href="#u3f32a7ba-fd4d-516a-b308-ef94ef03bbda">Chapter 3 considers how samul nori’s global circulation was also supported by the South Korean government. As the SamulNori quartet began to tour regularly in Europe and the United States, the state took note. The quartet was invited to perform at high-profile events such as the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul and the Taejŏn Expo ’93. When amateur samul nori ensembles formed outside South Korea, the South Korean government financially backed certain efforts by SamulNori and SamulNori Hanullim to develop pedagogical materials and to lead percussion workshops overseas. Prior to the Korean Wave and K-pop, samul nori was South Korea’s first successful musical export.
Chapter 3 centers on the state’s cultivation of samul nori as a sonic symbol of South Korea. I employ South Korea’s first nation-branding campaign as a case study to view the ways in which the music of samul nori was linked with the “Dynamic Korea” brand and how the state trumpeted its own dynamic image as a modern, economically viable nation-state.
Chapter 4 draws extensively on ethnographic interviews conducted with individuals from around the world who have engaged with samul nori in some depth. I analyze the individual moments of listening to and experiencing samul nori for the first time. In these “encounter narratives,” I chronicle the ways in which the music had a profound impact on its listeners. For some individuals such as Suzanna Samstag (the first managing director of the SamulNori quartet), this experience led to a major life change. For others, the experience led to a desire to learn how to perform samul nori, even without the presence of an instructor. In the case of the latter, pieces such as “Yŏngnam nongak” were accessible through notational booklets, recordings, audiovisual materials, and YouTube videos. Chapter 4 includes profiles of encounters that resulted in the formation of four different samul nori ensembles—Shinparam (United States); Swissamul (Switzerland); Canto del Cielo (Mexico City); and Sinawi (Japan). The chapter also sets the stage for chapter 5, by introducing some of the groups who participated in the 2008 World SamulNori Festival and Competition in South Korea.
The thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the SamulNori quartet was marked in 2008. Many events were planned to celebrate the occasion, including the hosting of the World SamulNori Festival. The festival (and competition) was the largest that was ever organized by SamulNori Hanullim, and featured more than seventy participating samul nori ensembles and over one hundred participants from nine different countries. Based on close ethnographic observation and research, chapter 5 examines the cultural politics that emerged when international samul nori enthusiasts converged at the same time and place, on the native terrain where the samul nori genre was conceived. I focus on the opening ceremony of the festival, where a performance of “Yŏngnam nongak” by all international participants was designed to highlight samul nori’s successful transmission outside South Korea. This collective performance of animated drumming in synchrony is contrasted with the production of the “International Pinari.” As the sole textual piece developed by the SamulNori quartet, the pinari narrates a cross-section of Korea’s history, geography, culture, and a composite of spiritual beliefs. Unlike “Yŏngnam nongak,” the pinari is seldom performed by international samul nori ensembles. In this chapter I show how a vernacular text-based form and a rhythm-based form are strategically deployed in the festival’s opening ceremony, unleashing a set of complex cultural politics. I examine how the organizer’s promotion of the internationalization of samul nori is put into tension with a nationalistic desire to accentuate the uniqueness of South Korea. Chapter 5 speaks to the success but also to the limits of samul nori’s story of globalization.
I conclude with ruminations on rhythmic forms in global circulation and future possibilities for music researchers.
ONE
Space and the Big Bang
In actuality, Konggan [Space] did not embark only to explain Korea to the Koreans; it was its ceaseless wish, too, to explain Korea to other countries.
Alain Delissen, 20011
SamulNori became SamulNori Hanullim, Inc. (Hanullim means big bang) in 1993. This growth from a four-man performance ensemble into a company of thirty artists meant that SamulNori’s new genre in traditional Korean arts, music, and dance over the last two decades had now also become a viable educational and research enterprise.
SamulNori Hanullim, n.d.2
In 1993 the SamulNori quartet officially disbanded, ending their remarkable run. As many histories of the group narrate, the quartet began as a modest experiment in 1978 and developed unexpectedly into a global musical phenomenon. Few could have predicted this rise, or this spread. Within the span of fifteen years SamulNori claimed over thirty-five hundred performances. They were credited with catapulting their brand of music into South Korea’s sonic landscape as the country’s representative genre of kugak (literally, “national [Korean] music”). Their success on international stages spurred a reappraisal of the status of traditional Korean arts on a domestic front. And the music that the quartet performed was soon embraced and imitated by many fans both within and outside South Korea.
But as is sometimes the case with things that have a steep and sudden ascent, the ending can be abrupt. Typically glossed over in SamulNori narratives or confined to the domains of conversation and hearsay, such difficulties as internal strife, conflicting agendas, financial disputes, and burnout all factored into the dissolution of the SamulNori quartet. This did not lead to the demise of samul nori as a genre, however. To the contrary, it was during the 1990s that the genre of samul nori flourished. A growing base of fans became samul nori practitioners, owing in large part to pedagogical outreach efforts sponsored first by the quartet, and later by samul nori’s most tireless and ambitious advocate, Kim Duk Soo.
Master of the hourglass changgo drum, Kim Duk Soo took up the reins and launched a reconfigured and expanded enterprise in 1993, calling it SamulNori Hanullim. Translated literally, hanullim means “grand reverberation”; Kim Duk Soo chose to render this in English as SamulNori “Big Bang.” Broadening his artistic horizons, Kim presided as the director for an organization that featured a roster of samul nori quartet “teams,” an educational division, and a managing staff.
The transformation from a stand-alone quartet to an artistic troupe capable of deploying separate teams to different events reflects the popularization of the percussion genre by the early 1990s. Not only was there an increased demand for samul nori performances, but there was also a younger generation of musicians who had essentially become adept (and even fanatic) at playing samul nori. The quartet attracted serious musicians and amateur enthusiasts—many of whom flocked to train with the quartet members at workshops or at the Sinch’on Live House Nanjang Studio.3 Ethnomusicologist Nathan Hesselink describes the quartet’s impact in even broader terms: “By the 1990s, SamulNori / samul nori in various incarnations had become a prominent fixture of the Korean musical landscape, seen on television broadcasts and in concert halls, disseminated on CD, VHS, and DVD recordings, studied in chapters of music history and appreciation textbooks, and taught at the primary, secondary, and collegiate levels throughout the peninsula” (2012, 3). Thus Kim’s SamulNori “Big Bang” was a fitting appellation to describe the longer-lasting reverberations of the SamulNori quartet, while at the same time forecasting Kim’s more ambitious agendas.
Beginning this story with the quartet’s demise is an unconventional narrative move. But it strategically foregrounds SamulNori’s popular reception—a reception that outlived the
