Research Guides: International Music Resources by Country: Korea

Map of South Korea

Citation (3)

Garland Encyclopedia of World Music

Korea
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Books

Dynamic Korea and Rhythmic Form by Katherine In-Young Lee The South Korean percussion genre, samul nori, is a world phenomenon whose rhythmic form is the key to its popularity and mobility. Based on both ethnographic research and close formal analysis, author Katherine In-Young Lee focuses on the kinetic experience of samul nori, drawing out the concept of dynamism to show its historical, philosophical, and pedagogical dimensions. Breaking with traditional approaches to the study of world music that privilege political, economic, institutional, or ideological analytical frameworks, Lee argues that because rhythmic forms are experienced on a somatic level, they swiftly move beyond national boundaries and provide sites for cross-cultural interaction.
Call Number: ML421.S25 L44 2018
From Factory Girls to K-Pop Idol Girls by Gooyong Kim; Douglas Kellner (Foreword by) Focusing on female idols' proliferation in the South Korean popular music (K-pop) industry since the late 1990s, Gooyong Kim critically analyzes structural conditions of possibilities in contemporary popular music from production to consumption. Kim contextualizes the success of K-pop within Korea's development trajectories, scrutinizing how a formula of developments from the country' rapid industrial modernization (1960s-1980s) was updated and re-applied in the K-pop industry when the state had to implement a series of neoliberal reformations mandated by the IMF. To that end, applying Michel Foucault's discussion on governmentality, a biopolitical dimension of neoliberalism, Kim argues how the regime of free market capitalism updates and reproduces itself by 1) forming a strategic alliance of interests with the state, and 2) using popular culture to facilitate individuals' subjectification and subjectivation processes to become neoliberal agents. As to an importance of K-pop female idols, Kim indicates a sustained utility/legacy of the nation's century-long patriarchy in a neoliberal development agenda. Young female talents have been mobilized and deployed in the neoliberal culture industry in a similar way to how un-wed, obedient female workers were exploited and disposed on the sweatshop factory floors to sustain the state's export-oriented, labor-intensive manufacturing industry policy during its rapid developmental stage decades ago. In this respect, Kim maintains how a post-feminist, neoliberal discourse of girl power has marketed young, female talents as effective commodities, and how K-pop female idols exert biopolitical power as an active ideological apparatus that pleasurably perpetuates and legitimates neoliberal mantras in individuals' everyday lives. Thus, Kim reveals there is a strategic convergence between Korea's lingering legacies of patriarchy, developmentalism, and neoliberalism. While the current K-pop literature is micro-scopic and celebratory, Kim advances the scholarship by multi-perspectival, critical approaches. With a well-balanced perspective by micro-scopic textual analyses of music videos and macro-scopic examinations of historical and political economy backgrounds, Kim's book provides a wealth of intriguing research agendas on the phenomenon, and will be a useful reference in International/ Intercultural Communication, Political Economy of the Media, Cultural/ Media Studies, Gender/ Sexuality Studies, Asian Studies, and Korean Studies.
Call Number: ML3502.K6 K5737 2019
In Search of Korean Traditional Opera by Andrew P. Killick This is the first book on Korean opera in a language other than Korean. Its subject is ch'angguk, a form of musical theater that has developed over the last hundred years from the older narrative singing tradition of p'ansori. Andrew Killick examines the history and current practice of ch'angguk as an ongoing attempt to invent a traditional Korean opera form to compare with those of neighboring China and Japan. In this, the work addresses a growing interest within the fields of ethnomusicology and Asian studies in the adaptation of traditional arts to conditions in the modern world. Ch'angguk presents an intriguing case in that, unlike the "invented traditions" described in Hobsbawm and Ranger's influential book that were firmly established within a few years of their invention, ch'angguk remains in a marginal position relative to recognized traditional art forms such as South Korea's "Important Intangible Cultural Properties" after more than a century. Performers, writers, directors, and historians have looked for ways to make the genre more traditional, including looking outside Korea for comparisons with traditional theater forms in other countries and for recognition of ch'angguk as a national art form by international audiences. For the benefit of readers who have not seen ch'angguk performed, the author begins with a detailed description of a typical performance, illustrated with photographs and musical examples, followed by a history of the genre--from its still disputed origins in the early twentieth century through a major revival under Japanese colonial rule and the flourishing of an all-female version (yosong kukkuk) after Liberation to the efforts of the National Changgeuk Company and others to establish ch'angguk as Korean traditional opera. Killick concludes with analyses of the stories and music of ch'angguk and a personal view on developing a Korean national theater form for international audiences.
