"Fusion" and Questions of Korean Cultural Identity in Music

Author(s): R. Anderson Sutton

Source: Korean Studies , 2011, Vol. 35 (2011), pp. 4-24
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press

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 "Fusion" and Questions of Korean Cultural
Identity in Music
R. Anderson Sutton

The notion of cultural purity is demonstrably a myth, as historical analysis of any

cultural expression can reveal multiple origins and hybridities that inevitably result
from human contact. Yet in Korea, as elsewhere, some cultural forms are recog
nized as "pure" and "authentic," celebrated as invaluable assets, to be preserved
from foreign mixture. Korean fusion music, a broad category of musical practices,
mixing unambiguously Korean elements with foreign elements, is an important re
sponse to the unsettled cultural terrain of contemporary Korea. This article explores
aspects of contemporary Korean cultural identity and its discourses in music, argu
ing that fusion music is an important site in the creative struggle for the future of
"Korean music."

Music constructs our sense of identity through the direct experiences it offers
the body, time and sociability, experiences which enable us to place ourselves
in imaginative cultural narratives,
—Simon Frith

Fusion music, whatever styles and genres are subsumed under this broad
rubric, involves mixture—intentional and perceptible mixture. In Korea,
music identified as "fusion," with very rare exception, combines elements
conceived to be "Korean" with others that are (or may be) conceived to be
"not Korean." As such it is a kind of intentional cultural impurity, and
hence, to some, a cultural "problem." But is there any cultural practice

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that is not the result of "fusion" in some sense? The notion of cultural
purity is demonstrably a myth, as any careful historical analysis of cultural
expression anywhere in the world can reveal multiple origins, blends, syn
cretisms, hybridities that are the inevitable result of human contact. Yet
in Korea, as in many countries around the globe, some forms of cultural
expression have come to be recognized as "pure" or "authentic" indigenous
forms, often celebrated in official discourse as invaluable assets, to be nur
tured and preserved against the perceived onslaught of foreign mixture
and "pollution."
Though all Korean music historians readily acknowledge the incorpo
ration of foreign elements, especially those from China, they stress the
"Koreanization" of these elements, and justifiably so. The Chinese origins
of the genre known as munmyo cherye-ak (Confucian ritual music) are
generally acknowledged, but its style of performance is thought to have
taken on Korean elements and not simply to replicate that of its Chinese
predecessor. Even more so the music of chongmyo cherye-ak (royal shrine
music), which is stylistically closely related to that of munmyo cherye-ak
and whose identity as Korean is strengthened by the change from Chinese
pieces (during King Sejong's reign) to Korean pieces (composed during
King Sejo's reign) even with the continued use of instruments such as
the jade and bell chimes (p'yôn-gyông and p'yonjong) imported from China.
We can also point to the secular Korean court music (tang-ak) deriv
ing from China and the adoption of two-stringed fiddle (haegüm) from
Mongolia. In an article titled "What makes Korean Music Different?"
Han Myong-hee (Han Myong-hüi), professor of Korean music at Seoul
City University, acknowledges that "... Koreans had active exchanges
with Chinese, Mongolians, Siberians, Japanese as well as the residents
of far-off Central Asian regions from early times. Thus Korean music
acquired a certain international outlook quite early." But he goes on to
state, "At the core of Korean music, however, have always been indige
nous musical styles that sound different [from other East Asian music]."1
There seems to be something different in the discourse on Korean
music when it comes to more recent international influences. Prominent
Korean musicologist Song Bang-song opens his collection of essays pub
lished under the title Korean Music: Historical and Other Aspects (2000)
with a chapter in which he proposes three eras in the history of Korean
music, the last of the three involving cultural intrusion (Western and
Japanese) beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century and continu
ing through the Japanese colonial era to 1945. Commenting on music
since that time, he writes:

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 Because neither the socialistic music of North Korea nor the thoughtless Western
oriented music of South Korea is pure Korean music, neither can survive in the
severely competitive music market of the 21st century. Therefore, the straighten
ing out of Korean music to be prepared for the 21st century would make possible
the creative inheritance of traditional music together with suitable acceptance of
Western music.2

Leaving the door open for a "suitable acceptance of Western music" and
not commenting on whether it should blend with or simply coexist along
side traditional music, Song does not lay out an action plan. Against the
background of the dominance of Western classical and pop music in con
temporary Korea, Chae Hyun-Kyung (Ch'ae Hyôn-kyông), in her 1996
dissertation, sees ch'angjak kugak (lit. "creative Korean national music")
as the solution, stating boldly: "By combining its unmistakably Korean
ideology with an unfailing feel for the ever so rapidly changing world
of the present, ch'angjak kugak has made Korean music truly Korean."3
Yet her stance is problematic, as ch'angjak kugak embraces many of the
stylistic features of Western classical music, raising questions about the
unmistakability of the Korean "ideology" Chae attributes to it.
Official discourse on the arts and government-supported cultural policy
in Korea has strongly favored the forms with the least evident influence
from other countries and cultures, but the vast majority of Korean people
today and in the recent past have felt remarkably little appreciation for
many of these forms. While most would not deny that these forms are
indeed part of their cultural heritage as Koreans and are clearly and un
ambiguously identifiable as "Korean arts," they also feel culturally "estranged"
from them. That they enjoy other forms of music in almost all contexts
presents us with a challenge as we try to come to terms with Korean notions
of identity in music.
Korean fusion music, a broad and somewhat controversial category of
diverse musical practices, all of which involve at least some perceivable
cultural mix between unambiguously Korean elements and other elements
with foreign origins, is becoming an increasingly important response to
the unsettled cultural terrain on which musicians find themselves in con
temporary Korea. In this essay I would like to reflect on the issue of
cultural mixture itself and to consider examples of Korean fusion music,
both mainstream and marginal, in an attempt to illuminate aspects of
contemporary Korean cultural identity discourses in music. These examples
range from music that is basically American jazz or Western classical, but
makes use of at least some Korean instruments, to traditional Korean folk
songs that incorporate Western harmony, instruments, or other stylistic

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features. In between are examples of Korean fusion music that seek and
attain more of a balance between Korean traditional and other elements.
I will be addressing both the sound objects themselves and representative
popular and scholarly discourse about them, and argue that fusion music
is an important locus, perhaps the most important locus, for the creative
struggle for the future of what will increasingly be thought of as "Korean
music."

