Abstract
This dissertation investigates Yesujeon (“The Story of Jesus”), a 1970 pansori composition by master singer Dongjin Park, as a groundbreaking work that reimagines Christian theology through the lens of Korean traditional music. Emerging in response to Korea’s cultural shifts in the twentieth century – including Westernization, Japanese occupation, and state-led modernization – Yesujeon integrates the Passion narrative with the aesthetics, vocal styles, and improvisational elements of pansori, a genre rooted in shamanic ritual and expressive storytelling.
While pansori has historically drawn from Korea’s folk and spiritual traditions, Park’s work merges it with biblical themes, offering a rare example of a new religious pansori that affirms Korean traditional spirituality rather than rejecting it in favor of Western forms. Through detailed transcription and English translation of selected scenes from Park’s 1988 studio recording, this study explores how pitch relationships, modal structures, and vocal stylization function expressively within Yesujeon. It introduces the concept of “modulatory bridging tones” to analyze mode-shift (byeonjo) and modulation (jeonjo) in a pansori context, revealing how emotional nuance drives tonal flexibility beyond fixed scales.
The dissertation also examines Park’s distinctive diction and phonetic stylization. While the Jeolla dialect serves as the primary literary language of pansori, Park layered it with personal artistic choices and a rich blend of regional inflections, particularly from Chungcheong-do, highlighting the dynamic interplay between standardized literary forms and individualized, expressive variation.
Equally central to this work is the contribution of gosu (barrel drum accompanist) Bongshin Ju. Far from a passive accompanist, Ju’s chuimsae (vocal acclamations and interjections) and rhythmic improvisations – embodying an idiosyncratic seongeum (a distinctive expressive voice shaped through both drum performance and chuimsae) – co-create the performance’s expressive landscape and exemplify pansori’s core ethos of interactive musical dialogue. The gosu’s emotional coloring is particularly nuanced in his chuimsae seongeum, especially during aniri sections, where he tends to respond more directly to the narrative text; in contrast, his interjections during sung passages are shaped more by the changja (singer)’s melodic delivery.
By contextualizing Yesujeon within the broader history of Korean music and its encounters with Christian theology, this dissertation sheds light on the work’s role in shaping a Korean spiritual aesthetic. It argues that Yesujeon is not merely a cultural artifact, but a living, performative theology – a devotional reimagining that channels national voice, history, and belief into an emotionally and musically resonant retelling of the Passion.