In the traditional ssitgimgut, a lengthy ritual for the dead, performed on the island of Jindo on the southern tip of the Korean peninsula, a shaman performs hours of improvised singing, extemporaneously creating a unique and extended musical work with each performance. This extraordinary feat requires a high level of musical skill, and danggol (as such hereditary shaman are called), along with their accompanying instrumentalists, came to be recognized as among the greatest of Korean folk musicians.

Woven Sound (엮은 소리) takes its inspiration from the Jindo shamans of old, and the way in which they would spin a musical tapestry with the barest of materials. Working with only a few pitches, a danggol would manage to create an intricate melodic web, seamlessly interlocked with the underlying rhythmic accompaniment. While Woven Sound does not seek to re-create ssitgimgut, it is connected to the music of the ritual through its interweaving of melody and rhythm. Like the musical lines woven by danggol, melodic ideas tend toward seeming infinite variants of a theme, building from a limited amount of material and repeating the same basic idea without actually ever repeating the same melody. Like ssitgimgut, the piece is built on a foundation of jangdan (rhythmic patterns), though it uses “invented” jangdan rather than relying on existing patterns. The essence of both ssitgimgut and Woven Sound lies in the interplay between these underlying jangdan and the overarching melodic lines.

In Woven Sound, gayageum and ajaeng play the role of danggol, singing melodic lines with constantly shifting rhythmic and phrase patterns over a subtly charged rhythmic base. Ethnomusicologist Mikyung Park writes in her description of a danggol performance, “If we say that the endlessly repeating percussive rhythm is a fabric on which the song rhythm is overlaid, the danggol is instantaneously knitting away with her poetic syllables, producing highly variable, intricate, balanced, beautiful designs.” Woven Sound seeks to do the same – to musically weave a series of intricately beautiful designs that suggest the rich musical tapestry, full of melodic invention and rhythmic vitality, of ssitgimgut.

About 11 minutes in duration, Woven Sound was commissioned by gayageum player Seyeon Park. The original version of the piece, for ajaeng and janggu, was commissioned by ajaeng player Mijung Jung, and titled Weaving Sound (위빙 소리).