Thoughts on Identity, Music, and Korean Identity in Music

An article by ethnomusicologist Timothy Rice offers a critique of the recent

work on music and identity, which has become one of the favorite topics
of papers, articles, and books over the past twenty years in the field of
ethnomusicology. Rice "was disappointed to learn that there is almost no
theoretical discussion in our article-length musical ethnographies on the
theme of music and identity," noting that we have mostly taken for
granted the notion of identity "as a category of social life and of social
analysis."4 As he states, the field of cultural studies has devoted lots of
thought to identity, including cultural identity. Stuart Hall opens the set
of essays on "identity" that he co-edited with Paul du Gay with a chapter
provocatively titled "Who Needs 'Identity'?" placing the word "identity"
in scare quotes, and going on to wonder, for seventeen pages, just how
and for whom this concept can still be useful in cultural analysis.5 The
"who" he is addressing are cultural scholars, not traditional artists or govern
ment bureaucrats. Hall's understanding of identity is contingent and

accepts that identities are never unified and, in late modern times, increasingly
fragmented and fractured; never singular but multiply constructed across different,
often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices and positions. They are
subject to a radical historicization, and are constantly in the process of change
and transformation. We need to situate the debates about identity within all
historically specific developments and practices which have disturbed the rela
tively 'setded' character of many populations and cultures, above all in relation
to the processes of globalization, which I would argue are coterminous with
modernity.6

Hall and others, including Homi Bhabha and Simon Frith, emphasize the
changeability of identity, something that is perhaps easier for cultural
studies scholars to accept than nationalistic culture brokers. Frith notes
music's mobility and its malleability with respect to meaning:

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 The problem here is not just the familiar postmodern point that we live in an
age of plunder in which musics made in one place for one reason can be imme
diately appropriated in another place for quite another reason, but also that
while music may be shaped by the people who first make and use it, as experience
it has a life of its own.7

Indeed, in its drawing on two or more cultural traditions, fusion music

very often presents its listeners with the challenge to find meaning in
music that is partly familiar and partly unfamiliar, drawing on music
that may sound fresh and original to some listeners (those not familiar
with it) but hackneyed and cliché to others (who are very familiar with
it). Traditional musicians would likely support Clifford Geertz's famous
claim that "art and the equipment to grasp it are made in the same
shop,"8 but contemporary realities suggest that art routinely leaves the
"shop" (i.e., the culture/the country) where it was made and gets inter
preted in many ways, some intended or understandable by its creators,
others unintended and unimaginable. And there is a pervasive sense
widely shared by kugak musicians who participate in fusion music and
enjoy it, as well as those who do not, that Korean music should gain greater
international exposure and be appreciated by people around the world and
that it somehow contains aesthetic value of potential universal appeal.
Discourses on the cultural identity of music, whether in Korea or
elsewhere, seem to view the locus of identity to be within the music itself,
rather than the people who make it or apprehend it. But notions of the
cultural identity of a particular kind of music routinely shift over time
and, more tellingly, may vary from one social group to another at the
same time, or even within a single individual's conceptions according to
the discursive context (for example, taejung kayo as "Korean pop" as dis
tinct from other contemporary pop music, or as "Westernized pop" in
contrast to more indigenous forms in Korea—see further below).
What, then, do scholars mean and what do Korean musicians and
lay people mean when they speak of "Korean music"?9 One can speak of
kugak (literally, "national music," popularly understood as "traditional
music") and one can speak of Han'guk ümak (literally, "Korean music").
The two are not synonymous. Most people would say kugak is Korean, or
"most Korean," in the sense that it is the repertoire/style of music most
distinct from forms of music associated with other countries /cultures.
What about more popular and casual conceptions of "Korean music"?
Internet searches for "Korean music" (or, in Korean, "han'guk ümak")
immediately pull up Korean popular music (taejung kayo). This is the
case, almost certainly because Internet searches on Google and the like
are driven by frequency of hits, which is driven by commercial factors.

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However, this phenomenon cannot help but solidify notions of Korean
pop singers and their music as "Korean," even though this attribution is
based almost entirely on the national/ethnic identity of the performers
and on the language (but not the musical style, not even the vocal style)
of the music. Rain, Seo Taiji, Se7en, Maya, and others all sing in Korean
(among other languages, including English and Japanese), claiming Korean
identity unproblematically, despite their reliance on musical styles adopted
from abroad and ultimately traceable to Western (American and European)
origins, albeit often filtered through Japan.
The Asian online music Web site YesAsia organizes its materials by
country and then by genre categories. Not surprisingly, under "Korea:
Folk and Traditional" among a total of 291 titles, we find some Korean
pop (even though YesAsia has a separate Korean heading for "Pop"),
various examples that would now widely be identified by Korean listeners
as "Fusion," some ch'angjak kugak, and some traditional folk and other
varieties of kugak. Some of the items are quite remarkable—challenging
and, no doubt, refiguring notions of genre and ultimately of what con
stitutes "Korean music" in the popular imagination. An album titled
Kugagüro Tünnün Pibaldi üi Sagye ("Vivaldi's Four Seasons heard through
Kugak") performed by the Seoulsi Kwanhyôn Akdan (Seoul City Kugak
Orchestra) is described on this site as:

It is the first full album of Vivaldi's Four Seasons heard through kugak....
Unlike the previous attempts (by others) which usually rearrange and perform
only excerpts from famous classical music, this album is more interesting
because of its new charm in Vivaldi's Four Seasons. (YesAsia Web site, translated
from the Korean)

