Overview

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 Korean culture.                Nathan Hesselink’s SamulNori traces this reinvention through the rise of the Korean supergroup of the same name, analyzing the strategies the group employed to transform a museum-worthy musical form into something that was both contemporary and historically authentic, unveiling an intersection of traditional and modern cultures and the inevitable challenges such a mix entails. Providing everything from musical notation to a history of urban culture in South Korea to an analysis of SamulNori’s teaching materials and collaborations with Euro-American jazz quartet Red Sun, Hesselink offers a deeply researched study that highlights the need for traditions—if they are to survive—to embrace both preservation and innovation. 

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Reviews

Readers who are already acquainted with traditional Korean percussion will find much of interest in this history, and others will find a new world of music to explore. Enjoy! --Carla Nappi New Books In East Asian Studies

Hesselink provides an in-depth and yet far-reaching study of SamulNori and the genre of music they created that manages to ground the group as a modern-day continuation of the namsadang tradition, a product of the urbanization and growing concert-hall culture of 1970s South Korea and (perhaps most importantly) the creativity of individuals and groups in collaboration. Hesselink also contributes to larger discussions of tradition and the preservation of heritage that question the ways we approach what we consider to be traditional and how these things should be preserved, while remaining relevant and allowing for artistic creativity. --Kurt Baer Journal of Folklore Research

Author Information

Nathan Hesselink is associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of P'ungmul: South Korean Drumming and Dance, published by the University of Chicago Press, and editor of the volumes Music and Politics on the Korean Peninsula and Contemporary Directions: Korean Folk Music Engaging the Twentieth Century and Beyond.

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