No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Transcending the Past: Singing and the Lingering Cold War in the Korean Christian Diaspora
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2021
Abstract
Protestant music in South Korea has received little attention in ethnomusicology despite the fact that Protestant Christianity was one of the most popular religions in twentieth-century Korea. This has meant a missed opportunity to consider the musical impact of a religious institution that mediated translocal experiences between South Korea and the United States during the Cold War period (1950s–1980s). This article explores the politics of music style in South Korean diasporic churches through an ethnography of a church choir in California. I document these singers’ preference for European-style choral music over neotraditional pieces that incorporate the aesthetics of suffering from certain Korean traditional genres. I argue that their musical judgement must be understood in the context of their lived and remembered experience of power inequalities between the United States and South Korea. Based on my interviews with the singers, I show that they understand hymns and related Euro-American genres as healing practices that helped them overcome a difficult past and hear traditional vocal music as sonic icons of Korea's sad past. The article outlines a pervasive South Korean/Korean diasporic historical consciousness that challenges easy conceptions of identity and agency in music studies.
- Type
- Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
I would like to thank the church choir described in this article. Many of its members supplied me with food and kindness while I was writing my doctoral dissertation in Los Angeles.
References
Abelmann, Nancy. The Intimate University: Korean American Students and the Problems of Segregation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Abelmann, Nancy, and Lie, John. Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Bohlman, Philip V. ‘Introduction: World Music's Histories’, in The Cambridge History of World Music, ed. V, Philip. Bohlman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chang, Hyun Kyong Hannah. ‘A Fugitive Christian Public: Singing, Sentiment, and Socialization in Colonial Korea’. The Journal of Korean Studies 25/2 (2020), 291–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Kuan-Hsing. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Cho, Grace M. Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Choi, Chungmoo. ‘Nationalism and Construction of Gender in Korea’, in Dangerous Women: Gender & Korean Nationalism, ed. Kim, Elaine H. and Choi, Chungmoo. New York: Routledge, 1998. 9–32.Google Scholar
Chow, Rey. The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Eidsheim, Nina Sun. ‘Race and Aesthetics of Vocal Timbre’, in Rethinking Difference in Music Scholarship, ed. Bloechl, Olivia, Lowe, Melanie, and Kallberg, Keffrey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 338–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harkness, Nicholas. ‘Culture and Interdiscursivity in Korean Fricative Voice Gestures’. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 21/1 (2011), 99–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harkness, Nicholas. Songs of Seoul: An Ethnography of Voice and Voicing in Christian South Korea. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Hong, Chŏng-p‘yo, ed. Chujebyŏl sŏngga hapch‘ang (Choral Pieces According to Topics), Vol. 1. Seoul: Saenorae, 1994.Google Scholar
Im, Bo kyung Blenda. ‘Delay, or, When Breath Precedes Encounter: Aesthet(h)ic(al) Negotiations in Black Gospel's Afro-Asian Crossings’, in Ethics and Christian Musicking, ed. Myrick, Nathan and Porter, Mark. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2021. 51–70.Google Scholar
Kim, Hosu. ‘The Parched Tongue’, in The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, ed. Patricia, Ticineto Clough and Halley, Jean. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. 34–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Hyun Sook, and Min, Pyong Gap. ‘The Post-1965 Korean Immigrants: Their Characteristics and Settlement Patterns’. Korea Journal of Population and Development 21/2 (1992), 121–43.Google ScholarPubMed
Kim, Jodi. Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Nadia Y. Imperial Citizens: Koreans and Race from Seoul to LA. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Kim, Rebecca. God's New Whiz Kids? Korean American Evangelicals on Campus. New York: New York University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Kim, Sandra So Hee Chi. ‘Korean Han and the Postcolonial Afterlives of “the Beauty of Sorrow”’. Korean Studies 41 (2017), 253–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Namhee. The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Lie, John. Han Unbound: The Political Economy of South Korea. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Maliangkay, Roald. ‘There is No Amen in Shaman: Traditional Music Preservation and Christianity in South Korea’. Asian Music 45/1 (2014), 77–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Min, Pyong Gap. ‘Koreans’ Immigration to the U.S.: History and Contemporary Trends’. The Research Center for Korean Community, Queens College of CUNY Research Report 3 (2011), 1–37.Google Scholar
Min, Pyong Gap. Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations. New York: New York University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Min, Pyong Gap. ‘The Structure and Social Functions of Korean Immigrant Churches in the United States’. International Migration Review 26/4 (1992), 1370–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shimakawa, Karen. National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Son, Min-Jung. ‘Regulating and Negotiating in T‘ŭrorŭ: A Korean Popular Song Style’. Asian Music 37/1 (2006), 51–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. ‘Can the Subaltern Speak? Speculations on Widow Sacrifice’, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, Lawrence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. 271–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suh, David Kwang-sun. The Korean Minjung in Christ. Hong Kong: Christian Conference of Asia, 1991.Google Scholar
Willoughby, Heather. ‘The Sound of Han: P'ansori, Timbre, and a Korean Ethos of Pain and Suffering’. Yearbook for Traditional Music 32 (2000), 17–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, Deborah. Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music. New York: Routledge, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yan, Hairong. ‘Position without Identity: An Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’. positions asia critique 15/2 (2007), 429–48.Google Scholar
Yang, Hon-Lun. ‘Music, China, and the West: A Musical-theoretical Introduction’, in China and the West, Music, Representation, and Reception, ed. Yang, Hon-Lun and Saffle, Michael. University of Michigan Press, 2017. 1–18.Google Scholar
Yoon, Paul Jong-Chul. ‘“She's Really Become Japanese Now!” Taiko Drumming and Asian American Identification’. American Music 19/4 (2001), 417–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yuh, Ji-Yeon. ‘Moved by War: Migration, Diaspora, and the Korean War’. Journal of Asian American Studies 8/3 (2005), 277–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zheng, Su. Claiming Diaspora: Music, Transnationalism, and Cultural Politics in Asian/Chinese America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.Google Scholar