Claiming that this album offers Vivaldi's Four Seasons "through" kugak
just because it has been arranged for Korean instruments is an indication
of how unstable the category "kugak" is becoming. And this album turns
up in a search for "Korean music," though the music (melodies, rhythms,
harmonies) are Italian, and the performance on kayagüm (long zither)
does not incorporate characteristically Korean microtonal ornaments,
heterophonic textures, or breath rhythms.10 It is simply the timbre of the
plucked kayagüm strings that is "Korean." Similarly, YouTube searches for
"Korean music" turn up everything from a "kugak version" of the Korean
teenage group Sonyô Sidae (SNSD, Girl's Generation)'s "Gee" and IS
(Infinity of Sound)'s "Pom" ("Spring") music videos—in which pop
tunes are rendered with the sounds (and sights) of a few kugak instru
ments added—to the fusion jazz group Oriental Express, whose YouTube
clip of "Sunshine Bay" explains, in a ticker in Korean:

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 This piece ["Sunshine Bay"], filled with the relaxed moment of a sunny blue
seashore, conveys a refreshing feeling of the kugak instrumental melody matched
with contemporary rhythm This fusion group, which is seeking to create a
new music style that combines kugak, jazz, and technology, presents a wide
variety of music through its three albums since its start in 2005. (YouTube
video, translated from the Korean)

The claim that one of the elements combined in this fusion is "kugak" and
that the instrumental melody is a "kugak"melody need to be scrutinized
critically. A close listen to the playing in this piece reveals two Korean in
struments, haegüm and kayagüm, playing with some of the vibrato (rapid
pitch variation) and glissando (sliding between pitches) that characterize
kugak, but if this component in this mix is to be called "kugak," rather
than kugak-nuznced, we do indeed see slippage in meaning of the word
kugak in public discourse.
What about instrumental jazz in Korea? One hears of "Korean jazz"
players, but is there a distinguishable "Korean jazz style"? One finds well
known Korean songs arranged for typical jazz instruments (e.g., "Arirang"
on the album Hanguk üi Tchaejü/Korean Jazz Music, 1989). Otherwise,
only if Korean traditional instruments (in older or kaeryang/ "remodeled,"
"improved" form) are either present, or clearly imitated, would the music
be identifiable as "Korean." In the latter case, the "style" is Korean only in
the one dimension of instrumental timbre (sound quality), whereas the
harmonies, rhythms, melodies—indeed, the repertory itself—are simply
"jazz."
What about classical music in Korea (küllaesik ümak)? If one uses the
word ümak (generally translated simply as "music") or küllaesik ümak
("classical music") in Korea, what is understood is not traditional, indige
nous music, but Western art music. Some Korean pianists, violinists, con
ductors, and composers have gained fame internationally as musicians
who happen to be from Korea. Alongside the music of the Western
canon, from Bach to Stravinsky, we can hear in Korea (and occasionally
abroad) music in the Western concert idiom, using Western instruments,
structures, and aesthetics but composed by Korean composers. Though
some have been trained in the West, in Europe or the United States,
others have received very comprehensive training in Korea from the
many well-qualified Korean experts in Western music performance and
pedagogy. The music of these composers is not often identified, by Koreans
or others, as "Korean music." Yet this is, for most Koreans, the most
prestigious music, the type of music parents pay fortunes to have taught
to their children, and whose concert tickets cost $ 100 and up.

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 Combining aspects of Western classical and traditional Korean is
much of the music that is categorized as new/creative Korean music
(ch'angjak kugak or, more rarely, sin kugak). This is also "Korean,"11 but
perhaps not "the most Korean"—even if every stage in its production and
consumption involves Korean people and Korean musical elements. The
composers are Korean, players are Korean, instruments are indigenous
Korean (whether old or remodeled Ikaeryang), vocal styles are distinctively
Korean, audiences are Korean. Ch'angjak kugak composer Yi Kón-yong
reflects on issues of identity in relation to this genre of music by invoking
the Korean concept of sint'oburi, the primordial rootedness of the Korean
"body" to the Korean "land" or "soil." Asking first whether one can even
apply this concept to music, he suggests that one can, based on the feel
ings evoked and even the melodic contours that somehow can capture the
shapes—from rolling hills to jagged mountains—of the Korean country
side.12 While he sees traditional kugak as possessing this quality across
the board, he finds it in only some ch 'angjak kugak pieces and offers ten
examples (by himself and other composers), some of which have sint'oburi
despite the use of Western major scale and harmony.13
We should note that there has been very little attempt to make
ch'angjak kugak appeal to foreigners, no international marketing strategies,
and so forth. If this music is "less Korean" than traditional kugak, it is
attributable to the perceivably Western elements, from the very idea of
a composer, distinct from the performers, writing out the parts for each
instrument and voice in full (regardless of what type of notation is used,
though almost always Western staff notation), the appearance of a conduc
tor on a stage, a featured soloist greeted and seated (in front of the string
section, to the conductor's left) in the same manner we are accustomed to
see (and Koreans are accustomed to see) in the Western concert hall.
Moreover, on instruments not originally intended to play in homophonic
and polyphonic textures (see note 10), based on functional harmony,
ch'angjak kugak is composed with these obviously Western-derived musical
conventions. Music critic and scholar Lee So-Young (Yi So-yong) differ
entiates ch'angjak kugak from other hybrid forms in Korea, such as fusion,
on the basis of the prominent role of the composer in producing a score
that subsequently serves not merely as a basis for performance, but as an
authoritative set of directions to the performers that severely limits the
individual interpretive input of the performers.14
What, now, of Korean fusion music (p'yujôn kugak)? Like ch'angjak
kugak, this is "Korean," yes, or "partially Korean." But the term fusion,
as mentioned earlier, draws attention to the cultural mix, rather than to

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the "creative" or "new" of ch'angjak or sin kugak. In fusion, the musicians
and the instruments are sometimes entirely Korean, but there is always an
element that is not—that's why it is most often labeled as fusion (though
some Koreans include "fusion" music under the wider umbrella of ch 'angjak
kugak). The term fusion, however, does not normally refer to mixes of
different genres of traditional kugak. While some might argue for seeing
such a mix as a kind of fusion or hybridity—and Yun Chung-Kang did
so in describing the new group of seven young musicians known as
Pulsech'ul15-—I would argue here, as I have elsewhere, that we retain
some analytical meaning for the word hybridity if we use it to refer to
mixture of elements that have spmng from different aesthetic and/or
semiotic worlds.16 The notion of fusion music, then, suggests ambiguity
from various perspectives, endearing it to some, making it repugnant to
others.

