Hyun Kyong Hannah Chang | The University of Sheffield (original) (raw)
Peer-reviewed articles by Hyun Kyong Hannah Chang
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2023
have contributed equally both as coconvenors of the colloquy as a whole and as authors of the int... more have contributed equally both as coconvenors of the colloquy as a whole and as authors of the introduction. Hyun Kyong Hannah Chang acknowledges the support given to her research by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/V013157/1). We are grateful to Bonnie Gordon, the colloquy's contributors, and the Journal's anonymous readers for their generous comments. 1. For example, Strohm, Studies on a Global History.
Twentieth-Century Music, 2021
A number of scholars in critical Asian Studies have pointed out the persistent construction of Ea... more A number of scholars in critical Asian Studies have pointed out the persistent construction of East Asia as the Other across Anglophone humanities. 1 They have cited ideologies that have continued to motivate the essentialist construction of East Asia as static, archaic, and separate from the Westfrom orientalism, a hallmark of European and US imperialisms, to postwar Boasian culturalism, which emerged as a kind of critique of cultural standardization brought on by Western imperialisms. 2 It would be an exaggeration to say that current Anglophone scholarship on the music of East Asia overtly partakes in the othering practices of the past. However, the legacies nevertheless continue to shape the epistemic ground of this scholarship in subtle ways. This is seen, for example, in the ways in which knowledge is organized and presented in reference books, textbooks, and syllabi. 'Chinese', 'Japanese', and 'Korean' music is depicted first and foremost as a range of traditional musics; Western, popular, or other hybrid forms of music do make an appearance but are given secondary or supplementary status. 3 This structure of knowledge reinforces a 'United Nations' model where nations are represented by traditional music and exist within nationally bounded space and time. It is difficult to paint in broad strokes the rapidly changing terrain of recent research; however, it is possible to locate a constructivist strain, which, despite its critical work, still maps music onto notions of national or ethnic identity. In this constructivist frame, there is a productive recognition that the traditional in twentieth-century music is reconstructed through the identity discourses of nationalism and globalization. 4 However, what lies outside this reconstructed soundscape remains underexplored, and thus music remains tethered to a 'nation-bound, identity-driven hermeneutics'.
Twentieth-Century Music, 2021
Protestant music in South Korea has received little attention in ethnomusicology despite the fact... more 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.
The Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus, 2020
Yun Isang (1917-95) was one of Korea’s most prominent composers in the twentieth century. From 19... more Yun Isang (1917-95) was one of Korea’s most prominent composers in the twentieth century. From 1957, the year he moved to West Germany, to his death in 1995, he had an internationally illustrious career, garnering critical acclaim in Europe, Japan, the United States, and North Korea. In South Korea, however, he became a controversial figure after he was embroiled in a national security scandal in 1967. As part of this incident, dubbed the East Berlin Affair at the time, Yun Isang was abducted in West Germany by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency and charged with espionage for North Korea. This experience of victimization, which also included torture, imprisonment, and an initial death sentence, turned him into a vocal critic of Park Chung Hee and an overseas unification activist in contact with North Korea. This article remembers the moral and political framings of Yun Isang in South Korea against a recurring politics of forgetting that masks the magnitude of violence that was wielded in the name of national security. It traces coverage of Yun in
several mainstream newspapers from the first mention of his name in 1952 to 1995. It argues that representations of Yun were mediated by a tension between national artistic progress and national security, one of the central tensions that defined South Korea’s Cold-War cultural politics.
