Building Interracial Youth Power in Chicago Through Korean Drumming

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: From the Margins to the Center: Critical Encounters With Race Across Disciplines and Communities

Abstract

Chicago is home to over twenty community-based youth music education programs that focus on immigrant music traditions. The media discourse around these programs tends to portray students as performing cultural heritage and connecting with their parents or grandparents. This paper demonstrates that such programs have the potential to serve a more nuanced role in young people’s social and political development. Through a case study of HANAsori, a youth p’ungmul ensemble at Chicago’s HANA Center, I argue that the intersection of music education and community organizing enables HANA to create a cohesive group identity and shared set of skills for a multiracial group of immigrant and 2nd-generation youth from different neighborhoods and high schools across the city.

Author

• Joseph Maurer, University of Chicago