And, importantly, it is also a dynamic category, subject to reinterpre

tation. What is obviously fusion now, if it persists, becomes a stabilized
norm, a genre or set of genres which can later be subject to further hy
bridizing processes. What changes is not so much the sound, but people's
conception of a particular piece or performance as music that combines
disparate elements or music that presents a familiar coherence, a musical
integrity.
One key and troubling point with regard to perceptions of identity
is the difference between "Korean" and "distinctively Korean music"
("taep'yojogin Han'guk ümak") with respect to musical sound, musical
repertoire, and the like. "Korean" could simply mean "not identifiable as
belonging primarily to another country or culture," whereas "distinctively
Korean" would seem to require maximal difference from other cultures.
But do Koreans want to be maximally different from other people, or
should they? Does their culture, in order to be meaningful and valuable,
need to be maximally different from that of other peoples? I think most
Koreans would answer "no." It seems one can either subscribe to a more
or less stable conception of Korean cultural identity and interpret the
current cultural environment as culturally complex—a variegated mix of
Korean and non-Korean/foreign—or subscribe to a dynamic and more
inclusive conception of Korean cultural identity that, while not redefining
every foreign import as automatically Korean once it arrives, views contem
porary Korean culture as absorbing, juxtaposing, and blending products
and forms of expression that have originated elsewhere.
In some parts of the world, hybridity feeds into some notions of
national identity, for example, the melting pot in the United States (how
ever contestable this concept), the Bhinneka Tunggal Ika in Indonesia

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(literally "Many Join as One"), Iwabuchi's "strategic hybridism" in Japan
(foreign elements subsumed into an immutable Japanese core, from
Chinese-derived calligraphy to American-derived hip-hop).17 No matter
how diverse, official discourse on national identity must emphasize unity
(over or from) diversity. This is not such an issue in Korea, whose people
are racially and linguistically quite homogeneous, regional preferences in
food, dialect, and artistic expression notwithstanding. In this way, it is
comparable to Japan, although the Ainu of Hokkaido, a distinct minority,
are "more different" from mainstream Japanese in their traditional culture, I
think it is safe to say, than Cheju islanders are from mainstream (mainland)
Koreans. What I am proposing in this essay is that Korean identity, not
only in music, but in other expressive forms, be seen as increasingly
hybrid (or recognizably culturally mixed), and that particular elements of
artistic style in music that outsiders and discerning insiders might readily
identify as foreign influence can retain that foreignness at the same time
that they can be seen to have settled into Korea so deeply as to be appro
priately considered "Korean" now. For others, the foreignness of some
foreign-derived elements may simply not be recognized as such. And in
cases where one may learn about the foreign origins of these elements,
one's conception of Koreanness can readily change.18

Korean Fusion Music—What's being Fused?

"Fusion kugak" is a contested category. Some people apply the term

broadly, to include any cultural mix, including cb'angjak kugak. Others,
such as Lee So-Young,19 distinguish fusion from ch'angjak kugak by
nature of (1) the popular, rather than academic, appeal of fusion—its
accessibility—and (2) the (re)uniting of composer and performer (normally
separate in ch'angjak kugak). With historical antecedents back to the hybrid
sin minyo of the Japanese period, the group Seulgidoong (Sülgidung),
founded in 1985, is often named as the first "fusion" group in Korea.
With many changes in membership over the years, some original members
founding their own musical groups, Seulgidoong combined Korean and
Western popular instruments and has played a repertory ranging from
Korean folk songs ("Kunbam T'aryông" and, of course, "Arirang") to
Western hits (e.g., "La Bamba"), combining Korean changdan rhythms,
distinctive vibrato, raspy timbres, with simple harmonies on keyboard
and guitars. Many of the pieces they have played have been composed
by group-leader Lee Jun-ho, also a ch'angjak kugak composer, but he is a
performing member of the group (most often playing sogüm, bamboo

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flute). It would seem rather uncontroversial to call this group and its
music "fusion."
One of the spin-offs, a percussion quartet known as Puri (P'uri),
founded in the early 1990s by former Seulgidoong member (and now com
position professor) Won II, eschewed labels such as fusion, preferring Puri
to be described as a creative percussion (ch'angjak t'a-ak) group. More re
cendy, several groups of kayagüm performers have formed groups that play
a variety of music, but gain their greatest popularity with arrangements of
Western classical and popular tunes: the Sagye quartet, whose repertory in
cludes a Bach Sinfonía; and now most famously the Sookmyung Gayageum
[Sungmyông Kayagüm] Orchestra, playing such classics as Vivaldi's Four
Seasons, Pachelbel's Canon in D, and the Beatles's "Hey Jude" and "I
Wanna Hold Your Hand." Some consider performances of these pieces
by Sagye and the Sookmyung group to be fusion music, since the West
ern melodies and harmonies are "fused" with the timbre of the kayagüm.
In CD stores (the few that still remain in Seoul), one finds Sagye and
Sookmyung CDs in the same section as Seulgidoong and other fusion
groups—sometimes not labeled separately from the general "Kugak " label,
sometimes included with all the other "Ch'angjak Kugak" CDs, but re
cendy, at least at Synnara, in a separate section labeled "Fusion." Even
though Sookmyung Gayageum Ensemble director Prof. Song Hye-jin con
ceives of the Beatles songs and classical pieces they perform as "Western
music arranged for kayagüm' and not Korean fusion music, the recording
industry would not place these in the Western pop or the Western classical
bins, but instead in the Kugak area and, if present, the Kugak Fusion
section.

