Joseon pop set to be Korea's next cultural export

Vocalist Lee Hee-moon, third from right, and other members of Korean band SsingSsing that fuses Korean folk music with genres like glam rock, disco and psychedelic rock pose with Bob Boilen, right, host of NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts, and staff of the program in this 2017 photo. SsingSsing was disbanded years later. Courtesy of Shawn Choi

This article is the first in a three-part series on "Joseon pop." ― ED.

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Since the 1960s, there has been a group of concerned musicians who have been serious about finding a breakthrough for gugak, Korea's centuries-old traditional music styles, to make it more appealing to music fans.

Their ceaseless efforts to modernize traditional music and to entice listeners in the local music scene, which has been dominated by contemporary music, finally materialized in the mid-2010s, five decades later, with the advent of what is being called "Joseon pop."

"Joseon" is the name of the dynastic kingdom of Korea that existed from 1392 to 1897, when it was replaced by the Korean Empire during the country's turbulent late 19th century history.

Putting together two very different concepts ― "Joseon" and "pop" ― the term coined both by industry experts as well as the media implies a "meeting of old and new," and the unique combination creates an irresistibly hip, new form of music.

Joseon pop encompasses all types of music performed by Korean fusion bands that are based on traditional music but creatively adopt contemporary elements from various genres, including rock, electronic music and hip-hop.

A prime example of a Joseon pop band is Leenalchi, a seven-member band that rose to stardom after it participated in a promotional tourism video series, titled "Feel the Rhythm of Korea," which became a sensational hit with billions of views. Leenalchi's music is based on pansori ―- a traditional form of narrative music characterized by a vocalist's expressive singing and stylized speech accompanied by a drummer ― and its songs include folk narratives told through trendy contemporary music.

"Gugak musicians have been wrestling for a long time with the idea of how they might make their music interactive," said Kim Hee-sun, a Kookmin University professor who received her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh. "There was a consensus among musicians, as well as among the public, that gugak was obsolete ― in other words, so old-fashioned that it was like cultural heritage that has remained the same for centuries and therefore had nothing to share in common with contemporary listeners. This negative perception of gugak had to be changed to make it into riveting pop music and broaden its fanbase."

Over the past decades, numerous groups had formed under the motto of popularizing traditional music, but most of their musical experiments failed to grab the public's attention.

Slowly and gradually, however, gugak musicians' continued efforts began to bear fruit one after the other with the moderate success of some musicians. Groups like Black String, SsingSsing and Jambinai are three of the bands drawing from Korean music traditions that have received critical acclaim from world music experts for their masterful combination of traditional and contemporary music elements.

SsingSsing / Korea Times file

Having debuted in the 2011 London Jazz Festival, Black String, which consists of four top performers in the fields of gugak and jazz, signed with the renowned European record label ACT Music, and has released two albums, "Mask Dance" and "Karma."

With "Mask Dance," the quartet won the award in the Asia-Pacific category of the annual Songlines Music Awards, hosted by the top-notch world music magazine of the same name.

Kim said that Black String's "saga" in recent years is something akin to a game-changing event in the movement to modernize gugak.

"It's something," she said. "Once a music band releases an album in collaboration with a world-class record label such as ACT Music, it embarks on a world tour. So, with Black String, Korea came to have a band that is touring other parts of the world with their repertoire based on Korean traditional music."

There is an intriguing aspect concerning the rise of Joseon pop bands: their careers took off first overseas and their overseas success influenced their footing in the local music scene.

SsingSsing, a now disbanded, six-member fusion band, for example, enjoyed rare popularity at home after its 2017 performance on NPR's "Tiny Desk" concert program went viral. Following the U.S. media-hosted show, tickets for their concert at a club in Seoul sold out within minutes, which was unprecedented. SsingSsing's vocalist Lee Hee-moon said later in a media interview that he was stunned at the news that the tickets for his band's concert had sold out immediately. The venue, which had some 150 seats, was overcrowded, as some 200 people showed up to see their performance, he added.

Compared to SsingSsing's instant stardom among local music fans after the NPR concert, Black String's success, albeit moderate, has been building for years.

Kye Meong-guk, a festival director and producer who managed the four-member band, started from scratch.

"We were in a 'do or die' situation," he said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. According to him, the "Black String project" began in 2008 when he was traveling back and forth between Seoul and London to work on a collaboration between Korean and British jazz musicians. It was a two-year-long, state-sponsored project. He received research funding support from the Korean Arts Management Service (KAMS), under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

"Despite the difficulties initially, I think it was relatively easier for me to launch Black String in London because I was and still am a festival organizer in Korea; I had an extensive network with festival directors and musicians overseas, and thus was in a position to influence the selection of lineups of musicians to perform on those stages," he said.

Kye, better known as Victor Kye among overseas world music experts, has been serving as artistic director of the Jarasum International Jazz Festival held every year in Gapyeong County, northeast of Seoul.

Over the past decade since Black String's debut, he said he felt that there have been meaningful changes in overseas fans' reactions to Korean fusion bands.

"Music fans around the world want to see Korean musicians, and festival organizers try hard to include Korean musicians in stage lineups," he said. "I heard a lot from overseas world music experts that Korean traditional bands' music is rare, in that it is quite 'Asian' but also contemporary. This may explain why Korean musicians have received lots of calls from festival organizers in the United States and Europe to perform on their stages."

Among others, professor Kim said that the KAMS-sponsored program, "Journey to Korean Music," played a key role in globalizing Korean traditional music, as world music experts and musicians overseas were able to discover talented Korean musicians through the program.

"Overseas festival directors, musicians and journalists covering world music have been invited to Korea annually, and they saw Korean gugak musicians and their performances in person," she said. According to KAMS, over 160 experts have participated in "Journey to Korean Music" since the program was launched in 2008.

Patrick de Groote, artistic director for the Sfinks world music festival / Courtesy of Brecht Van Maele

Patrick de Groote, the artistic director for the Sfinks world music festival held annually in Belgium, said he was "amazed" by the high quality of Korean traditional musicians.

"There is uniqueness in Korean sounds and aesthetics that is very distinct and easily identifiable. When this uniqueness manages to combine with a universal approach, it makes them stand out," he said in an email interview with The Korea Times.

De Groote has invited Korean musicians to the Belgian festival for the past 15 years, saying that they are well-received by local festivalgoers.

In Korea, "Joseon pop" has been used to refer to these music acts incorporating gugak. Outside the country, Korean musicians involved in fusion music are labeled in various different ways: Some call them "world music bands," while some dub them "K-folk pop bands" or "Korean global artists." Those who are familiar with Korean culture refer to them as "gugak bands."

Their presence in U.S. and European markets has been visible, thanks to the rise of world music. World music has had a stronger presence since the 2000s, especially in the United States and Europe. Festivals and various other types of platforms, in which musicians from around the world can showcase their music, have been created and have thrived with increasing numbers of festivalgoers.

Four-member band Black String performs at BIMHUIS in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in October this year. Courtesy of Black String