ISSUE FIFTEEN Summer 2004 Contents: [Return to NEWSLETTER INDEX] YouYoung Kang, Editor From the President
I
would like to begin this column by expressing my deep gratitude and sense of
pride in the amount and quality of work provided by AKMR members to the Annual
Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology held recently in Miami, Florida. The
number of panels and individual papers on Korea or Korea-related topics (see
attached proposals elsewhere in this Newsletter) was quite astounding, as was
the attendance at our AKMR business meeting. Our presence was in fact so
widespread that on numerous occasions, often completely without prompting, I
heard such remarks as “Don’t there seem to be a disproportionate number of
papers on Korea this year?”, or “Korean music must be the hot topic these
days,” or even “Is Korean ethnomusicology taking over?” (without any
implied sinister tone!). At the risk of being overly dramatic, I did have that
intangible but very real sense that Korean music has reached a new level of
appreciation, understanding, and perhaps even envy at the broader
ethnomusicological level. The numerous Korean drumming groups that have sprouted
throughout the U.S. (and Canada and Europe to a lesser extent) certainly
contribute to this phenomenon, but it is the high level and vigorous activity of
research — the primary focus of our
Association — that I believe accounts for most of this increased attention. I
highlight as examples all three issues of volume 47 (2003) of the journal Ethnomusicology
which featured an article by a member of AKMR (a convergence that will probably
never happen again), the inclusion of Korean theoretical issues in the
introductory volume of the new Global Music Series of Oxford University Press
(Wade 2004), and the large yet growing number of students in graduate programs
studying Korean music. An
especially important issue brought up in the business meeting in Miami was the
current state of our AKMR website. With great pleasure I was able to announce
that our current Website Manager, Robert Provine, had generously made the
donation for a new web address that will simplify matters considerably — in
the near future one need only type in <www.akmr.org>.
Needless to say, the Association is tremendously pleased with this further
gesture of dedication on Rob’s part. It was also announced, however, that Rob
will be stepping down from the manager position, which will require the
following two points of action: 1)
I am beginning to solicit self-nominations for a new website manager, an
official officer position in AKMR. Ideally this individual has some web design
experience with easy access to computing to regularly update the site. In the
beginning we anticipate a bit more work because of the transferring of files
from Rob to the new manager. I would like to stress that such a position not
only helps the Association in a crucial and central way, but that it would also
be attractive on a resume, particularly as many colleges and universities have
begun to employ “regular” faculty members to operate and maintain their own
departmental or school sites (due to financial cutbacks and streamlining). 2)
I ask that members please email me (ndhesse@ilstu.edu) with suggestions
for what they want to see on the website. Items suggested at the business
meeting included a member list with contact email addresses and a few topic
words describing their affiliation(s) and research interests, a section
describing major genres of Korean music for educators who regularly visit the
site, an internet discussion list potentially moderated by Robert Provine, and
an updated bibliography with a much more regular cycle of submissions from
members. Further suggestions and advice are greatly welcome. While
perhaps premature, I wanted to end this message from the President with a
heartfelt “thank you” to Rob Provine for his numerous contributions to the
Association in a variety of capacities, but especially here for his ongoing work
with the website, a job extremely well done. Best
wishes, Nathan Hesselink Note from the Editor
I sincerely apologize for the lack of a Newsletter during the past year. This Summer 2004 edition of the covers the 2003 AKMR Meeting in Miami. The next newsletter, expected in October 2004, will be my last one as the Newsletter Editor for AKMR. If you are interested in the job and would like more information, please contact me by email: ykang@scrippscollege.edu.In
the meantime, please send me news of your publications and activities - it would
be great to hear from all AKMR members! I
will also include paper abstracts for the SEM 2004 conference in Tucson in the
Fall Newsletter. Sincerely, YouYoung
Kang
June
2004
Crandon
Room of The Hotel Inter-Continental, Miami, Florida Friday,
October 3, 2003, 12:30 pm The
meeting was called to order by President Nathan Hesselink.