In her dissertation, Hilary Finchum-Sung reports that many of the

Koreans she interviewed contend that a traditional Korean theme is inher
ently present when a piece utilizes the instruments of the classical Korean
repertory. The very timbre of such an instrument represents a sound that
is raspy and distinct from other, non-Korean instruments. In other words,
the very sound of the instrument itself defines "Koreanness" according to
general standards of Korean traditional aesthetics.20
In fact, the mere use of Korean instruments—their look on stage and
their timbre, even when that timbre is modified to minimize the raspy
sounds (as in /wegrwz/Korean fiddle playing) and the vibrato (as in
kayagüm, other zithers, and bamboo flutes)—is enough for most contem
porary Koreans to identify the music as "Korean" or, at least, as "Korean
fusion." In a recent Korean television show, Star King, host Kang Ho
dong (a former ssirum wrestling champion) introduces a group of musi
cians as "the Fusion Kugak group K'at'a," playing futuristic electronic

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instruments, including a keyboard activated by waving one's arms (or feet)
near the keyboard, without physically touching it, and a "body drum"
worn as a kind of sack on the body. Offering a repertory of contemporary
Korean pop and Western standards, the group nevertheless was identified
as a "fusion kugak" group because it included the four percussion instru
ments now routinely identified as samulnori (puk and changgu drums,
ching and kkivaenggwari gongs).
We might see this group on the futuristic fringe, or perhaps just as
an amusing anomaly. Another unusual trend, though not so futuristic or
amusing, is the mixing of rock and kugak, which ranges from the soft,
cabaret style of former Hongdae club singer and kayagüm player Jeong
Min-A (Chóng Min-a) (Western-style singing, with Korean instruments)
to the remarkable combination of heavy metal with p'ansori-style singing of
Gost Wind21 (Western rock instruments with Korean vocal style and flute).
Sagye's and Sookmyung Orchestra's Western and pop music, as
mentioned above, may not be considered "fusion" music by some, but
it is just that in some Korean conceptions, as it does represent a mix.
Stylistically this part of their repertory, of course, uses the musical lan
guage (harmony, scales, dynamics, and so on) of Western music and
is not terribly different from the New Age kinds of music composed or
arranged (in Korea, by Koreans) for mixed instrumentation, in which
one traditional Korean melodic instrument—most prominently haegüm
or daegüm—is featured with accompaniment by keyboard synthesizer
or guitar, as in some of the music of Ccotbyel (Yi Kkot-byôl), Jeong
Soo-Nyun (Chông Su-nyon), Kim Aera, Kang Eunil (Kang Un-il), and
other haegüm players, as well as Won Jang-Hyeon (Won Chang-hyôn)
and Kim Young-Dong (Kim Yông-dong) taegüm.
Another aspect of the overall fusion picture, and an important one,
is the combination of kugak, or kugak instruments, with various styles
of jazz. Most famously, of course, we can point to Kim Duk-soo (Kim
Dôk-su)'s SamulNori and their work over more than a decade with the
European jazz group Red Sun, whose music evolved from rather obvious
juxtaposition of what we might call "non-fused" elements to pieces that
more truly fuse and blend these contrasting but somewhat compatible
musics. Finchum-Sung notes that

Young performers and composers, in search of ways to make kugak more acces
sible and interesting to themselves and to the world, look to combinations of
kugak and jazz as a way to develop kugak's inherent characteristics. [One com
poser said] that his ideal was to meld jazz and kugak. He believed this melding
to be the future direction of Korean music and the best way to keep kugak an
active part of Korean culture.22

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 Still other music often identified as "fusion" falls under what Lee So
Young23 and some of the musicians who perform it are calling "avant
garde fusion": the trio known as Sang Sang (literally "Imagination"),
who rely heavily on improvisation, combining shaman-based sinawi,
free-jazz, and some elements of Western avant-garde; and the vocal and
instrumental ensemble known as Jeongga Akhoe (Chóngga Akhoe) (liter
ally "Love for Song Music Group"), who combine classical, court singing
and playing styles with Western harmonies (sometimes using acoustic
Western instruments, such as guitar and violins). In sum, there would
seem to be almost no musical elements or genre that cannot potentially
be combined to create "fusion music."

What Fusion Music "Does": Discourses of Nationalism, Globalism,

Modernity, and Commercialism

What, then, does fusion music "do"? What is its cultural work? From CD
liner notes and my own interviews with musicians who play fusion music,
it is clear that fusion music figures, sometimes centrally, in a range of
cultural discourses. It is intended to provide pleasant listening experiences,
to earn money for its performers, but also to introduce Koreans to their
own musical heritage (gently seducing them away from pop music to an
appreciation of kugak), to promote Korea and Korea's "culture" overseas,
and more.

Some fusion music simply tries to appeal to listeners by evoking

Koreanness, regardless of musical value or originality. This from the CD
liner notes for the album Korean Rd. by the group Gost Wind, whose
music combines heavy metal with kugak:

How many musicians have been just talking about 'the combination/union of
kugak and Western music' and wasting so many sounds/notes as they only
try to promote their music by appealing to (Koreans') patriotism! But, it is an
inevitable result that the music lovers who had experienced such superficial
tricks came to the conclusion that 'kugak and Western music can never be com
bined/fused' based on those meaningless musical pieces and looked at them
with skeptical eyes. Of course, this does not apply to every musician who has
made such an attempt, but to those 'fake' musicians who just tried to stimulate
people's curiosity with mere mish-mash arrangements instead of creating real
• 74
music.

