Nathalie Baumann, Violette Nys, Kenichi Yanaka, Mayumi Abe, Yuki Goto, Stephen Wunrow and Martha Vickery, Han Yong Wunrow, Sam Sangho Kim, Sarah Lee, Nik Nadeau, Lia Bengtson, Shirley Sailors, Viry Sánchez, Wendy Rodríguez, Ariadna Ramírez, Itto Cario Martínez, Alik Son, Inga Sin, Nastia Alexuyk, Bo-sung Kim, Myung-hyun Park, Hyo Jin Shin, Han Song Hiltmann, and Na-Rhee Scherfling: I look forward to many future encounters. To those of you who were kind enough to grant interviews or host me in your countries, I bow my head deeply. Your passion for samul nori is at the heart of this story. I hope that I have accurately conveyed some of that passion in this book.
In 2012, I moved cross-country to California and began a new life at UC Davis. I also gained a family. Henry Spiller has been a wonderful colleague, mentor, friend, and kindred spirit. Thank you, Henry, for reading drafts and for supporting me intellectually and emotionally during the past five years. I am so fortunate to have you in my life. The Music Department is a special place, and one that I will miss dearly in my departure for UCLA. I would like to acknowledge Beth Levy, Laurie San Martin, Sam Nichols, Chris Reynolds, Anna Maria Busse Berger, Carol Hess, Jessie Ann Owens, Kurt Rohde, Pablo Ortiz, Mika Pelo, D. Kern Holoman, Ross Bauer, Jeffrey Thomas, Amelia Triest, Christian Baldini, Matilda Hofman, and Chris Froh for their collegiality and warmth. The staff at the UC Davis Department of Music also supported my frequent endeavors to bring artists and scholars to campus: Josh Paterson, Phil Daley, Stephen Bingen, Joy Li, Courtney Kievernagel, and Karen Nofziger. Thanks especially to Stephen Bingen for providing excellent advice on sound-related matters and for a stimulating discussion on “dynamics” from an audio engineer’s point of view. To all the graduate students at UC Davis: I have learned so much from our conversations. Thank you. And a very special hello to all my former students of the Korean Percussion Ensemble at UC Davis. Andrew Park enthusiastically took my ensemble for nearly three years, and went above and beyond the call of duty by leading voluntary review sessions for students in the class.
I was blessed to encounter Seeta Chaganti, Meaghan O’Keefe, Carey Seal, and Catherine Mike Chin at UC Davis. Our weekly dinners and conversations nourished me in more ways than you will ever know. You must all come visit me in Los Angeles. I am particularly indebted to Seeta Chaganti for generously sharing her brilliant and daring work on medieval poetic form with me. My sole colleague in Korean Studies at UC Davis, Kyu Hyun Kim, has also been very supportive.
It is only through the generous financial and administrative support from various institutions that I have been able to see this long-term project to fruition. The Blakemore Foundation made it possible for me to focus exclusively on language study for eighteen months, early on in my academic journey. Funding for both archival and ethnographic research has come from the following sources: the Harvard Music Department, the Korea Institute at Harvard, the Steve S. Kang Young Artists and Scholars Fund, the Institute of International Education (Fulbright), the Social Science Research Council, UC Davis, the Association for Asian Studies, the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Archival work was conducted at UCLA, UC Berkeley, Seoul National University Archives, the Korea Democracy Foundation, and the Harvard-Yenching Library. A faculty research fellowship from the UC Davis Humanities Institute gave me one quarter off from teaching to begin the hard intellectual work on this manuscript. And a generous Hellman Fellowship allowed me to travel to Europe in the summer of 2015 to meet several people connected to samul nori in Berlin, Brussels, Paris, and Vienna. I had the good fortune to work with and befriend a number of administrators and staff through these various affiliations. I credit them here: Griffith Way and Cathy Scheibner of the Blakemore Foundation, Susan Laurence and Myong Chandra of the Korea Institute, Steven Biel, Mary Halpenny-Killip, and Sarah Razor of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard, Mary Dunn (American Academy of Arts and Sciences), Molly McCarthy and David Biale (Davis Humanities Institute), Shim Jai Ok and the staff at Fulbright Korea, and Nicole Restrick Levit of the Social Science Research Council.