Keith
Howard made an announcement that Prof. Yi Sungchun passed away. The
announcement was followed by a moment of silence. Heather
Willoughby was re-elected as Member-at-Large (odd year). Secretary/Treasurer's
Report by Okon Hwang: Financial report from September 25, 2002 to October 2,
2003 *
Income: membership dues $210 + dividend $42.48 ($9.09
on 9/30/02 + $10.40 on 1/1/03 + $8.56 on 3/31/03 + $7.74 on 6/30/03 + $6.69 on
9/30/03) = $252.48 *
Expense: $50 for AKMR Award to Paul Yoon + $74.39 for Fall 2002 Newsletter +
$56.26 for Spring 2003 Newsletter = $180.65 *
Balance: $1536.01 as of 10/2/03 The
AKMR Prize for the most distinguished student paper on Korean music presented at
the 2002 SEM annual meeting was awarded to Donna Kwon. After
a lengthy discussion, the AKMR Prize guidelines were modified. From now
on, students can submit their entries no later than two weeks after the end of
the SEM conference. Also, students must submit only four, not six, copies
of the paper. Heather
Willoughby will chair the AKMR Prize selection committee for the papers
presented at the 2003 SEM annual meeting. The
President announced that Former President Robert Provine arranged (and paid) for
AKMR to have a new web-site address: www.akmr.org . The President thanked
Prof. Provine for his effort and generosity. A
Website Manager position was added to the current body of AKMR officers. Therefore
AKMR officers are now comprised of President (currently Nathan Hesslink), 3
Members-at-Large (currently Heather Willoughby, Hillary Finchum-Sung, Paul
Yoon), Newsletter Editor (currently YouYoung Kang), Website Manager, and
Secretary/Treasurer (currently Okon Hwang).
Byungwon
Lee reminded AKMR members of the Lee Hye-gu Award ($3,000). A candidate
should be no older than 45 years old and should submit a publication published
within the last two years. The
award amount for the AKMR Prize will be raised to $75.
The new amount will be awarded next year for this year's paper. Respectfully
submitted, Okon
Hwang
Khmer Culture Association
In Association with The Asia Pacific Society for
Ethnomusicology (APSE) and
The Paññasastra University Announces:
August 24 –27
,2004 Paññasastra
University 144
Norodom Boulevard Phnom
Penh CAMBODIA
Tel
: (855) 23–990-680 Email
: juliana@camnet.com.kh The
following issues will be highlighted : The
Khmer Culture Association now accepts pre-registration of US $120 for the 9th
International Conference of the Asia Pacific Society for Ethnomusicology.
The registration fees include conference package, attendance, and meals
(lunches and dinners) from August 24-27, 2004.
Participants with a valid registration will receive a conference package
at the hotel during the opening reception (August 23, 2004) or at the conference
venue on the opening day (August 24, 2004)), which includes conference
materials, useful information about Cambodia, nametag, and meal tickets, etc.
The registration fees will be collected on site.
You do not need to send any money to us now. Participants
will be staying at the Phnom Penh Hotel located at the center of Phnom Penh, the
capital city of Cambodia. 53
Monivong Boulevard Phnom
Penh CAMBODIA Tel:
(855) 23-991-868, Fax: (855) 23-991-818 E-mail:
info@phnompenhhotel.com, Website:
phnompenhhotel.com Room Rates
(including breakfast): Double:
US$50/night Extra
bed: US$15/night To
secure the above group rates, please direct your conference pre-registration and
hotel reservation to Dr. Sam-Ang Sam at: 5008
Columbia Pike, #5 Arlington,
VA 22204 U.S.A. Tel:
(703) 671-6197 E-mail: samangsam@aol.com Finding the 'Flow’: The Ryu Canon and New Ryu The
placement of sanjo (solo instrumental genre) into the academy in 1959 changed the
practice of Korean instrumental music forever. Lifted from its low
association with the kisaeng (women
entertainers), sanjo was established as an "Intangible Cultural Asset"
by the Korean government in the 1960s. As is widely recognized, its
elevation in status was a domestic response to multiple factors for the need to
preserve the traditional arts in the immediate post-Japanese colonial and
post-Korean War period. Channeling 'Popular’ Sentiment Through Music? A Korean Case Study Changes
in Korea relegated indigenous music to a cultural inconsequentiality. Despite
this, some believed that a Korean essence (uri
chongso) or spirit (uri chongsin)
could be expressed only through court or folk music idioms, and this has
inspired the emergence of new genres.
This paper looks at two genres of music that developed at separate times
in South Korea’s modern history and for diverse reasons.
