Why is traditional music called “traditional”? No one calls Western classical music traditional, but the music of the Joseon Dynasty in Korea, which developed around the same time, is called traditional. When I thought about what constitutes traditional music, I came to the conclusion that it’s only called traditional when the genre has stopped developing.…

Contemporary traditional music is currently referred to by various names such as Alternative Pop, Post Rock, Korean Shamanic, and Fusion Gugak, and is not clearly named. However, it is rooted in New Minyo, which refers to a new form of folk music, and shares the characteristics of mixing various traditional music forms such as Pansori…

In the previous post, we talked about Korean traditional music, divided into court music and folk music. In this post, we’re going to look at the modern Korean traditional music that was influenced by those traditional music in two genres: trot and contemporary traditional music. Trot has been a Korean popular song that originated in…

This is the last post in our series on traditional Korean folk music, and today we’ll cover Sanjo, Dance Music, Nongak, Muak, and Beompae. Sanjo is an instrumental solo piece that originated in the southern region of Korea and is most often played on the gayageum, geomungo, and daegeum, but is also sometimes played on…

In our last post, we talked about Minyo, and in this post, we’ll talk about Japga, Yipchang, Pansori, and Byeongchang. These four types of folk music can be categorized into two groups based on their musical similarities, the first being Japga and Yipchang, and the second being Pansori and Byeongchang. Japga is a long-form song…

Korean traditional music can be divided into two main categories according to modern categorization, one of which is court music, which we covered in the last three posts, and the other is folk music, which was passed down from the common people to professional musicians. Unlike court music, which had a specific role for each…

In this article, we’ll take a look at the last of the three types of court music from the Joseon Dynasty: Tang-ak, A-ak, and Hyang-ak. Hyang-ak was named after the introduction of Tang-ak in the Three Kingdoms period to distinguish between foreign music and indigenous music, so it is indigenous Korean music that has existed…

In the last article, we learned about Tang-ak, one of the three types of Joseon court music, and today we’re going to take a look at A-ak. Like Tang-ak, A-ak is a type of ancient Chinese music that was introduced from the Song Dynasty during the Goryeo Dynasty, but A-ak only refers to songs that…

The music of the Joseon Dynasty can be divided into court music (Jeongak) and folk music according to modern classification. As the name suggests, court music refers to music used at royal events, while folk music was aimed at the general public. During the Joseon Dynasty, court music can be divided into three types of…

Music using traditional instruments has received a great deal of attention around the world. Some people consider music performed on traditional instruments to be ‘traditional’ regardless of the form of the song or the way it is performed. However, others argue that in order to be called traditional music, the components of the music, including…