monochrome gagok
 
_How this work was started
This work was first performed in 2010 as a prize winner in a contest held at Arko Art Center in Seoul. Jung Marie explores about the roots of human sound with this work. She collaborated with an installation artist, Yee Sookyung. Ms. Yee provided the space and environment from which Jung Marie performed her own version of sound, which was  based mainly on Gregorian chant and Gagok, Korea's traditional lyric song. Since then she further developed her work through a series of performances at Sidney, Delhi and Santiniketan  (India), Beijing,  Madrid , Poitiers  and Berlin.  At each time, incorporating various local elements such as Flamenco and others into her performance while adapting to new space and environment. It was during this time Jung Marie started experimenting with performing Gagok with her voice only – i.e.,  instead of performing it together with the accompanying traditional musical instruments.
 
_What is in the work
Jung Marie focused on the early forms of song -- meaning, before it was developed into a refined art form.  Song is invented to convey complex feelings and sentiments that cannot be delivered through simple and plain words. Interestingly, another name for Gagok is "yeong eon", which literally means long words.  In a sense, this other name for Gagok informs us how this genre of music was initially originated.
Jung Marie believes singing is one of the purest forms of art. Through her work, she attempts to bring her audiences closer to the essence of song universal to human beings. Searching for the  the origin of song, Jung Marie tries to intertwine space and time using her voice only. With that, she invites  her audience to travel back in time to the origin of the song and become one with the people who invented the song in the ancient time.
 
-How she came up with this work
Jung Marie has studied and practiced Gagok since she was 13 years old. After finishing graduate school, she explored various possibilities of performing Gagok. And, while doing so, she was intrigued by the similarities of human sound at its roots whether in Eastern or Western traditions, which led her to join the Eden Choir (Sop.), Scholar Gregoriana de Seoul that performs Western early music, polyphony or Gregorian chant. While studying Gregorian chant and other various religious vocal music of the world, she discovered that there was one element that not only transcends but unifies all the differences in  religion, culture and age. This single element was the human voice.  From there she went to the place where she could present her own performance, which eventually allowed her to be  not only a successor of Korean traditional music. Gagok, but also  a contemporary artist.
Tradition is not just something from the past, but it is also an huge stream of water which started in the ancient past but continues to flow  in the present, and eventually making its way to the future. As a performer of traditional art, she realized her responsibility is to carry the legacy of  Gagok into the future in its totality as completely as she got it from the past, not carelessly dismissed or distorted by individual taste or preference.
 
-What is Gagok
Gagok is a genre of traditional Korean vocal music sung by men and women to the accompaniment of a small orchestra. In the orchestra, there are usually players for traditional Korean musical instruments such as the geomungo six-string zither, daegeum bamboo transverse flute, gayageum twelve-string zither, piri small double-reed pipe, haeguem two string fiddle and janggo hourglass-shaped drum.
Gagok was mainly appreciated by aristocrats in Korea up until the late 19th century. Gagok is said to express, with extremely protracted melody in swirling or circling manner, noblemen's simple and highbrow  minds not tarnished by secular greed or desire. The lyrics of these songs are Korean traditional poems that follow a fixed format like a sonnet. Gagok comprises twenty-six nam-chang or songs for men, and fifteen yeo-chang or songs for women.
There are Gagoks that take more than 10 minutes to finish, which are slower than the slowest beat produced by metronome, or 3 to 4 minutes, which are short and relatively speedy.
Gagok is one of three major Korea's traditional vocal music genres.  The other two being  Pansori (one man or woman performance of rhythmic story narration accompanied with a percussion) and Beompae (solemn chant recited during a buddhist ritual).
Gagok was added to UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in November of 2010. The legacy of Gagok performance is passed on from generation to generation, but only through a very select and devoted  professional musicians.

Jae Hak Lee