Particular musicians and groups are not named, of course, bu

the group Gost Wind views itself as making aesthetically suc
of heavy metal and kugak. What is the target audience fo

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Though the explanatory liner notes are only given in Korean, all the song
titles are English, and written in English, rather than phonetic han'gul.
Still, it seems that this album is aimed primarily at Korean listeners, many
of whom are accustomed to English-language titles and may find them
appropriate and consistent with the heavy-metal musical style that pre
dominates on all tracks.
In the liner notes to a CD titled Sounds of Korea, Today (produced
and distributed by the Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism), Yi
Sungchun (Yi Song-ch'on; the late professor of composition at Seoul
National University) describes the varied contents of the album (which
includes kugak and fusion) as responses to the degradation of traditional
music during the Japanese colonial period and onslaught of Westerniza
tion after independence. He says:

The 80s brought on a new surge of young musicians whose goal was to close the
gap [between Korean tradition and the Westernization/modernization]. Out
came pop-style traditional songs and ensemble-style music more suitable for
the masses. The simpler easy-listening style became a new genre of music suc
cessful in reaching the everyday listeners. This CD is the [that/this] very genre
of music. It is music that does not require deep understanding of theory or
history of music.25

Eight years later, the same ministry released a CD presenting various

groups who had participated in what was billed as the "21C Korean
Music Project" for the "promotion of newly composed Korean traditional
music." The liner notes contain something like a manifesto for the music
the ministry is promoting on this CD (and continues to promote with
lavish funding for such events as the Miriade Wave Festival organized by
komun'go player, avant-garde fusion musician, and Sang-Sang member
Heo Yoon-Jeong [Hô Yun-jóng], at the Pukch'on Ch'angwu theater).

The purposes of the project are to present a new vision of Korean music and to
promote modernization and popularization of traditional music and to cultivate
the gifted musicians and creative new compositions of Kugak. The project was
the first step for encouraging the creative initiative of young musicians and for a
new possibility of future Korean Music. The most important mission of the
21st Korean traditional music [project] is to accomplish two different tasks; to
preserve a unique cultural identity of traditional music as well as to adapt itself
to a new environment of the times through constant self-evolution Diverse
attempts should be carried out in order to produce a number of great music
pieces that will attract the love of Korean people and, even more, of worldwide
people and then they will remain as the masterpieces of music throughout
history.26

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Here we encounter the dual goals of appealing to Korean audiences who
do not (yet) appreciate kugak and appealing to listeners in other countries.
A similar discourse is evident among many fusion musicians and appears
on many CD liner notes, for example the popular percussion-based fusion
group Gong Myoung (Kong Myông), who bill themselves on their third
album as "A Global Music Group from Korea":

Based on the lyricism and rhythm of traditional Korean music [, the] group
"Gong Myoung" attempt to compose their own musical language which various
kinds of people including Korean as well as other countries' people can easily
feel and enjoy. They freely play and harmonize more than 30 musical instru
ments Korean and other countries' percussion & wind instruments ... in order
to express their unlimited passion for the music and show diverse attractiveness
of Korean music. Based on this[,] music of Korea meets the music of the
world.27

The fusion group Vinalog, which began as basically a jazz fusion group
with a few kugak instruments added, professes a lack of concern over how
they are categorized, stressing instead the cultural/aesthetic communication
in their music. From their 2005 album, titled (tellingly) Two Worlds, the
notes claim:

Whatever we are called is fine. World music, fusion, or ch'angjak kugak, cross
over ... these sound good and it is excellent if our story circles/hovers in the

Again, the stated aim of the music is to be able to communicate, to

"converse."

The concern about communication and appreciation has been evident

for some time. In an article titled "Taking Traditional Music into the
Future," Pusan Municipal Classical Orchestra director and Korean Music
Research Institute director Kim Yong-Man wrote in 1993: .. continued
experimentation is necessary. Music originally created for practical pur
poses should be transformed into music for appreciation if the original
purposes no longer apply."29

Concluding Observations and Questions

Observing the present and looking to the future, I find what Nathan
Hesselink wrote a decade ago about Korean "folk" music to be applicable
also to fusion music:

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 Korean folk music will be defined more by its essence—a process in motion—
than by title or genre. It will not be bound by instrumentation, method of
transmission, an established canon, a particular socioeconomic class, level of
education, or even manner in which it is perceived. Korean folk music will,
however, be understood as musical activity that hails from a collective folk
past, yet strives for or is open to change, embracing the here and now.30

While some scholars and musicians, along with other more conserva
tive Koreans, argue for preservation and understand Korean identity and
what can properly be called Korean music to be not only firmly rooted in
the past, but also resistant to change, others have urged a more inclusive
and dynamic conception. As Keith Howard observes,

Mediation between the two poles, one nationalistic/conservative/Korean and

the other international/progressive/Korean, came in a number of articles by the
academic critic Lee Kang Sook [Yi Kang-suk] (1977, 1980) and the composer
critic Yi Kón-yong (1987). These argued for Korean identity to be imposed in
all musical creation, by establishing a musical democracy that would use and
unify all musics as a Korean product. Essentially, this vision of democracy blurs
the boundaries between Western music and Korean music and between Korean
court and folk music.31

Here, of course, Howard does what we all are prone to do without con
stant vigilance to the contrary—he uses the term "Korean music" to refer
to the traditional styles and repertory, that which does not exhibit Western
influence. Clearly this is the conceptual view shared by most scholars and
more conservative musicians in Korea, but this view is not shared by all
and is in transition as cultural realities, including musical practice, are in
transition.

Some current thinking on Korean cultural identity in music is begin

ning to acknowledge the appropriateness of at least some forms of fusion
music to represent Korea. At an international exposition and conference
held by the Internadonal Council of Museums (ICOM) in Seoul in 2004,
considering practices and strategies for cultural representation for the twenty
first century under the rubric "Museums and Intangible Heritage," the
Korean hosts offered performance events, featuring the most prestigious tradi
tional performers—officially designated cultural treasures (in'gan munhwajae)
and members of the Court Music Department (Chóng'akdan) at the
National Kugak Center—but excluding current fusion music groups.32
Yet for the final presentation, these musicians joined with fusion musicians
in a concert titled "Cultural Heritage Meets the Digital" (Munhwa Yusan
kwa Tijit'ôl ici Mannam), in a calculated effort to show how Korean music
can adopt to the globalizing twenty-first century.33 Also looking to the

R. Anderson Sutton "Fusion" and Questions of Korean Cultural Identity in Music 19

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future, Kim Jeong-soo (Kim Chong-su), president of the Society for New
Composition in Korean Traditional Music, is quoted in Finchum-Sung as
saying:

