A Korean luthier consolidates the future of the Spanish guitar

The craftsman signs his guitar with a rosette.

Wooden tiles stained in different colors that surround the mouth of the lid forming geometric motifs.

Almost a decade ago, 38-year-old Yunah Park customized the first instrument he made without his teacher's supervision with one of these pieces.

Flower-shaped center, four-color spikelets and black and white stripes assembled over three long days that a foolish miscalculation ended up shattering.

Now his workshop in Malasaña (Madrid) watches over the sketch of that frustrated mosaic, recalling the fragility of a profession that long family sagas have dominated.

Female and South Korean, Park is unique in the guild.

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In Spain, only three other classical guitar builders work in a traditional way, all born in the country. The rest are men, the majority close to retirement, according to the Spanish Society of Guitar Makers. Park began preparing as a soloist in a middle-class neighborhood of his native Seoul, a degree he completed on the recommendation of his tutor at the Óscar Esplá Conservatory of Alicante. As she outlines a German spruce top, she explains that her dream was to make a single guitar for herself, "but no luthier wants to reveal their secrets to you and just walk out the door." A professional turn at the end of her studies - "I did not want to end up teaching class" - led her to offer herself as a meritorious in several guitar workshops. Useless pilgrimage, since this knowledge is usually transmitted from generation to generation.Until in Madrid he found his mentor.

In the capital about fifteen stores of this type survive, Ángel Benito runs one of them. He was looking for disciples to succeed him in his techniques and studies. Above all, in those that focus on how the various forms and materials of the instrument modify the succession of the sound. In South Korea, this maestro is known as the head luthier of the soloist Daekun Jang, to whom the Spanish guitar owes much of its status in Asia. Along with two other students, Park began studying in the bright workshop on Monteleón Street that he would later inherit. His companions, however, soon gave up. "Many despair because this is a learning process that lasts a lifetime and requires effort," she says. At first he was limited to listening, until the second year he did not change the notes for the tools.

Yunah Park finishes off a guitar neck, the dimensions of which must be adapted to the player's arm length. David G. Folgueiras

As an initiation to craftsmanship, Park first made small jewelery boxes out of scraps of wood. Then he managed to specialize in three different guitar models that he builds in three months and cost 4,200 euros each. The waiting list to get them lasts one year. This morning in April the luthier has just sent a package with her latest offspring to Gran Canaria. It regrets that, due to the pandemic, the new owner has not been able to travel to Madrid to test it before varnishing. The dimensions of the instrument vary depending on the player, "short fingers require adapting the handle, someone short needs to reduce the perimeter of the soundboard." Otherwise, after hours of rehearsal each day, you may injure your forearm or hand muscles.

Some customers take her for a shop assistant. Only by shaking his hand do they realize his true role, as they notice his calluses and roughness. The daughter of a fond of playing, Park has always lived surrounded by guitars, although the construction process was alien to her. The support of a patrician from the union like Ángel Benito helped to be taken seriously, "without him it would have been much more difficult," he says. It is common for onlookers to peek into her workshop, where she spends most of the day alone. On the other side of the glass, the scene of an Asian woman building the quintessential Spanish instrument may seem unusual. “The children ask their mothers what a Chinese woman does making guitars. That is why I have hung a Korean flag, unless they know where I came from, ”he laughs.

The Spanish guitar resembles the flamenco guitar only in appearance. The first, Park concedes, has to prolong the sound to

legato

. The second, on the contrary, cut it percussively. His latest creation is a copy of the one commissioned in 1924 by the concert artist Andrés Segovia from the mythical luthier Santos Hernández. The original, kept in the Víctor Espinós Music Library in the capital, is characterized by its flexible phrasing and deep bass. Park produces the back of this guitar with Madagascar rosewood, an African ebony fingerboard, a Honduran cedar neck and a German spruce top. Apply the shellac of the varnish with the only help of a cotton doll. And silence reigns in his workshop: "I can't listen to music and work at the same time."

Yunak Park manufactures three different guitar models, each of which takes three months to build and costs about 4,200 euros.David G. Folgueiras

Some say that her creations acquire a delicate and sensitive sound, she attributes it to those small and stylized hands with which she manages to finish off any detail. Her teacher is quick to define her as "a brave woman who in less than a decade has managed to place herself at the forefront of the guitar industry." His high musical training, Benito considers, plays an important role in the way he assembles instruments: “Many luthiers come from cabinetmaking and do not know how to play, they depend on an interpreter to try the guitar and offer his verdict on whether he is there or not. finished. Yunah [Park] doesn't have that problem, she knows exactly what she wants, she has her own criteria. He is interested in learning about tradition, but he is also beginning to develop his own way of doing things ”.

Artisans find themselves cornered by industrial manufacturing. Park maintains that this "does not have to imply a worse quality, although it is true that the final result has less personality". It was precisely the nature of his work that a few years ago aroused the interest of an international distributor. He liked his guitars, but he predicted that if he advertised them with his first name, no one would want to buy them. First, for being a woman. Second, for being Korean. Market dynamics, he said. “I proposed that I hide under the identity of my husband, a professor at the conservatory. It was a business opportunity, but I refused ”. In addition to placing the rosette, since then he has labeled each of his creations with some solemnity: “Made in Madrid. Yunah Park, luthier ”.