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INTRODUCTION

Hip-hop. Gamelan. Taiko. Samul nori. These are just a handful of musical genres that have become truly global in the past century. Not only are these musics enjoyed by diverse audiences; they are regularly performed in locales that may have little or no connection to the genre’s country of origin. While cross-cultural musical interaction is neither novel nor surprising, the widespread transmission of these genres to musical communities around the world beginning in the late twentieth century is nonetheless remarkable. This phenomenon has often been explained by some of globalization’s grandest narratives—Westernization, neoliberalism, and the widespread diffusion of media technologies.

But what makes one form of music go global and another one stay relatively put? And what compels people with limited musical training to actually learn how to perform music that may be culturally distant from them? Lastly, what are some of the mechanisms that facilitate the pedagogical transmission of a musical practice, across cultural and national boundaries? Dynamic Korea explores these questions through the lens of a South Korean percussion genre called samul nori. First created in Seoul in 1978, samul nori (which translates simply into “four things play”) is a neo-traditional musical repertory that features the use of four different percussion instruments. Since the 1980s, the drum-and-gong-based genre has been performed on many international stages by professional ensembles. It also holds the distinction of having been transmitted to amateur musical communities around the world. Samul nori is performed by musical groups in Korean diasporic communities and also in places where a connection to Korea is limited or unexpected, such as Mexico City and Basel, Switzerland. Like other expressive forms that have “gone global,” samul nori has been uneven in its charted movement, with certain pathways tread more frequently than others because of proximity (Seoul to Osaka, Japan), ethnic ties (Los Angeles and Berlin), or idiosyncratic reasons (Paris). But even despite this asymmetry, samul nori is undeniably a genre that has traveled far and wide. It is actively practiced outside the country of its origin.

With its transmission abroad and regular appearances on international stages, samul nori is regarded as an important sonic and cultural symbol of South Korea. The prolific scholar of Korean music Keith Howard proclaimed that by 1994 samul nori “was firmly established as an icon of Korean identity and was arguably the most popular genre of traditional music both at home and abroad” (2006, 2). Samul nori, in fact, precedes the trendier “K-pop” genre as one of South Korea’s successful musical exports. One could argue that it was the first ripple in what would later become known as the Korean Wave.¹ And although it is rooted in much older musical traditions that date back to a unified Korean peninsula, samul nori is a genre of music that is a quintessentially South Korean creation.

Dynamic Korea is animated by the question of how samul nori became a global music genre. In this book, I argue that samul nori’s rhythmic form has served as a critical site for cross-cultural musical encounters and its global journeys. This rhythm-based form has helped to draw in international fans with little prior knowledge of traditional Korean music or even of South Korea. Additionally, it has aided enthusiasts on their path to the actual learning and performance of Korean percussion music. In some extraordinary cases, it has served as a gateway for even more rigorous explorations of traditional Korean music and transformational life experiences.

There are, of course, other factors that have contributed to the outward spread of samul nori to far-flung destinations. This book will consider some of those other factors, such as state support, circulation of recordings, the world music industry, and the development of musical notation. But it will invest more time reflecting on the dynamics of rhythmic form in relation to global samul nori. Born out of a collaborative musical experiment in the late 1970s, samul nori as a case study provides us with a special opportunity to witness the creation and development of a musical genre. Soon after its creation, the nascent samul nori genre began to be performed outside South Korea—first by way of international tours by the legendary SamulNori quartet, and then through imitation by amateur and semiprofessional percussion ensembles. Samul nori’s journey of globalization allows us to examine how rhythm-based forms can travel swiftly across boundaries. This rhythmic form, I posit, has been the key to its mobility. At first blush, framing this study in terms of musical form may seem unfashionable or even anachronistic. Why form, of all things? Let me explain.

MUSICAL GLOBALIZATION

Many important studies of global musics have shed light on the political, economic, institutional, or ideological issues that undergird music’s globalization. Scholars aptly turned their attention to the politically fraught issues that were imbricated with global music circulations, such as the Western music industry’s appropriation and exploitation of non-Western musical traditions in the creation of “world beat” or the “world music” genre (to name just a few, Feld 1988, 2000; Meintjes 1990; Garofalo 1993; Erlmann 1999). Along with this critique came critical Marxist and postcolonial readings of the production, circulation, and consumption of sonic and cultural difference in global markets (Taylor 1997; Erlmann 1996).