If today's Korean music should be something that people can relate to and
enjoy, what is that music? I believe it should include all musical instruments,
methods and sounds from the East and from the West. It should contain every
thing and mix well together. It should be a comprehensive music. Some people
think this is fusion and some people think it is a joke, but I believe if we want
to put music on a global scale using only traditional musical methods, then it
can never be globalized.34

Indeed, it would seem some form of combination of traditional Korean

with Western elements is inevitable and thoroughly appropriate in relation
ship to contemporary cultural identity in Korea. Drawing on the thoughts
of Bak Sangmee (Pak Sang-mi), Finchum Sung writes:

For the new generation (sin saedae) (Bak 1997:157) in South Korea, acceptance
of the western without losing one's cultural identity appears to be a reasonable
concept. Identified as 'a Korean dilemma, [the desire] to be, simultaneously,
nationalistic and global' (Bak 1997:137), the new generation was born and has
been raised in a culture containing both Korean and Western elements. What
the older generation of South Koreans may clearly identify as a Western product,
the younger generation might identify as a product, though possibly Western in
origin, which has become Korean through indigenous use over time.35

Fusion music, in all of its various forms, comes under criticism from
many directions. Those who subscribe to notions of cultural purity deni
grate fusion as impure, as inauthentic. Those who value music for its
noble and uplifting values denigrate fusion as crass and commercial.
Those who value musical sophistication and originality denigrate fusion
as cliché, formulaic, easy-listening. Yet new groups are forming con
stantly, appearing in festivals, producing and releasing music on CDs
and other formats. As a foreign observer, and one who finds some of the
music predictable, boring, naïve, gimmicky, I am reluctant to condemn
any of it, for it seems to me that all the musicians involved in fusion are
responding to the cultural circumstances in which they are situated—
circumstances characterized by cultures in contact, with cultural and artistic
power and meaning constantly being negotiated. I would concur with
Simon Frith when he suggests that a musical piece or performance is not
a mere "reflection" of the people who create and consume it, but "produces
them," making music an active agent in identity. In Frith's words, music
"creates and constructs an experience—a musical experience, an aesthetic

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experience—that we can only make sense of by taking on both a subjective
and a collective identity."36 Fusion music, it would seem, is doing just
that—denying neither the roots Koreans have in their cultural past, nor
their position in the international/globalized cultural present. In this light,
I do not see how it can be possible any longer to ignore or erase fusion
music, no matter how naïve some of it may seem, in the discourse on
Korean music and Korean cultural identity. Much of the fusion music
that has been produced in the last twenty-five years may well be forgotten,
discarded as ephemeral steps in an ongoing journey. But the impetus
to pursue these kinds of creative experiments will continue to produce
new musical works and, no less importantly, to "produce" (à la Frith)
new Koreans.

Notes

1. Myong-hee Han, "What Makes Korean Music Different? Its Roots and
Branches," Koreana, 8, no. 3 (1994): 7.
2. Bang-song Song, Korean Music: Historical and Other Aspects (Seoul: Jimoondang,
2000), 37.
3. Hyun-Kyung Chae, "Ch'angjak Kugak: Making Korean Music Korean" (Ph.D.
diss., Univ. of Michigan, 1996), 190.
4. Timothy Rice, "Disciplining Ethnomusicology: A Call for a New Approach,"
Ethnomusicology, 54, no. 2 (2010): 320.
5. Stuart Hall, "Introduction: Who Needs 'Identity'?" in Questions of Cultural
Identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (London: Sage, 1996), 1-17.
6. Hall, "Introduction: Who Needs 'Identity'?," 6.
7. Simon Frith, "Music and Identity," in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart
Hall and Paul du Gay (London: Sage, 1996), 109.
8. Cliffort Geertz, "Art as a Cultural System," in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in
Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 118.
9. In probing this question in what follows, it is not my intention to search for
an essential "Koreanness"—either in the abstract or within any musical practice, though
discourse contributing to such an inevitably constructed notion is plentiful, for example,
Han, "What Makes Korean Music Different?"; Byong Won Lee, Style and Esthetic in
Korean Traditional Music (Seoul: National Center for the Korean Traditional Performing
Arts, 1997). Beyond the realm of music, Cho Hae-Joang has noted that Korean scholars in
recent decades have mostly avoided or critiqued such essentialism, even as they acknowl
edge its strong role in resisting colonialism in the early twentieth century and in strengthen
ing nationalism in the face of globalization in the late twentieth century, as "the business
sector and the government are anxious to have guidelines for representing South Korea."

R. Anderson Sutton "Fusion" and Questions of Korean Cultural Identity in Music 21

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Hae-Joang Cho, "Constructing and Deconstructing 'Koreanness,'" in Making Majorities:
Constituting the Nation in Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the United
States, ed. Dru C. Gladney (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1998), 76. Among recent
publications dedicated to determining such guidelines on the issue of Korean cultural
identity, one of the most extended discussions can be found in Munhwa chôngch'esông
hwangnibül wihan chôngch 'aek pangan yon 'gu [Policy planning research for the establish
ment of cultural identity], a book written by a team of scholars and government officials
headed by Yang Kon-yol and commissioned specifically to address the representation of
Korean culture in the rapidly globalizing twenty-first century, for Koreans and non
Koreans as well: Kôn-yôl Yang et al., Munhwa chôngch'esônghwangnibül wihan chôngch'aek
pangan yôn'gu (Seoul: Han'guk Munhwa Chôngch'aek Kaebalwôn, 2002). Several of the
articles discuss music (popular and traditional) and their importance to Korean identity
(chôngch'esông), but fusion music is mentioned only once (p. 243, footnote 165) as a con
temporary phenomenon that "is increasingly diversifying" (kalsurok tayanghwa toego itta).
10. Microtonal ornamentation involves tonal motion between a basic tone and

others only slightly higher or lower in pitch. Unlike the homophonic and polyphonic
textures of most Western art music (as well as Western-influenced popular music world
wide), in which different tones heard simultaneously produce harmonic entities that
listeners recognize as "chords," heterophonic texture involves the simultaneous perfor
mance of variants of a single melody or melodic core. Homophonic texture features one
melody supported by chords, whereas polyphonic texture consists of multiple, indepen
dent melodies, heard simultaneously (e.g., the "counterpoint" or contrapuntal polyphony
of Bach). Breath rhythm involves the slight, but unmeasured lengthening of some beats
in the unfolding of a musical phrase and is typical of the slower sections in Korean court
music.