Call Number: ML1751.K7 K54 2010
K-Pop Live by Suk-Young Kim 1990s South Korea saw the transition from a military dictatorship to a civilian government, from a manufacturing economy to a postindustrial hub, and from a cloistered society to a more dynamic transnational juncture. These seismic shifts had a profound impact on the media industry and the rise of K-pop. In K-pop Live, Suk-Young Kim investigates the meteoric ascent of Korean popular music in relation to the rise of personal technology and social media, situating a feverish cross-media partnership within the Korean historical context and broader questions about what it means to be "live" and "alive." Based on in-depth interviews with K-pop industry personnel, media experts, critics, and fans, as well as archival research, K-pop Live explores how the industry has managed the tough sell of live music in a marketplace in which virtually everything is available online. Teasing out digital media's courtship of "liveness" in the production and consumption of K-pop, Kim investigates the nuances of the affective mode in which human subjects interact with one another in the digital age. Observing performances online, in concert, and even through the use of holographic performers, Kim offers readers a step-by-step guide through the K-pop industry's variegated efforts to diversify media platforms as a way of reaching a wider global network of music consumers. In an era when digital technology inserts itself into nearly all social relationships, Kim reveals how "what is live" becomes a question of how we exist as increasingly mediated subjects, fragmented and isolated by technological wonders while also longing for a sense of belonging and being alive through an interactive mode of exchange we often call "live."
Call Number: ML3502.K6 K577 2018
Music in Korea by Donna Lee Kwon; Bonnie C. Wade (Editor); Patricia Shehan Campbell (Editor) Music in Korea is one of several case-study volumes that can be used along with Thinking Musically, the core book in the Global Music Series. Thinking Musically incorporates music from many diverse cultures and establishes the framework for exploring the practice of music around the world. Itsets the stage for an array of case-study volumes, each of which focuses on a single area of the world. Each case study uses the contemporary musical situation as a point of departure, covering historical information and traditions as they relate to the present.Despite its longstanding position as a distinct cultural force in East Asia, Korea continues to be underrepresented in world music texts. Music in Korea is the first brief, single-volume text to provide a thematic, succinct introduction to the music of Korea - a region whose volatile politicalclimate has often overshadowed its rich cultural and musical traditions.Based on author Donna Lee Kwon's extensive fieldwork, the text features interviews with performers, eyewitness accounts of performances, and vivid illustrations. Kwon uses three themes - Korea as a transnational player in East Asia, the intersection of Korean music and cultural politics, and Korea'smaintenance of its strong cultural identity through both musical and aesthetic continuity - to survey the region and draw parallels and contrasts between its various traditions. Each theme lends itself to a discussion of Korea's classical musical customs and its contemporary developments. Packagedwith an 80-minute audio CD containing musical examples, the text features numerous listening activities that engage students with the music. The companion website (www.oup.com/us/globalmusic) includes supplementary materials for instructors.
Call Number: ML342 .K867 2012
SamulNori by Nathan Hesselink In 1978, four musicians crowded into a cramped basement theater in downtown Seoul, where they, for the first time, brought the rural percussive art of p'ungmul to a burgeoning urban audience. In doing so, they began a decades-long reinvention of tradition, one that would eventually create an entirely new genre of music and a national symbol for Korean culture.                 Nathan Hesselink's SamulNori traces this reinvention through the rise of the Korean supergroup of the same name, analyzing the strategies the group employed to transform a museum-worthy musical form into something that was both contemporary and historically authentic, unveiling an intersection of traditional and modern cultures and the inevitable challenges such a mix entails. Providing everything from musical notation to a history of urban culture in South Korea to an analysis of SamulNori's teaching materials and collaborations with Euro-American jazz quartet Red Sun, Hesselink offers a deeply researched study that highlights the need for traditions--if they are to survive--to embrace both preservation and innovation. 
Call Number: ML421.S25 H47 2012

Korean Music

Facts in Brief

Capital: Seoul

Official Language: Korean

Current Population: 51,821,669

Area: 100,364

Climate: The climate is marked by cold, dry winters, with an average temperature of −6°C (21°F), and hot, humid summers, with an average temperature of 25°C (77°F).

