CDs
of 78 rpm recordings done during the Japanese occupation during the first
half of the century.   So they were just ready for this.
And so they picked it up and produced this recording.
They gave me a month to give them comments on it,
and I couldn't find my notes anywhere.
So this has none of my comments.
And in the end, they asked me to contribute an article
to their journal, which I did, and that filled out some
of the material that I had then.
But since then, I've filled in quite a lot.
So the reaction initially was really very muted.
And I remember showing the photograph of this one, x-ed out,
unique drum to some of the senior musicians.
And they just shrugged.
So I think attitudes are probably changing at this point,
or they didn't realize quite what the significance
of this unique drum was, or of these recordings.
Female Speaker: Is that drum [inaudible]?
Robert Provine: No.
That drum was played at royal court sacrificial rights to the god
of wind, clouds, thunder and rain, in other words, heavenly spirits.
And the ancient sources prescribe
that for heavenly spirits you have a drum with six sides.
And that was the only heavenly spirit rite
in the entire Choson dynasty until the very end of the dynasty
when Korea converted itself from a kingdom to an empire.
And an emperor has a further sacrificial rite to carry
out to heaven, which is another heavenly spirit,
because the emperor is the son of heaven,
so it's a kind of filial duty.
So at most there would have been a drum for sacrifice to wind, cloud,
thunder and rain, and a second one for the sacrifice to heaven.
So there would only be a need for two altogether.
Female Speaker: Did it [inaudible]?
Robert Provine: It wasn't at the Columbian exposition.
This one Morse bought separately in Japan, I think around 1923.
There was a fair amount of collecting that the Japanese did
in Korean during the colonial period and then sold
on in the eBay of the time in Tokyo.
Morse, for those who aren't familiar with him, was a great disciple
of Charles Darwin, a raging atheist, and he went to Japan
to propagate his views there.
And there is still a memorial garden for Edward Sylvester Morse there,
as well as teaching at Boston University.
Male Speaker: Can you put the timeline as far as recording
in the context of other Asian cultures, either Japanese,
Chinese or other that existed?
Was it before or after, or any significance?
Robert Provine: Yeah, the really remarkable ones are Benjamin
Gillman's collection of cylinders from the Chicago exposition in 1893.
There are recordings of Javanese gamelan,
various Polynesian island songs,
as well as a good deal of American Indian.
Those are amazing recordings, just extraordinary.
And it's why I'm particularly regretful he wasn't there while the
Korean musicians were at the exposition.
But the cylinder machines only came commercially available,
and their use for music recognized, around 1888 or so, was it?
So Fletcher was in the early going in 1891.
So yes, the late '80s and 1890s are the basic context
of the earliest recordings of this type.
Female Speaker: There are, obviously I know
that there are a few Chinese opera cylinder recordings
from I think right around 1904, 1906, that are here as well.
We don't know the back story on those, either.
Robert Provine: The next recording of Korean music was 1907 in Japan.
Male Speaker: Why is "Danny Boy" so popular among Koreans?
Robert Provine: That's an easier question to answer than you think,
in that what we think of as Western music
as much Korean music as it is Western.
The musical culture of Korea is Western music.
Traditional music is very much a minority interest.
So when you see Jong Won Yah [spelled phonetically] playing
violin, or if you just look at the makeup of orchestras nowadays,
you'll see there's a very high number of East Asians in it.
So "Danny Boy" fits right in.
It's just as much their music as it is ours.
Female Speaker: I think we'll close for now.
And if you have additional questions,
please feel free to come up.
Thank you so much for coming and let's thank Rob Provine.
[applause] Female Speaker: This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.   [end of transcript]