Second, a significant number of scholars have also gravitated toward the “global-local” relational analytic in their work. To that end, dozens of studies of global music genres such as hip-hop, reggae, taiko, bhangra, and gamelan have explored diverse processes of localization, hybridization, and diaspora formation, often through a political lens.² Third, the question of cross-cultural “exotic” appeal has also been considered from multiple perspectives. Michelle Bigenho (2012) examined Japan’s courtship with Andean music, and recent ethnographies of American converts to Balkan music and Javanese gamelan identify a shared fascination with the distant sounds of non-Western music (Laušević 2007; Spiller 2015).

When viewed as a whole, these common approaches to the study of globalization and music demonstrate that nonmusical considerations dominate analysis. Yet this seems peculiar. And a missed opportunity. Ethnomusicologist Martin Stokes has questioned how and why it is that “particular musical forms, styles, processes, sounds, rhythms, and metrical practices traverse national cultural boundaries” (2004, 65). And what is it about certain musics that compels people—who may have little or no connection to the genre’s origin—not just to listen to but also learn to perform such genres? Do some genres have a more user-friendly entry point than others? Like Stokes, I believe that there are indeed musical (as well as political, social, and economic) reasons as to why particular cultural practices circulate (Stokes 2004, 68).

Although many studies of global musics consider how music has traveled via structures of Western imperialism, the widespread diffusion of media technologies, and resistance movements, very few have actually engaged in trying to understand the musical reasons as to why certain musical practices move with apparent ease. The exceptions include Ingrid Monson’s study of “riffs” (defined as short, repeated segments of sound, deployed singly, in call-and-response, in layers, as melody, accompaniment, and bass line) and her exploration of how these “pervade African-American musics and various world popular musics, especially those of the African diaspora” (1999, 31). Monson is interested in how riffs, repetition, and their composite grooves circulate within and between cultures, and how these musical devices can tell us something about musical circulation.³ Timothy Taylor’s work on global pop and world music markets, and music and globalization—while posing provocative questions about the larger political and economic structures that shape the circulation of music—also attends to the ways in which musical form and style can reveal social and political transformations (1997). And Jocelyne Guilbault’s multi-sited and multifaceted study of the popular music genre known as zouk chronicles (partly through musical analysis) how this genre developed and spread throughout the Caribbean (1993).

Like these examples, this book also emphasizes a music-centered analysis. I contend that a genre’s global reach often has much to do with the kinetic appeal of the music itself and its ability to connect with people. I take the term “dynamic”—a word that is often used to describe samul nori—and develop this as an analytic to assert the accessibility and portability of rhythm-based forms in global circulation. Anthropological work on circulation as a cultural process provides a framework for me to interrogate an aesthetic form as it travels, performs, and transforms across boundaries (Lee and LiPuma 2002, 2004; Novak 2013). As Benjamin Lee and Edward LiPuma suggest, “circulation” should be viewed not simply as processes that transmit meanings, but as constitutive, performative acts in themselves (2002, 192). By thinking of circulation as a site for cultural analysis, I am able to examine some of the reasons for samul nori’s ability to travel or circulate—from the particularities of its rhythm-based form to how it is taught to individuals around the world.⁴

THINKING ABOUT FORM

In her recent publication Forms, literary theorist Caroline Levine revives a debate on formalist analysis and issues a call to expand our understandings of form and to think of form’s functions in broader social contexts (2015). Levine builds on the concept of affordance theory that was adapted for design studies by Donald Norman (1988, 2013). An affordance refers to a relationship between the properties of an object and a person; this relationship affords or furnishes an opportunity for a certain kind of action to be performed by the person. Psychologist James J. Gibson first coined the term in 1977, and later expanded on his theory of affordances in The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979). Gibson’s original formulation of affordance considered the relationship between the environment and animals: “The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill…. It implies the complementarity of the animal and the environment” (1979, 127). Gibson moves from describing ecological niches and terrestrial surfaces to objects such as “sheets, sticks, fibers, containers, clothing, and tools” that afford manipulation. The focus on objects (and the affordances provided to humans) eventually became a point of interest and departure for Donald Norman, who then applied the ideas to design theory. With a background in electrical engineering and cognitive psychology, Norman refined his usage of affordance to the potential uses or actions latent in materials or designs.⁵ A chair is for support, and affords sitting. Glass affords transparency, and a doorknob affords turning, pushing, and pulling (2013, 10–13). Norman also took care to explain that an affordance is not an inherent property of an object, but rather a relationship between the qualities of an object and the abilities of the agent or user that is interacting with the object (11). This distinction is key.