Both genres look/ed to folk or court music for structural or thematic
inspiration, and both sought (or still seek) popular acceptance as expressions
of a Korean spirit. The first of
these, sin minyo (new folk song), appeared in the 1930s and offered the
public an indigenous popular music distinct from Japanese enka. It struck a nostalgic chord through use of minyo
(folk song) style and provided a means for escape from the harsh realities
of the occupation. The second genre, sometimes termed ch’angjak
kugak, is newly composed music derived from traditional music. Contemporary
music specialists strive for ch’angjak
kugak’s incorporation into
Koreans’ everyday lives through discourse, promotion, and image. Although sin
minyo appealed to the aesthetic tastes of the time,
ch’angjak kugak requires listeners to suspend their existing musical
preferences and support the music out of cultural pride. Bounded Variation? Music Television and its Aesthetics in South Korea
A decade after MTV’s international station blurb declared “One world,
One image, One channel,” (1993) the configuration of music television in Asia
has grown markedly more complex. In
South Korea, as of July 2001, the tens of millions of cable TV subscribers have
access not only to a variety of video and live music shows on the
government-sponsored channels (e.g., KBS, Arirang), but also to four full-time
(24-hour, 7-days a week) music television stations.
Two of these stations are Korean branches of multi-national broadcasting
companies (MTV Korea and Channel [V] Korea) and two are locally owned and
managed (M-Net and Kmtv). Based on interviews with Korean music industry personnel
(producers, VJs, musicians), music and popular culture critics, and a sample of
music television viewers, complemented and informed by extensive personal
viewing of these stations on four visits from September 2000 to November 2002,
this paper offers an interpretation of the broadcast content and its
implications for Korean popular music aesthetics.
The intense competition between the four full-time stations has yielded
remarkably little contrast among them, each seeming merely to present its own
variation on a gradually evolving model of what music television can or should
be offering its viewers. The paper
considers Korean music television content within the context of demographic
profiles of viewers, market forces, trends in the wider world of Korean and
international popular music, local discourses of authenticity (both
“musical” and “national”), and the limits of transnational cultural
transmission. Korean Hip-Hop for a "New Generation": Seo Taiji's "Classroom
Ideology"
In this paper, I examine the ways in which popular music articulated the
rise of a "new generation" (shinsedae)
in Korea during the 1990s. This generation, comprising those born after 1970,
found its representative voice in Seo Taiji, who succeeded
In 1992, Seo organized the group "Seo Taiji and Boys" and
released his first album, "Nan Arayo"
("I Know"), which instantly shifted mainstream popular music away from
slow, sentimental ballad music toward faster, dance-oriented genres including
rap. Seo's stylistic mixing and sampling techniques, sensational visual
presentation, and persuasive lyrics have been viewed by many as the most
revolutionary contribution to 20th century Korean popular culture.
Seo's music is not a simple appropriation of rap as it is known in the U.S,
where it often addresses racial, political, and economic marginality. Seo's rap
deals with a different kind of marginality: the cultural struggles of Korean
youth against a repressive government educational system supported by the
"older generation" “Korean Ppongjjak: Authenticity and the Politics of Representation”
Since its inception in the late 1920s, ppongjjak
(or tueroteu [trot]) has enjoyed a
loyal following in South Korea. A
popular song genre named curiously after the onomatopoetic representation of its
accompaniment (duple meter modeled on the fox "trot"), ppongjjak's
success has largely been credited to its aesthetical world view, a perspective
that has resonated with the Korean pathos of han (sadness or
Ppongjjak has, nevertheless,
been part of a complex history due to the genre's close connection to Japanese
enka and, by default, resentment related to
This panel examines ppongjjak's
multifarious existence in Korea in relation to the Japanese legacy.
Themes addressed include: 1) whether Koreans have had From Nightingale to Crow: the Change of Vocal Timbre of the Contemporary Popular Song Singers in South Korea
The emergence of the contemporary popular song began during the Japanese
annexation (1910-45), which brought a new dimension to vocal style in Korea. The
melodic contour, rhythm, expression and the vocal quality of these early popular
songs were strongly influenced by the Japanese popular songs of that time. The
prevailing vocal quality was clear, slightly nasalized and polished voice, which
is still strong in present Japanese enka
and kayokyoku singing. The early
popular song singers in Korea adopted the Japanese style of vocal quality as
well as other aspects of Japanese popular songs, and this vocal quality
dominated in South Korean until the mid-1960s.
