GOMOOL
음악동인 고물
Musical Coterie GOMOOL
“Gomool (고물, 古物)” means an object from the past but most people use it as a word for a useless object.
Its English translation can range from “antique” to “junk.”
In 2002, people majoring in traditional music of Korea gathered, and Gomool, a musical coterie, was formed to investigate from diverse perspectives why failures continued in music making when the traditional music involved. We have discovered political mechanisms working in understanding and perceiving music, which we do and will ceaselessly question and tackle.
The rational perception on Korea’s traditional music has been impossible by the forces to distort and misrepresent the musical heritage of Joseon and the resulted prejudiced perceptions on the traditional music. To counteract these movements and their effects, Gomool has invented what is called a staged documentary (a performative form of documentary).
Korean people in general are barred from the chance to rationally perceive the musical heritage of Joseon conceptualized as obsolete and hallowed music. Such conceptualization started in Japanese Colonial era to frame Korea as barbaric and was finalized by the wave of westernization in Korea. Even those who major in Korea’s traditional music cannot rationally perceive it, subject to the authoritative environment in the academia of the music.
We, Gomool, thus aim to discover the following in this music-cultural situation. We pursue and are seeking the novel way to achieve a musical goal in music making that is based on the original musical grammaticality of Joseon music. With this new way, we are in search of a channel where music genres with disparate grammars communicate with one another.
We, Gomool, are a camp built on the vision of musical evolution.
Without denying that the musical heritage we use is prescribed as “gomool,”
we aim to strip such prescription off and revive its original grammar for its evolution.