Levine applies affordance theory to form—and uses the tools of formalist study to investigate how forms (broadly construed) organize not only art, but also society. She is interested in “both the particular constraints and possibilities that different forms afford, and the fact that those patterns and arrangements carry their affordances with them as they move across time and space” (2015, 6). Levine investigates the specific ways that four major forms—wholes, rhythms, hierarchies, and networks—have structured culture, politics, and scholarly knowledge across periods, and she proposes new ways of linking formalism to historicism and literature to politics. For rhythm, Levine takes an expansive view. One example looks at the cycles of time that are essential to the endurance of institutions. Patterns of repetition and recurrence—which are used to impose order on courses, curricula, conferences, and scholarships—suggest to Levine that institutions preserve forms. These repetitive rhythms afford stability, which is essential to the work of institutional organizations. While I find Levine’s reappraisal of forms a compelling one, Levine’s reading of “rhythm” is unsatisfying to me—namely because she does not address a more literal, or rather a more granular understanding of rhythm. In this book, I take up Levine’s proposition by engaging in a musical analysis of rhythm in tandem with long-term, multi-sited ethnography. By doing so, I consider the affordances of samul nori’s rhythmic form in its global journeys and encounters.

When thinking about form in relation to music, there are a few things to consider—especially for readers unfamiliar with Western music theory and musicology.⁶ First, some definitions. The Oxford Dictionary of Music defines musical form as the “constructive or organizing element” in compositions (Whithall 2001). Next, based on the specific repertoire of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, music theorist William E. Caplin introduced form as a “hierarchical arrangement of discrete, perceptually significant time spans, what has been termed the grouping structure of the work” (1998, 9). And more broadly, theorist and composer Wallace Berry described form in music as “the sum of those qualities in a piece of music that bind together its parts and animate the whole” ([1966] 1986, xiii).

Teaching musical form is often a part of the musicologist’s and music theorist’s stock-in-trade. Instructors of a Western music history or a “Form and Analysis” collegiate course will introduce basic musical forms such as ternary, rondo, sonata, theme and variations, and strophic. In fact, learning to identify musical forms may be one of the first sets of musicological skills that nonmusicians (or non-music majors) will take away from a Western music survey course. Forms can be useful pedagogical tools; they provide students with concise models to understand how certain musical works are organized.

Yet, formal analysis in music can also be fraught. As musicologist Mark Evan Bonds reminds us, musical form is merely an abstraction. Forms are reductive schemas; they “function as a priori ideal types to which a given work can be compared” (Bonds 2010, 265). The study of musical form, as music educator Edward Brookhart put it, has often been approached from the standpoint of deriving “conventional, static structural patterns” from the works of the “great” composers of Western music (1964, 91). Graying musical textbooks present patterns or models that have become reified and endowed with a fixity that students may view in uncritical terms. Thus, the practice of formal analysis in music—excavating form as object—concomitantly raises thorny issues surrounding the value that is arbitrarily placed on formal exemplars, the hierarchies in Western art music, and the implication that Western music is superior to other kinds of musical traditions from around the world.

But other questions soon follow. What is the standard upon which an “ideal form” is based? And when a musical composition deviates from an idealized form, how should we evaluate the work? Lastly, how might we reconcile the practice of locating “objects”—detached and disembodied—with a more productive and humanistic formal analysis? While it is not my intention to resolve these questions in this manuscript, this book intervenes in traditional music formalist studies with its unequivocal commitment to ethnography—thus offering a variation on an old music-analytical theme: form and ethnographic analysis.

AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF SAMUL NORI

In Dynamic Korea, I am concerned with the ways in which musical forms serve as entry points for the intercultural appreciation and acquisition of musical genres. The rhythm-based form of samul nori serves as this book’s primary focus. In particular, I pay ethnographic attention to people with little or no formal training in music. These nonmusicians, whom I will often refer to as enthusiasts, begin a process of learning how to play music outside that of their own culture. Whereas linguistic, harmonic, or modal forms require various degrees of cultural translation and training, a rhythm-based form, I maintain, offers a point of entry that privileges the sonic and the somatic. It is this rhythmic form that guides amateur enthusiasts on their transformative path from musical appreciation (or zealous fandom in some cases) to active musical performance of samul nori.

This monograph is far from the only study of the SamulNori quartet or, to a lesser extent, the samul nori genre. Prior studies have highlighted the quartet’s rise to popularity, the complex relationship to “tradition,” the politics of innovation, and canon formation (e.g., Hesselink 2012; Howard 2006, 2015; Kim Hŏnsŏn 1995; Park, Shingil 2000). Yet conspicuously absent in this literature is multi-sited ethnographic research of samul nori and a consideration of its global journeys. By presenting this ethnographic, multi-sited study of samul nori alongside formal analysis, Dynamic Korea endeavors to join a larger conversation on global music genres and contribute a theorization on the power and portability of rhythmic forms in circulation.

The foundations for this project began over a decade ago. In 2003, I worked as the overseas coordinator for Kim Duk Soo’s SamulNori Hanullim—one of the premier samul nori ensembles in South Korea. Kim Duk Soo [Kim Tŏksu], as we will learn in chapter 1, was one of the founding members of the SamulNori quartet, which gave rise to the samul nori genre. In addition to working on numerous performances and festivals in South Korea, I served as tour manager for Samul-Nori Hanullim’s three-week tour of Denmark (Copenhagen, Randers, Skive) in August 2003, and I assisted in the planning of the 2004 U.S. tour. I translated program notes, handled correspondence with presenters in Europe, Asia, and the United States, and interpreted at various public events. Much of what I have learned about the samul nori genre and its global iterations has come directly from my own experiences as a former staff member of the ensemble, interacting with many members of the SamulNori community as well as international samul nori enthusiasts. During field research in South Korea (August 2008–November 2009), I utilized this existing network to conduct over thirty interviews with founding members of the SamulNori quartet, former managing directors, and members of the SamulNori Hanullim troupe. I also became acquainted with several amateur samul nori ensembles that participated in the World SamulNori Festival and Competition in South Korea in October 2008. At the festival, I volunteered as a coordinator and translator for over one hundred participants from eleven countries. I was able to interview several leaders of the ensembles, as well as visit some of the groups in their respective countries (e.g., Mexico, United States, France, Belgium, and Japan) in the years following (Lee, Katherine In-Young 2017). I continue to consult for and assist SamulNori Hanullim. I have written essays on SamulNori for concert programs, and I also helped to arrange lectures and master classes with Kim Duk Soo and SamulNori Hanullim at Harvard University and at UC Davis (November 2011 and March 2014, respectively).

CHAPTER SUMMARIES

Chapter 1 tells the story of the early reception of the SamulNori quartet and the development of the samul nori genre. Unlike other genres of traditional Korean music, samul nori has a specific place and point of origin that can be traced back to the Space Theater (Konggan Sarang) in Seoul in 1978. The genre began as a musical experiment when four musicians decided to recontextualize and “stage” the rhythmic cycles derived from p’ungmul—an older genre of rural band percussion music and dance that was part of the social fabric of life when Korea was a preindustrialized, agrarian society. The success of the experimental collaboration eventually led to requests for performances within and outside South Korea. Beginning in the early 1980s, SamulNori toured extensively on the world music circuit in North America, Europe, and Japan. Within the span of a few years, the repertory and performance style of the quartet became so popular that its specific brand of percussion music inspired the classification of a new genre of music in South Korea—a genre that took the quartet’s name.

Chapter 1 brings focus to the quartet’s spirit of experimentation and the process of musical arranging that develops into a repertory. Drawing on interviews that I have conducted with members of the SamulNori community as well as a substantial archive of published materials, I show how the unexpectedly enthusiastic reception of SamulNori and samul nori was connected to the Space Theater and the Konggan Project.

