A Wesleyan audience of about 45 members witnessed the soulful, solitary performance of Dr. Chan E. Park, last Wednesday. Sept. 13, at the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies.

Park kept her audience engaged with her round drum and tremulous voice. She began with a lecture on Korean culture, history and art.

“[My music and stories are a] journey of the Korean voice,” Park said. “It is a journey from the past to the present.”

Due to Korea’s separation into two countries, and the subsequent splintering of culture, Park says that many Koreans have a loss of trust in their identity. She sees the heritage of the oral arts as a way of identifying with the past and therefore present and future, of Korea.

“The root is disconnected from the branches and the leaves,” Park said. “Our art is one way to gain the eye to see where the leaf connects to the branch, and the branch to the trunk, and dig it and there you see the roots.”

Her work captures accumulated pain and humor of a long tradition of oral song passed down from generation to generation.

“I was moved by her performance because of the depth of feeling which she conveyed,” said Garrett Field, a graduate student in ethnomusicology. “It transported me to a different time and place.”

According to Park, her art tries to relive and recast the urgency of reality. She does this mainly with humorous and witty bilingual interpretations of the ancient p’ansori tales, a specific genre of Korean music and storytelling.

Like Shakespeare, originally considered entertaining for the lower classes, the art of p’ansori has now been recognized as a cultural treasure of Korea. Park chuckled that it was number five on the cultural treasure list, because many of the other forms of storytelling have stemmed from p’ansori.

The stigmas surrounding the folk art, though, still exist to some extent. Park’s parents were not delighted when they discovered their daughter’s interest in old folk music.

“The vocal quality is not ideal for prospective wives,” Park said. “Although it is very ideal for my voice. I could never hit those high falsetto notes in choir.”

With the myths built around the intense training needed to perform p’ansori, it’s doubtful that anyone would attempt to learn the old art without a lot of dedication. Park shared some of the common myths; one says that true training must cause one to bleed buckets from their vocal chords. She assured everyone, though, that this was not true.

Those lucky enough to hear Park sing were grateful for both the effort she must have put into her training and the opportunity to hear a form of singing rarely heard in New England.

“The singing was beautiful and expressive, which offset the loud cracks on her drum,” said David Mostoller ’08. “The great humor of the translation made it come to life for me.”

Park, an Associate Professor of Korean Language, Literature and Performance Studies at Ohio State University, was the first in a series of performances to be presented by the Music Department and the Freeman Center. Wesleyan graduate student Hae Joo Kim, currently living in China, single-handedly arranged the event, via e-mail and phone. All the hard work paid off, though, as the knowledgeable and humorous Park received a larger-than-expected audience.