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]
Booklist: Music and Performance (page 3)
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]
K-Pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Economic Innovation in South Korea
From the publisher’s website: K-Pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Economic Innovation in South Korea seeks at once to describe and explain the emergence of export-oriented South Korean popular music and to make sense of larger South Korean economic and cultural transformations. John Lie provides not only a history of South Korean popular music—the premodern background, … [Read More]
Gugak: Traditional Korean Music Today
From the publisher’s website: Over the course of Korean history, gugak – traditional Korean music – developed in an intimate relationship with the lives of the people. During the 20th century, however, the introduction of capitalism coupled with a rapid influx of Western culture erected a barrier between Korea’s traditional music and daily experience. Still, … [Read More]
Contemporary Korean Theater: Beyond Tradition and Modernization
From the publisher’s website: Korean Theater from the 1970s up to the Present The 1970s in Korea saw the establishment of Korean theater’s identity and development of contemporary characteristics in terms of theatrical aesthetics. This book examines Korean theater from the 1970s up to the present. The focus of this volume attempts to examine original … [Read More]
Contemporary Korean Ballet: Scenes and Stars
From the publisher’s website: Contemporary Korean Ballet introduces today’s Korean ballet with concise yet sufficient, detailed explanation. Today’s ballet is divided into romantic and classical ballet popular during the 19th century and a variety of creative ballet pieces since the 20th century. Ballet of Russia, Europe, and the US have long positioned themselves. Japan and … [Read More]
K-POP Now! The Korean Music Revolution
From the publisher’s website: K-Pop Now! takes a fun look at Korea’s high-energy pop music, and is written for its growing legions of fans. It features all the famous groups and singers and takes an insider’s look at how they have made it to the top. In 2012, Psy’s song and music video “Gangnam Style” suddenly … [Read More]
The Korean Popular Culture Reader
From the publisher’s website: Over the past decade, Korean popular culture has become a global phenomenon. The “Korean Wave” of music, film, television, sports, and cuisine generates significant revenues and cultural pride in South Korea. The Korean Popular Culture Reader provides a timely and essential foundation for the study of “K-pop,” relating the contemporary cultural landscape to … [Read More]
Key Papers on Korea: Essays Celebrating 25 Years of the Centre of Korean Studies, SOAS, University of London
Key Papers on Korea is a commemorative collection of papers celebrating 25 years of the Centre of Korean Studies (CKS), SOAS, University of London that have been written by senior academics and emerging scholars. The subjects covered in this collection reflect the different research interests and different strengths of the CKS and include historical perceptions of … [Read More]
Songs of Seoul: An Ethnography of Voice and Voicing in Christian South Korea
From the publisher’s website: Songs of Seoul is an ethnographic study of voice in South Korea, where the performance of Western opera, art songs, and choral music is an overwhelmingly Evangelical Christian enterprise. Drawing on fieldwork in churches, concert halls, and schools of music, Harkness argues that the European-style classical voice has become a specifically … [Read More]
Korean P’ansori Singing Tradition: Development, Authenticity, and Performance History
In 2003, the Korean singing tradition of p’ansori joined the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, a distinctive honor bestowed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. P’ansori is a music genre—an oral tradition comprising arias and narratives. Often the individual singer acts out the story of young and old, … [Read More]
The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global
From the publisher’s website: Since the late 1990s South Korea has emerged as a new center for the production of transnational popular culture – the first instance of a major global circulation of Korean popular culture in history. Why popular (or not)? Why now? What does it mean socially, culturally and politically in a global … [Read More]
Hwang Byungki: Traditional Music and the Contemporary Composer in the Republic of Korea
From the publisher’s website: Anyone who knows anything of Korean music probably knows something of Hwang Byungki. As a composer, performer, scholar, and administrator, Hwang has had an exceptional influence on the world of Korean traditional music for over half a century. During that time, Western-style music (both classical and popular) has become the main … [Read More]
Acts and Scenes: Western Drama in Korean Theater
From the publisher’s website: Acts and Scenes: An Introduction of Western Drama in Korean Theater Almost 400 playwrights from about 25 countries and more than 1,000 dramas have been introduced to Korea in the brief span of 100 years despite the fact that Korea has a vastly different culture, history, and tradition. While the history … [Read More]
Choreographers in Motion: Retrospective and Perspectives
From the publisher’s website: Choreographers in Motion explores the lives and works of representative contemporary dance choreographers of Korea, primarily based in Seoul. The artists selected are examined in detail through interviews by thoroughly investigating their education, influences, and creative process that determines their aesthetic inclination. The artists are presented in chronological order, and are further … [Read More]