Main Religions: Confucianism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Chundo Kyo

Citation (2)

Traditional Korean Music

Court Music

Chinese ritual music (yayue, Korean pronunciation, aak) came to Korea as a gift from the Chinese emperor in 1116 and was originally performed in a number of formal court ceremonies. This is stately, rarified music performed by two alternating ensembles of special wind and percussion instruments of Chinese origin, such as the sets of tuned bronze bells (p'yŏnjong) and stone chimes (p'yŏn'gyŏng) many of these instruments are used for no other purpose. Other court ceremonial music, mainly of Korean origin (for which the native term is hyangak but also loosely called aak), includes two suites (Pot'aep'yŏng and Chŏngdaeŏp) of 11 pieces each, performed by singers and two large instrumental ensembles at the annual sacrifice to royal ancestors at the royal ancestral shrine (Chongmyo) in Seoul and in concert. The history of these suites can be traced in detail through numerous scores as far back as their origin in the mid-15th century.

Aristocratic genres

Non-ceremonial instrumental music of the former ruling aristocracy of the Chosŏn dynasty is essentially limited to one suite of nine increasingly faster movements, Yŏngsan hoesang, which is performed in a number of versions of varying instrumentation and is employed both as chamber music and dance accompaniment. Hyŏnak Yŏngsan hoesang is set for mixed ensemble of strings, winds and percussion; KwanakYŏngsan hoesang is for winds and percussion only; P'yŏngjo hoesang is set for mixed ensemble but is melodically transposed down a 4th and somewhat more ornamented; and Pyŏlgok is again for mixed ensemble but omits some movements and adds three other quick movements at the end. Refined, subtle vocal music setting poetry of high literary quality is found in kagok, sijo and kasa. The repertory of kagok, for male or female solo voice with eight accompanying string, wind and percussion instruments, consists of about 40 interrelated pieces, each setting a poem in the favourite national form known as sijo, consisting of three couplets.

Folk Music

Music considered by Korean to form their folk tradition includes both professional and amateur genres. The highest artistry and training is required for p'ansori, a dramatic narrative form for solo voice and drum (puk), which has developed over several centuries; it employs song, speech and gesture. Only five stories remain in the active modern repertory, but each lasts several hours and provides ample scope for individual interpretation and development. In the recent past, other folk genres have been refined to a professional level. Nongak, farmers’ music, for example, has been performed by bands of percussion instruments for many centuries at both a simple local level and at a professional level by touring bands. Loud music for outdoor events, nongak ranges from simple work rhythms to assist repetitive tasks in the fields to complex set pieces performed by professional bands at concerts and festivals.

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Citation (4)

Composer Highlight: Kim Jin-hi

Kim Jin-hi

b. 1957

Composer and komungo performer of South Korean birth. She is internationally recognized as an innovative virtuoso on the komungo (a Korean fourth-century fretted-board zither) as well as for her cross-cultural compositions. She learned to play piano as a child, but followed her father’s encouragement to study Korean music. She was in the first class of students to be accepted to Korea’s National High School for Korean Traditional Music, and chose to pursue komungo, traditionally associated with male performers. She typically integrates the komungo (either acoustic or electric) into compositions for chamber ensemble and orchestra, mixed ensembles, and avant-garde jazz improvisations. Kim's works have been presented at premiere venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Royal Festival Hall (London), and festivals such as Musique Action Festival (France), the Asian Pacific Festival (New Zealand), Nazuca Music Festival (Peru), Moers New Jazz Festival (Germany), and the Vancouver International Jazz Festival (Canada).

Bamboo, Silk and Stone

International Music Resources by Country: Korea