The Journal of Korean Studies, 2020
Well-known songs of colonial Korea such as “Kagop’a” and Pongsŏnhwa” appear to be secular songs, ... more Well-known songs of colonial Korea such as “Kagop’a” and Pongsŏnhwa” appear to be secular songs, but their origins lie in the complex intersection of North American Christian missions, Korean cultural life, and Japanese colonial rule. This article explores the historical significance of secular sentimental songs in colonial Korea (1910–45), which originated in mission schools and churches. At these sites North American missionaries and Christian Koreans converged around songwriting, song publishing, and vocal performance. Missionary music editors such as Annie Baird, Louise Becker, and their Korean associates relied on secular sentimental songs to cultivate a new kind of psychological interior associated with a modern subjectivity. An examination of representative vernacular song collections alongside accounts of social connections formed through musical activities gives a glimpse into an intimate space of a new religion in which social relations and subjective interiors were both mediated and represented by songs. The author argues that this space was partly formed by Christianity’s fugitive status in the 1910s under the uncertainty of an emergent colonial rule and traces the genealogy of Korean vernacular modernity to the activities of singing in this space, which she calls a fugitive Christian public.
Ethnomusicology Forum, 2018
The rise of Japan as a regional empire and a model of Asian modernity in the late nineteenth cent... more The rise of Japan as a regional empire and a model of Asian
modernity in the late nineteenth century set in motion the
diffusion of particular forms of vocal music across East Asia. In this
article, I examine one important material channel within this intraregional
circulation of music: classroom songbooks published by
the Japanese colonial government in Korea for use in its
elementary schools throughout Korea. I analyse the contents and
sourcing patterns of authorised songbooks that represent the
three distinct phases of the colonial rule (1910–1945), exploring
how they crystallised the colonial government’s shifting stance on
Korean assimilation and difference. I also situate these textbooks
within a broader ecosystem of published songbooks in Japan and
Korea, which I argue constituted a multifaceted nexus between
the metropole and the colony, one that demonstrates the
interrelationship of coloniality and modernity in early twentiethcentury
East Asia.
Book chapters by Hyun Kyong Hannah Chang
The Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies, 2019
and Keywords In late nineteenth-century Korea, American-style hymn-singing and the related practi... more and Keywords In late nineteenth-century Korea, American-style hymn-singing and the related practice of praying began in missionary churches as the number of Christian converts grew at an ex ceptional rate that was not replicated in any other parts of Asia. Born within the context of colonial pressures from the United States and Japan, Korean Christian singing and praying in the early-twentieth century exhibit a trans-Pacific genealogy of the modern Ko rean voice, that is, a genealogy that materialized at the intersection of Pacific colonial projects, local experiences, and pre-existing cosmologies. This chapter investigates Kore an Christian singing and praying by examining missionary and Korean records, as well as some Japanese colonial sources. Activities directed by the missionaries, hymn-singing, and praying among Korean converts reflected a network of American aesthetic, moral, and economic ideologies. The author argues that Korean Christian singing and praying formed a complex site in which North American religious practices and Korean social mo bilization converged in the contexts of Japanese colonialism and US-Japan rivalry in the Pacific. This inquiry allows the author to hear and describe not a Korean voice in mimesis of or opposition to the West, but a trans-Pacific voice, exhibiting a trans-Pacific genealogy. The voice, then, can be understood as a kind of technology through which Korean con verts negotiated their way into a "global history" not as full agents or subjects, but in their markedly compromised positions, within multiple shifting power relationships.
Papers by Hyun Kyong Hannah Chang
The Series on Digital Humanities, Volume 7. Taiwan University Press. 335-364. , 2016
The meticulously internetworked structures of prominent K-pop groups and companies are a key aspe... more The meticulously internetworked structures of prominent K-pop groups and companies are a key aspect of "cultural technology," the successful and sometimes controversial system for developing internationally appealing entertainment products pioneered by S.M. Entertainment, a K-pop firm, under the direction of its founder, Lee Soo-man. To examine the formation of "production networks" within Korean popular music over time, we applied network analysis techniques to records in online data archives describing ~4,800 individuals, groups, and companies associated with recent Korean popular music, especially K-pop.
