[KS] Jazz in Korea--Josephine Baker
Frank Hoffmann
hoffmann at koreaweb.ws
Wed Nov 23 00:07:18 EST 2011
Dear Steven, and All:
As far as I am aware of not a single scholar, historian or music
specialist, has ever stated that Baker visited East Asia before 1954,
so your and John's claim seem pretty unique, and the first printed
evidence you gave us (the February 8,1940 _Tonga ilbo_ article)
already proofed to be a report about her activities in EUROPE. That
was for late 1939 or early 1940. Now, with the _Chogwang 朝光_ magazine
it is about 1936. There then is ONLY that single piece by Yi Hyo-sŏk,
no newspaper report, nothing else from Korea, Japan, China, or all the
scholars interested in Jazz and music will have overlooked that?
Possible, certainly possible, but still really strange, especially if
you consider how much has been published on Baker in Japan where Jazz
has always been much more popular than in Korea. There are e.g.
reports about how such and such Japanese artist got inspired while
serving in the military in Manchuria by listening to songs by Baker,
BUT there is no single mention of Baker having actually performed
herself, in person, in Manchuria or Japan.
- _Chogwang_ is a known magazine from that time, and everyone doing
work on colonial Korea is familiar with it. If that "Baker visit" (Yi
Hyo-sŏk's piece) would have been taken for real and not just as
fiction, then SURE every single article and website about Jazz in
Korea and articles and Korean websites about Baker (by Koreans) would
have mentioned that already. But nothing... It really does not matter
all too much how Yi's daughter classifies that TODAY. We need to look
at the original publication, not a re-published Han'gŭl edition (I
suppose that is what you refer to, yes, the 2009 edition?).
_Chogwang_ was a literature magazine, published by the Chosŏn Ilbosa,
although in later years it was transformed into a kind of propaganda
magazine to support the Japanese war effort. What you find in there in
1935/36, however, before the Pacific War, is literature, is fiction.
'Kohyang' & 'New Woman' & Local Colors:
Please bear with me--I am trying to contextualize, as I think teh
context is most important here, not just some factual history (not
just if Baker was in Korea or if she was not): The 1936 special theme
of _Chogwang_ was "kohyang" (home town, native place, in extension
homeland). In the early and mid-1930s this was a popular theme in
colonial Korea, one of the themes that was at its base given by the
Japanese authorities, same as the theme of "new woman." You can see
this theme appearing in painting as well, not just literature. In
painting we know it under the term "local colors"--originally "couleur
locale" in French, but then theorized mostly in Germany towards the
end of the 19th century as "Lokalkolorit"--both in literature and in
art. In Korea and under colonial conditions (and same in Taiwan, by
the way), this becomes a very different theme, and a very very central
one, both during and after the colonial period. You will find that in
the mainstream SOUTH Korean discourse on colonial period art this is
one of the three main topics that South Korean scholars and
journalists (mostly since the late 1980s) are pounding on like it were
Cruella De Vil herself. As I tried to show in a recent chapter on the
development of North Korean Chosŏnhwa painting (in Rüdiger Frank's
volume), the NORTH Korean discourse is completely different in this
respect--where those colonial approaches on local identity were
continuously developed (with a short interruption during the Soviet
occupation) since the mid-1950s: this is one of the reasons why
journalists and visitors from the South talking about "collaborator"
tagged artists and writers on visits to the North seem at times so
surprised about reactions there. North and South stew in their own
juice, have almost completely different discourses going on. (We all
do that, of course.) ... As an example from painting, look at Yi
In-sŏng's 1934 oil painting "A Day in Fall," in the South usually
canonized as an exemplary work of pro-Japanese "collaboration" (while
at the same time appreciated aesthetically).
-> http://hoam.samsungfoundation.org/exhibition/lee/view/pop/images/2_01.jpg
This undeniable comes close to Paul Gauguin's early 1890s works from
Tahiti. Once you have the colonizer's gaze on the native (read
primitive) sexized colonial subject and once the colonized one's
imitating the colonizer's view. That at least has been the mainstream
South Korean take on the issue for the past 30+ years. (And that
discourse has been as boring, uninventive, and monologic as it
possibly can get in art history.) Now let me come back to Yi Hyo-sŏk
and his various pieces for _Chogwang_ in 1936. Yi Hyo-sŏk's works for
_Chogwang_ were written in that same context, which was then seen as a
positive one, as a challenge to develop some sort of a Korean
identity, apart from Japanese modernity but not against it. So, that
main theme was basically given to Yi. And both in literature and in
painting the "exotic woman" was one of the usual subject matters, but
also the "new woman," the "creative woman" for which western women
were the model ... in painter Yi In-sŏng's case, in the mentioned
example at least, it was an exoticized Korean girl in a poor
country-side setting, exoticized through Western means of depictions
and points of view (then still new for Korea), while for writer Yi
Hyo-sŏk and many others this was usually a Western woman with Western
accessoirs (cloth, perfume bottles, furs, high heel shoes, magazines,
etc.). The image of a bare-breasted dancer (and yes, Baker really did
that too), a beautiful black American in Paris was a more than perfect
match here! So, my point is that in itself the appearance of Josephine
Baker in 1930s Korean magazines is anything but a surprise! To the
opposite, it is most typical for 1930s Korean culture.
Now, you say that Yi Hyo-sŏk's piece in this literary magazine is not
literature, not fiction, but a documentary report. It is indeed
re-published as "tanp'yŏn sŏn," and maybe it was published as this
originally.
But again, we talk about a writer here, not a journalist, and one that
did other pieces in 1936, all with the 'kohyang' theme in the center,
trying to depict, on his and his times terms, Korea as a
not-yet-modernized but on the way to modernization culture (sorry
about my English, this can sure be phrased better). The context in
itself suggests this is also fiction. The fact alone that he talks
about "C-Harbor" (in the subtitle already) and not Chŏngjin Harbor
should make us suspicious. A "report" can of course be a fictitious
report, which is just another genre of fiction. That is exactly what
we have here! Or, as an essay about the 2009 edition says, "(dreams,
fantasies, imagination) to construct the idealized woman"--that is
exactly what we have here as well. I do not have that 2009 edition,
but one of the book sellers publishes a "Publisher's Review" here:
http://www.yes24.com/24/goods/3450735
Click on the small "continue" button to see the full text. With
reference to the here discussed <그때 그 항구의 밤> that review clearly
states, I quote: "그에게 진정한 예술(문학)은 단순한 현실의 반영에 머물지 않고, 현실의 소재를 유기적으로
재구성한 미적 구조물이다." This may not necessarily be the most enlightening
review either, yet it at least gets to the point on this issue.
Best regards,
Frank
--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws
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