TEMPTING TUNES: Interfaces of Sound and Narrative in Korean Culture
Transmedial narratology is not a new discipline in Korean Studies. We can, however, observe that many transmedial approaches rather focus on the verbal/textual in combination with visual media than with auditory media. This project sets out to explore interfaces of sound and narrative in Korean culture.
The research project TEMPTING TUNES draws attention to the interfaces of sound and narrative in Korean culture. It broadly investigates soundscapes of Korea’s past and present asking: how does sound impact narratives? How does sound influence the reception of narratives? The project has three research areas:
- TEMPTING TUNES investigates the role sounds play when learning Literary Chinese 漢文 in a Korean context. (Literary Chinese dominated written culture of Korea until ca. 1910.)
- TEMPTING TUNES analyses the role of displacement and disciplining institutions on the development and trajectory of Korean hip-hop (PhD project, Amos Farooqi).
- TEMPTING TUNES aims to understand the effect of religious sounds in contemporary South Korean popular culture.
The first workshop of TEMPTING TUNES took place in hybrid format on May 6-7, 2022.
CedarBough T. Saeji (Assistant Professor, Pusan National University) - online
“Building a K-Community: Idol Stars Challenging Foreign Fans to Learn Korean Traditions”
Young Kyun Oh (Associate Professor, Arizona State University)
“Fidelity and Performance—the Art of Vocalized Reading in Chosŏn Korea”
Si Nae Park (Associate Professor, Harvard University)
“The Allure of Vocalized Stories”
Antonio J. Domenech (Associate Professor, University of Malaga)
“The sounds of suffering and hope: Gwanseeum bosal’s (관세음보살 觀世音菩薩) tempting tunes”
Ross King (Professor, University of British Columbia)
“The discovery and celebration of Korean ideophones in colonial Korea: The role of the Chosŏnŏ Hakhoe and Yi T’aejun’s Munjang kanghwa”
Tim Tangherlini (Professor, Berkeley University of California)
“Buzzscape: Fuzzy classifiers for music, dance and sound”
Hee Seng Kye (Assistant Professor, Hanyang University) – online
“The Sound of Future Past: Demystifying the “Retromania” in 21st-Century Korea”
Dayton Lekner (Humboldt-Fellow, University Freiburg)/ Bo Ærenlund Sørensen (Assistant Professor, University of Copenhagen):
“Where sounds go to die in contemporary Chinese fiction”
Beata Switek (Assistant Professor, University of Copenhagen)
“The sound of a fish”
Amos Farooqi (PhD candidate, University of Copenhagen)
“Postcolonialism, Nationalism, and Race in Korean Hip-hop: An Analysis of BeWhy's "Naeui ddang" and Jay Park's "DNA Remix"”
Katherine In-Young Lee (Associate Professor, UCLA) - online
“Sonic Legacies of Faith-Based Humanitarianism: The World Vision Korean Orphan Choir”
Jina Kim (Associate Professor, University of Oregon)
“Resonance: From Radio to Podcast and P'ansori to Audio Comics”
Line Daugaard (MA students, University of Copenhagen)/ Barbara Wall (Associate Professor/Copenhagen)
“How to get the kids to sing: From kugyŏl to Konglish”
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The second workshop of TEMPTING TUNES took place on April 28-29, 2023. Stephen Epstein (Associate Professor, Asian Languages and Cultures Programme at Victoria University of Wellington) presented the documentary Us & Them: Korean Indie Rock in a K-Pop World (co-produced by Stephen Epstein & Timothy Tangherlini). Sol-i So (Bachelor in Vocal Music and Music Drama at "Chung-Ang University", Seoul, Korea; Bachelor in Composition at "Hochschule für Musik", Dresden, Germany; Master in New Music with focus on Singing at "Hochschule für Musik", Dresden, Germany and "Hochschule für Künste", Bern, Switzerland). Halym Kim (Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in Music Performance at "Rytmisk Musikkonservatorium", Copenhagen, Denmark). Sol-i Sol and Halym Kim develop new rhthms and melodies to sing Literary Sinitic in a Korean context. One core project of TEMPTING TUNES is to explore how singing 聲讀 can facilitate reading and understanding Literary Sinitic. Listen to the three experimental recordings |
2022
“Tempting Tunes: The Soundscape of Contemporary South Korean Popular Culture”. Panel for the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, Honolulu, USA, March 24-27, 2022. Panel organizer: Barbara Wall; Panelists: Hee Seng Kye (Hanyang university), Jan Creutzenberg (Ehwa University), Jungwon Kim (Yonsei University), Byong Won Lee (University of Hawaii at Manoa), Barbara Wall.
“Regional hip hop and the Seoul Metropole: A case study of underground hip hop in Gwangju”. Presentation by Amos Farooqi for the Nordic Korean Studies Days, March 9, 2022. The talk is available on our YouTube Channel “Korean Studies Online“.
“Korean Sounds Shared with the World”. Panel for the 11th World Congress of Korean Studies, Academy of Korean Studies, South Korea, Oct 21, 2022. Panel organizer: Barbara Wall; Panelists: Hee Seng Kye (Hanyang University), Jan Creutzenberg (Ehwa Womans University), Jungwon Kim (Yonsei University), CedarBough T. Saeji (Pusan National University), Barbara Wall.
2023
“Buddhist sounds in contemporary Japan and South Korea”. Panel for the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, Boston, USA, March 16-19, 2023. Panel organizer: Barbara Wall; Panelists: Duncan Reehl (Boston University), Iljung Kim (University of British Columbia), Erez Joskovich (Ben Gurion University and Tel Aviv University), Katherine Lee, University of California, Los Angeles), Barbara Wall.
“Transnationalization of Localisms and Cultural Deterritorialization in Korean Hip-hop”. Presentation for the Transpacific East Asia: Transformations and Trajectories in Music and Sound Conference, University of Sheffield, June 1, 2023. (Speaker: Amos Farooqi)
“Where is Home? Displacement and Constructed Communities in Korean Hip-hop”.
Presentation for the 31st Association for Korean Studies in Europe (AKSE) Conference, Copenhagen, June 23. (Speaker: Amos Farooqi)
“How to teach hancha and hanmun in Korean Studies?” Panel for the 31st Association for Korean Studies in Europe (AKSE) Conference, Copenhagen, June 23. (Panel organizer: Barbara Wall; Panelists: Ross King (University of British Columbia), Young Kyun Oh (Arizona State University), Isabelle Sancho (EHESS, Paris)/Vladimir Glomb (FU Berlin), Line Daugaard/Barbara Wall (Copenhagen).
“Where is Home? Displacement and Constructed Communities in Korean Hip-hop” (Revised). Presentation at the workshop “Belonging in South and North Korean popular culture: diverse perspectives” at the University of Hamburg, August 31, 2023. (Speaker: Amos Farooqi)
“Hanguk Hip Hop,” University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, USA, “Regional Rhythms: Place, Mobility, and Provincial Identity within Korean Hip-hop”, October 19, 2023. (Speaker: Amos Farooqi)
2024
“Regional Hip Hop and the Seoul Metropole: A Case Study of Underground Hip Hop in Gwangju”. Talk for the University of Helsinki on March 21, 2024.
Researchers
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Farooqi, Amos | PhD Fellow | +4535323595 | |
| Sørensen, Bo Ærenlund | Assistant Professor - Tenure Track | ||
| Wall, Barbara | Associate Professor | +4593565616 |
Funding
TEMPTING TUNES has been granted a five-year funding by the Seed Program for Korean Studies of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the Korean Studies Promotion Service at the Academy of Korean Studies.
Period: June 2021-May 2026