I was fortunate to present drafts of chapters and papers at the following institutions: UC Berkeley, Stanford University, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and Harvard University. In 2011, I participated in the SSRC Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop, where I received valuable comments from fellow participants and mentors Suk-Young Kim, Jun Yoo, Seung-sook Moon, and the ever-luminous Nancy Abelmann. An earlier draft of chapter 3—presented at the “Rising Stars of Korean Studies” Junior Faculty Mentoring Workshop at USC—benefited greatly from incisive feedback given by Joshua Pilzer and Nojin Kwak. I am grateful for Lee Yong-shik’s thoughtful and expert critique of chapter 2. A slightly revised version of chapter 3 is based on an article published by the Journal of Korean Studies.
On the thread of intellectual communities and affiliations, my cohort during graduate school has been a source of tremendous inspiration and support. I entered the doctoral program at Harvard University in 2005 with my sole colleague in ethnomusicology—Corinna Campbell—and two historical musicologists, Ryan Raul Bañagale and Anna Zayaruznaya. Our many conversations in formal and informal settings have yielded important insights, friendship, and inside jokes. I have also been enriched by my friendships with many other Music Department colleagues: Sheryl Kaskowitz, Marc Gidal, Jean-François Charles, Andrea Bohlman, Mike Heller, Meredith Schweig, Glenda Goodman, Emily Abrams Ansari, Wenqi Kai Tang, Nathalie Kirschstein, Alexandra Monchick, Peter McMurray, and Will Cheng. Faculty members have also offered abiding support. I owe a great deal to Anne Shreffler for encouraging my incipient research project on “drumming and protest” during her Music and Politics Seminar. I am also thankful for the opportunity to have studied with Suzannah Clark, Thomas Kelly, and Carol Oja. I would be remiss not to include the staff at the Harvard Music Department, who function as an all-star team, helping to ensure the humor and well-being of the department. Thanks to Nancy Shafman, Kaye Denny, Charles Stillman, Jean Moncrieff, Lesley Bannatyne, Karen Rynne, Mary Gerbi, Eva Kim, and Fernando Viesca for shepherding the graduate students along their academic journeys. The staff at Harvard’s Loeb Music Library also deserves a special acknowledgment. I cannot think of a more knowledgeable or professional crew: Andrew Wilson, Kerry Masteller, Sarah Adams, Liza Vick (now at the University of Pennsylvania), and the incomparable Virginia Danielson (now at NYU–Abu Dhabi).
I am not able to give due justice to the many mentors and friends who have helped me in some shape or form with this manuscript. I am beholden to my halmŏni, the late Lee Kwang-kyu, Lee Yong-shik, Marié Abe, Choi Haeree, Kim Eunhee, Lee Soobeen, Shin Mikyung and the Happynist samul nori team, the Won family at the Kumhyŏn Kugakwŏn, Michael Sprunger, Franklin Rausch, Olga Fedorenko, Jenny Wang Medina, Eleana Kim, Marcie Middlebrooks, Nicholas Harkness, Jimmy Jung, Robert Garfias, Michael Seth Orland, Tim Haggerty and Mack Liu, Andrew Thompson, Tanya Lee, Anna Schultz, Ling-ju Lai, Elena Tsai, Aimee Lee, Steph Rue, Charlie Kim, Matthew Sussman, Kate Davidson Harkness, Kevin Mora and Amy Lee, Terttu Uibopuu, Tommy Tran, Julia Kim, Jeongin Lee, Andrew Park (UC Davis), Gary Rector, the late Brian Barry, Jacques-Yves Le Docte, Nikki Guarino, Ro Jaemyeong (Korean Classical Music Record Museum), Chŏng Yusuk and her family, and my relatives from San Diego: Michelle, Ben, and Lorraine Chu. Thanks to Julius Gyu Cheon Hwang, who went along with my idea and produced the calligraphic artwork that appears in chapter 2. The talented graphic designer Benjamin Shaykin produced the artwork and design that grace this cover. And Derek Harkness provided unparalleled technical support when my computer began to fail me just before my final manuscript was due. To my fellow travelers in Korean music studies—Donna Kwon, Hilary Finchum-Sung, Roald Maliangkay, Jocelyn Clark, Nathan Hesselink, CedarBough T. Saeji, Joshua Pilzer, Heather Willoughby, Chan Park, Andy Sutton, and Chae Hyun Kyung—may we continue to converse, drink, and sing, and find reasons to meet in Insa-dong! I extend my gratitude to Dr. Byoung Sug Kim and Dr. Ji-Yeon Yuh for granting me permission to include their collaborative translation of SamulNori Hanullim’s “Pinari” text in this manuscript. The translation is an impressive feat, and a resource that I am sure many samul nori ensembles will benefit from in the future.
My close
