Modernizing Korean Traditional Music

Hee-sun Kim
Name in Latin Alphabet:	Hee-sun Kim
Nationality:	Republic of Korea
Affiliation:	Kookmin University

강연 소개

After the collapse of the Joseon Dynasty, its music became the music of the past, or gugak. During the twentieth century, Joseon music faced serious competition from various newly-introduced forms of popular entertainment and Western art music in educational and other institutions. Joseon court music was the most seriously-threatened genre, in comparison to other folk art music categories, like pansori and minyo, which were actively appropriated and adapted for the new environment of the time.

Previous studies on the twentieth-century modernization of traditional music in non-Western societies have drawn on theories of Westernization, which, however, only explain the phenomenon in generalized and over-simplified terms, and which cannot explain specific situations in individual localities, like that of gugak in Korea. The process of modernization in the case of Korean traditional music should be examined in its socio-political and historic-cultural contexts, including modernization and nationalism. At the same time, for the practitioners of traditional music, modernization was not the result of Westernization, but rather a process of constructing self-identity and legitimacy under the specific social conditions of twentieth-century Korea. The modernization of traditional music involved a process of constructing and modernizing traditional music.

With that in mind, this lecture sketches the socio-cultural contexts, discourses, and multi-dimensional processes involved in modernizing gugak, from the early twentieth century up to its current phase. With gugak as a prism, this lecture will examine the multiple layers of Korean modernization, as well as the meaning of gugak within the socio-cultural landscape of contemporary Korea. The almost-one hundred years’ experience of modernizing gugak suggests that the process has been multi-directional and was experienced differently by the various agents involved in varying contexts. Social values and the meanings of contemporary gugak are constantly being negotiated, reaffirmed, and reinforced. Throughout this lecture, I will discuss aspects of gugak as practiced by people whose attitudes, perceptions, conflicts, and desires are deeply rooted in an understanding of the past, present, and future of the music. I argue that the modern traditional music is a site for negotiating and redefining meanings of “tradition” beyond the concept of “heritage.”

강연 영상

Modernizing Korean Traditional Music