11. See Chae, "Ch'angjak Kugak: Making Korean Music Korean," passim.
12. Kón-yong Yi, Na üi ümagül chik'yô ponün olguldül [People/faces looking at
my music] (Seoul: Minjok Ümak Yôn'guhoe, 2005), 136. The contours of landscape,
the shapes of mountains and valleys, also figure into a sense of Korean identity in the
visual arts, especially painting, as noted even in the policy-oriented study mentioned above
in note 9. See in particular the essay "Han'guk üi mi wayesul"[Korean beauty and art], in
Munhwa chôngch'esông hwangnibül wihan chôngch'aek pangan yôn'gu, 138-89, esp. p. 143.
13. Kôn-yong Yi, Na üi ümagül chik'yô ponün olguldül, 138-49.
14. So-Young Lee, "Reading New Music in the Age of Fusion Culture," Tongyang
ümak, 25 (2003): 189-226; So-Young Lee, Han'guk ümak üi naemyônhwadoen Orient'al
lijürnül nômôsô [Getting beyond internalized Orientalism in Korean music] (Seoul:
Minsokwon, 2005); So-Young Lee, Saengjon kwa chayu [Survival and freedom] (Seoul:
Minjok Umak Yôn'guhoe, 2005).
15. Chung-Kang Yun, "City of Pungryu that Bulsechul is going to create," in liner
notes to Bulsechul: 2008 Miriade Wave Concert Live Album (Seoul: Bukchon Changwoo
Theater, ADCD 506, 2009).

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 16. See R. Anderson Sutton, "Gamelan Encounters with Western Music in Indonesia:

Hybridity/Hybridism," Journal of Popular Music Studies, 22, no. 2 (2010): 180-84. Ad

mittedly, one could see the semiotic world of royal shrine music (chongmyo cherye-ak) and
regional folk song (e.g., Kyonggi minyo) as different aesthetic and even different semiotic
worlds, but nowadays they may be presented on the same stage, in the same performance
(although not simultaneously!) as kugakltraditional Korean music.
17. Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Trans
nationalism (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2002), 53.
18. Elsewhere in my research, in Indonesia and Hawai'i, I have seen instruments,
for example, that have been introduced long ago and used for such a long period of time
(centuries, in some cases) that they do not seem the slightest bit foreign to most of the
people who hear them and play them: guitar in Indonesia's kroncong music, ukulele in
Hawaiian music—both of European origin; or gambus/ud (lute) in Indonesia's qasidah
and gambus music—of Middle Eastern/Arabian origin.
19. So-Young Lee, "Reading New Music in the Age of Fusion Culture"; So-Young
Lee, Saengjon kwa chayu.
20. Hilary Finchum-Sung, " Uri Saenghwal Umak: Music, Discourse, and Identity
in South Korea" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana Univ., 2002), 61.
21. The spelling "Gost" appears consistently on their albums in roman letters, likely
an unintentional misspelling of the English word Ghost.
22. Finchum-Sung, "Uri Saenghwal Ümak," 82.
23. So-Young Lee, "Reading New Music in the Age of Fusion Culture."
24. Gost Wind, liner notes to CD Korean Rd. (Seoul: Fire bird, Universal Music,
DK-0503, 2006), translated from the Korean.
25. Sunchung Yi, liner notes to CD Sounds of Korea, Today (Seoul: Ministry of
Culture and Tourism, 1999).
26. Hyeong-Seon Ryoo, "Releasing a New Record," in liner notes to CD 21C
Korean Music Project: Promotion of newly-composed Korean traditional music (Seoul: Ministry
of Culture and Tourism, with Kugak Broadcasting System, CD DU7365, 2007).
27. Gong Myoung, liner notes to CD Deep Sea (Gong Myoung Entertainment,
Z-KTL-7139, 2007).
28. Vinalog, Liner notes to CD Two Worlds (Seoul: Synnara Media, VLD-001,
2005), translated from the Korean.
29. Yong-Man Kim, "Taking Traditional Music into the Future," Koreana, 7, no. 4
(1994): 20.
30. Nathan Hesselink, "Introduction," in Contemporary Directions: Korean Folk
Music Engaging the Twentieth Century and Beyond, ed. Nathan Hesselink (Berkeley:
Institute of East Asian Studies, Univ. of California, 2001), 3.

31. Keith Howard, "Korean Folk Songs for a Contemporary World," in Contem
porary Directions: Korean Folk Music Engaging the Twentieth Century and Beyond, ed. Nathan
Hesselink (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, Univ. of California, 2001), 166.

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 32. ICOM has existed since 1948, but the meeting in Seoul in 2004 was the
first ICOM meeting in Asia. The event is described and discussed in some detail by
Kang in his book on hallyu (the Korean Wave). See Ch'ól-Kün Kang, Hallyu iyagi
(Hallyu üi künwoneso Miraekkaji) [The Korean wave story (from the Korean wave's origins
to its fixture)] (Yiche [Yich'ae] Press, 2006), 230-75.
33. Kang, Hallyu iyagi, 241.
34. Finchum-Sung, "Uri Saenghwal Umak," 102, from interview with Kim Jeong-soo,
May 29, 2001.
35. Finchum-Sung, "Uri Saenghwal Umak," 135-36, referring to Sangmee Bak,
"McDonald's in Seoul: Food Choices, Identity, and Nationalism," in Golden Arches East:
McDonald's in East Asia, ed. James L. Watson (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997),
136-60.

36. Frith, "Music and Identity," 109.

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