SamulNori Contemporary Korean Drumming and the Rebirth of Itinerant Performance Culture

SamulNori: Contemporary Korean Drumming and the Rebirth of Itinerant Performance Culture By Nathan Hesselink
2012 | 224 Pages | ISBN: 0226330966 | PDF | 3 MB
In 1978, four musicians crowded into a cramped basement theater in downtown Seoul, where they, for the first time, brought the rural percussive art ofp’ungmulto 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’sSamulNoritraces 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.