Currently, most of the old Japanese-influenced elements, except vocal
timbre, continue in that early style of popular song genre called ppongjjak.
But conspicuous change in vocal timbre from the polished to the strong husky
quality began in the mid-1960s. This period coincides with the return from the
United States of the Korea-born Las Vegas entertainer Patty Kim, who was one of
the leading popular song singers in South Korea, and at present the majority of
Korean popular song singers stress this strong husky quality. A few singers with
polished vocal quality occasionally surface, but their fame quickly disappears.
This paper presents a historical survey of the vocal timbre in ppongjjak,
and examines how it is related to the strong, raspy, buzzing or husky timbre of
Korean traditional music. Lee Seng Kang’s The Song of Hope: Music and Identity Politics in Contemporary South Korea Released
in 1998, Lee Seng Kang’s [Yi Saenggang] CD The
Song of Hope was as bold in its stated goals as it was in its multiple
underlying themes. An officially recognized master of the taegûm,
or Korean transverse bamboo flute, Lee has since the 1970s also been at the
forefront of collaborative efforts with musicians and styles outside of the
traditional realm. This CD continues in this vein, celebrated in the program
notes as giving new meaning to the idea of “Korean music” in the late
twentieth century. The release represented the first recorded example of the
fusion of Korean traditional music, Western jazz, and Korean popular songs. The
“hope” here was for a broader, more inclusive approach to Korean-ness that
flew in the face of official academic and governmental policies. To
further complicate matters, however, the featured Korean popular songs were from
the t’ûrot’û (ppongtchak)
repertoire that hail from a colonial past. While today such music may be viewed
by the general populace with an unproblematic nostalgia, the songs’ historical
and musical materials are nonetheless very much rooted in the Japanese
occupation of the early twentieth century (an awareness Lee hints at with his
choice of album title, a liberation song popular in the colonial period). This
paper will address the musically creative strategies employed by Lee in his
struggle to accommodate the “foreign” (i.e., the Euro-American and Japanese)
while at the same time safely asserting a distinctively older Korean identity. Ppongjjak and the Culture of Korean Folk Music and Dance Transmission Centers
This paper investigates the seemingly incongruous but welcome practice of
singing ppongjjak songs at regional transmission centers of Korean folk
expressive culture. Called
“junsoogwan” or “transmission buildings,” these centers were established
as part of the government’s system of cultural preservation set in motion in
the early 1960’s. Junsoogwan are
usually built in the village or locality that a given style is believed to have Korean Angelenos and Black Music since the Rodney King Uprising
The 1992 acquittal of the police officers charged with the brutal beating
of Rodney King sparked a wave of interethnic violence throughout Los Angeles.
In African American communities, anger against the police and the
judicial system was transferred and redirected against local, predominantly
Korean storeowners, inciting mass looting and arson of neighborhood businesses.
The first day of rioting, April 29, christened in Korean as sa-i-ku,
marked a turning point in the lives of Korean immigrants.
Abandoned by the police and city officials as their livelihoods went up
in smoke and suddenly thrust into the national spotlight, Korean Americans were
forced to confront painful realities concerning their place in American society
and their relationships with other racial and ethnic groups.
This paper examines the impact of sa-i-ku
on Korean-Angeleno hip-hoppers in the decade since the riots.
I question how young Korean Angelenos, who are mostly first- and
1.5-generation Americans, have negotiated the complex racial terrain of
post-1992 Los Angeles in their construction of a viable Korean-American
identity; how black music, hip-hop in particular, inflects their understanding
of and identification with African American culture even in light of the
conflicts that were characterized reductively by mainstream media as black
versus Korean; and how their cultural practice.
Specifically, the production and consumption of musicChave changed as a
result of the riots. Using the
watershed event of the 1992 uprising as a historical framework, this paper
considers how music is implicated in the dynamic process of constructing race
and identity in contemporary America. AKMR
Information Officers President:
Nathan Hesselink ndhessse@ilstu.edu Secretary/Treasurer:
Okon Hwang
hwango@easternct.edu Newsletter Editor:
YouYoung Kang
ykang@scrippscollege.edu Website Manager:
Robert Provine
provine@wam.umd.edu Members-at-Large:
Hilary Finchum-Sung
hfinchum@uclink.berkeley.edu
Heather
Willoughby haw10@columbia.edu
Paul
Yoon
py19@columbia.edu
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