Publisher description: Recently, a seven-member boy band from Korea called BTS has captivated the globe, forming the most massive and powerful fandom in history. The BTS phenomenon reaches far beyond the typical achievements of pop stars: as Jiyoung Lee illustrates, the changes that have been shown by BTS and their fandom ARMY are not confined … [Read More]
Booklist: Music and Performance (page 2)
Dynamic Korea and Rhythmic Form
Winner of the The Béla Bartók Award for Outstanding Ethnomusicology The South Korean percussion genre, samulnori, is a world phenomenon whose rhythmic form is the key to its popularity and mobility. Based on both ethnographic research and close formal analysis, author Katherine In-Young Lee focuses on the kinetic experience of samulnori, drawing out the concept … [Read More]
K-Pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance
From the publisher’s website: 1990s South Korea saw the transition from a military dictatorship to a civilian government, from a manufacturing economy to a postindustrial hub, and from a cloistered society to a more dynamic transnational juncture. These seismic shifts had a profound impact on the media industry and the rise of K-pop. In K-pop Live, … [Read More]
Broken Voices: Postcolonial Entanglements and the Preservation of Korea’s Central Folksong Traditions
From the publisher’s website: Broken Voices is the first English-language book on Korea’s rich folksong heritage, and the first major study of the effects of Japanese colonialism on the intangible heritage of its former colony. Folksongs and other music traditions continue to be prominent in South Korea, which today is better known for its technological … [Read More]
K-pop – The International Rise of the Korean Music Industry
From the publisher’s website: K-pop, described by Time Magazine in 2012 as “South Korea’s greatest export”, has rapidly achieved a large worldwide audience of devoted fans largely through distribution over the Internet. This book examines the phenomenon, and discusses the reasons for its success. It considers the national and transnational conditions that have played a … [Read More]
The Song of Ch’unhyang: Musical Text as compiled by Master Singer Kim Yŏn-su
The Song of Ch’unhyang is one of the most popular p’ansori pieces in the genre’s classic repertoire. Its story is simple. Ch’unhyang (“Spring-Fragrance”) is the beautiful daughter of a deceased aristocrat and Wŏlmae, a retired kisaeng. Her ambiguous social status becomes the key dramatic complication when she falls in love with Yi Mongnyong, the young … [Read More]
Gone: A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung
Publisher description: ‘All my life my Stradivarius had been waiting for me, as I had been waiting for her . . .’ At 7 years old Min Kym was a prodigy, the youngest ever pupil at the Purcell School of Music. At 11 she won her first international prize. She worked with many violins, waiting … [Read More]
Salpuri-Chum, A Korean Dance for Expelling Evil Spirits: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of its Artistic Characteristics
From the publisher’s website: This book is a study of Salpuri-Chum, a traditional Korean dance for expelling evil spirits. The authors explore the origins and practice of Salpuri-Chum. The ancient Korean people viewed their misfortunes as coming from evil spirits; therefore, they wanted to expel the evil spirits to recover their happiness. The music for … [Read More]
Performing Korea
This book offers an exploration of the intersection of Korean theatre practice with Western literary theatre. Gangnam Style, K-Pop, the Korean Wave: who hasn’t heard of these recent Korean phenomena? Having spent two years in Korea as a theatrical and cultural ‘tourist’, Patrice Pavis was granted an unparalleled look at contemporary Korean culture. As well … [Read More]
Korean Musical Drama: P’ansori and the Making of Tradition in Modernity
From the publisher’s website: P’ansori is the quintessential traditional Korean musical drama, in which epic tales are sung and narrated by a solo singer accompanied by a drummer. Drawing on her extensive research in Korea and its diasporas, Haekyung Um describes and analyses the creative processes of p’ansori, weaving into her discussion musical, social and … [Read More]
Made in Korea: Studies in Popular Music
From the publisher’s website: Made in Korea: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary Korean popular music. Each essay covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Korea, first presenting a general description of the history and background of popular music … [Read More]
Korean Screen Cultures: Interrogating Cinema, TV, Music and Online Games
From the publisher’s website: The “Korean Wave”, or Hallyu phenomenon, has brought South Korean popular culture to the global population. Studies on Korean visual culture have therefore often focused on this aspect, leaving North Korea sidelined and often considered in a negative light because of its political regime. Korean Screen Cultures sets out to redress this … [Read More]
SamulNori: Korean Percussion for a Contemporary World
From the publisher’s website: SamulNori is a percussion quartet which has given rise to a genre, of the same name, that is arguably Korea’s most successful ’traditional’ music of recent times. Today, there are dozens of amateur and professional samulnori groups. There is a canon of samulnori pieces, closely associated with the first founding quartet … [Read More]
Globalization and Popular Music in South Korea: Sounding Out K-Pop
From the publisher’s website: This book offers an in-depth study of the globalization of contemporary South Korean idol pop music, or K-Pop, visiting K-Pop and its multiple intersections with political, economic, and cultural formations and transformations. It provides detailed insights into the transformative process in and around the field of Korean pop music since the … [Read More]
Korea and the Western Drumset: Scattering Rhythms
From the publisher’s website: For over a century, drummers have been turning to a variety of percussive traditions as prompts for the creation of new expressive possibilities on the drumset. In this book, Simon Barker sets out in detail the developmental processes he has followed creating an improvisational language for the drumset utilizing Korean rhythm/sticking … [Read More]
Performing the Nation in Global Korea: Transnational Theatre
From the publisher’s website: This book illustrates how local awareness of Western cultural hegemonic entities such as Broadway and Shakespeare have been implemented within South Korean theatre in the global era. With a focus on performances that targeted global audiences, Lee explores the ways in which Korea’s nationalistic desires for global visibility are projected on … [Read More]