London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

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]

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]

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]

Music in Korea: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture

From the publisher’s website: Despite its longstanding position as a distinct cultural force in East Asia, Korea continues to be underrepresented in world music texts. Music in Korea is the first brief, single-volume text to provide a thematic, succinct introduction to the music of Korea—a region whose volatile political climate has often overshadowed its rich cultural and … [Read More]

SamulNori: Contemporary Korean Drumming and the Rebirth of Itinerant Performance Culture

In 1978, four musicians crowded into a cramped basement theater in downtown Seoul, where they, for the first time, brought the rural percussive art of p’ungmul to a burgeoning urban audience. In doing so, they began a decades-long reinvention of tradition, one that would eventually create an entirely new genre of music and a national symbol for … [Read More]

Healing Rhythms: The World of South Korea’s East Coast Hereditary Shamans

Still today, in South Korea, many people pay for the services of mudang – the intermediaries of Korea’s syncretic folk religion. The majority of mudang are called to the profession by gods; their clients are individuals or small groups and they focus on the use of spirit-power (‘possession’) for diagnosis and problem-solving. There is, however, … [Read More]

Creating Korean Music: Tradition, Innovation and the Discourse of Identity

From the publisher’s website: With the rise of nationalism in the Republic of Korea, music has come to play a central role in the discourse of identity. This volume asks what Koreans consider makes music Korean, and how meaning is ascribed to musical creation. Keith Howard explores specific aspects of creativity that are designed to … [Read More]

P’ungmul: South Korean Drumming and Dance

From the publisher’s website: Composed of a core set of two drums and two gongs, p’ungmul is a South Korean tradition of rural folk percussion. Steeped in music, dance, theater, and pageantry, but centrally focused on rhythm, such ensembles have been an integral part of village life in South Korea for centuries, serving as a musical accompaniment … [Read More]

Great Journeys of the World

From the dust jacket: In Great Journeys of the World, six talented individuals – among them writers and actors, a poet and a musician – embark on journeys of special interest in some of the most spectacular parts of the world. … In Korea, the world’s leading solo percussionist, Evelyn Glennie, explores Korea’s musical culture … [Read More]