Chapter 2 reflects on one of the most popular samul nori compositions that is learned by amateur enthusiasts around the world. I provide an analysis of the formal properties of “Yŏngnam nongak,” which is an arrangement of rhythmic patterns drawn from the p’ungmul regional variant that comes from southeastern Korea. Although it is an introductory-level piece, it features many of the formal elements that are common to other samul nori pieces—a modular formal structure, a general progression from complex rhythmic cycles to ones more simplified and compressed, and significant contrasts between tempi, volume, and levels of energy exerted in performance. Based on recordings of the piece made by the SamulNori quartet, notation that was published by SamulNori Hanullim, and audiovisual materials, I analyze how the rhythm-based form in “Yŏngnam nongak” exhibits these aforementioned properties. In this chapter, I develop the term “dynamic” as an analytic to think through the ways in which the rhythmic form in samul nori compositions features a series of contrasting yet balancing forces. These built-in moments of dramatic change draw in listeners on a sonic level and also assist in the learning of a sequence of different rhythmic cycles. This chapter asserts that samul nori’s rhythmic form is a dynamic musical form. As such, it has elicited a response that has moved well beyond its original local context.

Chapter 3 considers how samul nori’s global circulation was also supported by the South Korean government. As the SamulNori quartet began to tour regularly in Europe and the United States, the state took note. The quartet was invited to perform at high-profile events such as the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul and the Taejŏn Expo ’93. When amateur samul nori ensembles formed outside South Korea, the South Korean government financially backed certain efforts by SamulNori and SamulNori Hanullim to develop pedagogical materials and to lead percussion workshops overseas. Prior to the Korean Wave and K-pop, samul nori was South Korea’s first successful musical export.

Chapter 3 centers on the state’s cultivation of samul nori as a sonic symbol of South Korea. I employ South Korea’s first nation-branding campaign as a case study to view the ways in which the music of samul nori was linked with the “Dynamic Korea” brand and how the state trumpeted its own dynamic image as a modern, economically viable nation-state.

Chapter 4 draws extensively on ethnographic interviews conducted with individuals from around the world who have engaged with samul nori in some depth. I analyze the individual moments of listening to and experiencing samul nori for the first time. In these “encounter narratives,” I chronicle the ways in which the music had a profound impact on its listeners. For some individuals such as Suzanna Samstag (the first managing director of the SamulNori quartet), this experience led to a major life change. For others, the experience led to a desire to learn how to perform samul nori, even without the presence of an instructor. In the case of the latter, pieces such as “Yŏngnam nongak” were accessible through notational booklets, recordings, audiovisual materials, and YouTube videos. Chapter 4 includes profiles of encounters that resulted in the formation of four different samul nori ensembles—Shinparam (United States); Swissamul (Switzerland); Canto del Cielo (Mexico City); and Sinawi (Japan). The chapter also sets the stage for chapter 5, by introducing some of the groups who participated in the 2008 World SamulNori Festival and Competition in South Korea.

The thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the SamulNori quartet was marked in 2008. Many events were planned to celebrate the occasion, including the hosting of the World SamulNori Festival. The festival (and competition) was the largest that was ever organized by SamulNori Hanullim, and featured more than seventy participating samul nori ensembles and over one hundred participants from nine different countries. Based on close ethnographic observation and research, chapter 5 examines the cultural politics that emerged when international samul nori enthusiasts converged at the same time and place, on the native terrain where the samul nori genre was conceived. I focus on the opening ceremony of the festival, where a performance of “Yŏngnam nongak” by all international participants was designed to highlight samul nori’s successful transmission outside South Korea. This collective performance of animated drumming in synchrony is contrasted with the production of the “International Pinari.” As the sole textual piece developed by the SamulNori quartet, the pinari narrates a cross-section of Korea’s history, geography, culture, and a composite of spiritual beliefs. Unlike “Yŏngnam nongak,” the pinari is seldom performed by international samul nori ensembles. In this chapter I show how a vernacular text-based form and a rhythm-based form are strategically deployed in the festival’s opening ceremony, unleashing a set of complex cultural politics. I examine how the organizer’s promotion of the internationalization of samul nori is put into tension with a nationalistic desire to accentuate the uniqueness of South Korea. Chapter 5 speaks to the success but also to the limits of samul nori’s story of globalization.

I conclude with ruminations on rhythmic forms in global circulation and future possibilities for music researchers.