Feeling at Home in the World: Korean (Traditional) Musicians in a Transnational Circuit

• In Event: Listening to Korea: On Authenticity, Identity and the Nation in Music

Abstract

In the early 2000s, an increasing number of musicians trained in Korean traditional music (gugak) started to perform at music festivals around the world. While most of them have ended up in a one-time performance, recently some musicians have gained an even greater popularity outside Korea. In this paper, focusing on Jambinai, regarded as one of the most successful Korean music groups who have performed abroad, I investigate what aspects of their music appeal to the foreign audience—even more than the Korean audience—making them a group that many international festivals are eager to invite. It might be the local tint found in their music which piques the audiences’ curiosity on first hearing them (Harvey 1990; Stokes 2004). I argue, however, that it is a sense of simultaneous familiarity and distance that eventually prevents their music from being associated with one specific genre. On the contrary, I contend that because it has been labeled as gugak, the same music has elicited different responses from the Korean audiences. I suggest that their music is in fact an example of “cosmopolitan striving”—a collective motivation to be a citizen in the world, deriving from Korea’s unique history and current position in the world (Park and Abelmann 2004). By examining Jambinai and looking at culture-specific reasons for their success, this paper will provide a new perspective for studying Korean music in a transnational context and show how Korean music has come to be circulated in the larger context of global music markets.

Author

• Hyunjin Yeo, University of Maryland