Book reviews by Hyun Kyong Hannah Chang
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2023
have contributed equally both as coconvenors of the colloquy as a whole and as authors of the int... more have contributed equally both as coconvenors of the colloquy as a whole and as authors of the introduction. Hyun Kyong Hannah Chang acknowledges the support given to her research by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/V013157/1). We are grateful to Bonnie Gordon, the colloquy's contributors, and the Journal's anonymous readers for their generous comments. 1. For example, Strohm, Studies on a Global History.
Twentieth-Century Music, 2021
A number of scholars in critical Asian Studies have pointed out the persistent construction of Ea... more A number of scholars in critical Asian Studies have pointed out the persistent construction of East Asia as the Other across Anglophone humanities. 1 They have cited ideologies that have continued to motivate the essentialist construction of East Asia as static, archaic, and separate from the Westfrom orientalism, a hallmark of European and US imperialisms, to postwar Boasian culturalism, which emerged as a kind of critique of cultural standardization brought on by Western imperialisms. 2 It would be an exaggeration to say that current Anglophone scholarship on the music of East Asia overtly partakes in the othering practices of the past. However, the legacies nevertheless continue to shape the epistemic ground of this scholarship in subtle ways. This is seen, for example, in the ways in which knowledge is organized and presented in reference books, textbooks, and syllabi. 'Chinese', 'Japanese', and 'Korean' music is depicted first and foremost as a range of traditional musics; Western, popular, or other hybrid forms of music do make an appearance but are given secondary or supplementary status. 3 This structure of knowledge reinforces a 'United Nations' model where nations are represented by traditional music and exist within nationally bounded space and time. It is difficult to paint in broad strokes the rapidly changing terrain of recent research; however, it is possible to locate a constructivist strain, which, despite its critical work, still maps music onto notions of national or ethnic identity. In this constructivist frame, there is a productive recognition that the traditional in twentieth-century music is reconstructed through the identity discourses of nationalism and globalization. 4 However, what lies outside this reconstructed soundscape remains underexplored, and thus music remains tethered to a 'nation-bound, identity-driven hermeneutics'.
Twentieth-Century Music, 2021
Protestant music in South Korea has received little attention in ethnomusicology despite the fact... more 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.
The Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus, 2020
Yun Isang (1917-95) was one of Korea’s most prominent composers in the twentieth century. From 19... more Yun Isang (1917-95) was one of Korea’s most prominent composers in the twentieth century. From 1957, the year he moved to West Germany, to his death in 1995, he had an internationally illustrious career, garnering critical acclaim in Europe, Japan, the United States, and North Korea. In South Korea, however, he became a controversial figure after he was embroiled in a national security scandal in 1967. As part of this incident, dubbed the East Berlin Affair at the time, Yun Isang was abducted in West Germany by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency and charged with espionage for North Korea. This experience of victimization, which also included torture, imprisonment, and an initial death sentence, turned him into a vocal critic of Park Chung Hee and an overseas unification activist in contact with North Korea. This article remembers the moral and political framings of Yun Isang in South Korea against a recurring politics of forgetting that masks the magnitude of violence that was wielded in the name of national security. It traces coverage of Yun in
several mainstream newspapers from the first mention of his name in 1952 to 1995. It argues that representations of Yun were mediated by a tension between national artistic progress and national security, one of the central tensions that defined South Korea’s Cold-War cultural politics.
The Journal of Korean Studies, 2020
Well-known songs of colonial Korea such as “Kagop’a” and Pongsŏnhwa” appear to be secular songs, ... more Well-known songs of colonial Korea such as “Kagop’a” and Pongsŏnhwa” appear to be secular songs, but their origins lie in the complex intersection of North American Christian missions, Korean cultural life, and Japanese colonial rule. This article explores the historical significance of secular sentimental songs in colonial Korea (1910–45), which originated in mission schools and churches. At these sites North American missionaries and Christian Koreans converged around songwriting, song publishing, and vocal performance. Missionary music editors such as Annie Baird, Louise Becker, and their Korean associates relied on secular sentimental songs to cultivate a new kind of psychological interior associated with a modern subjectivity. An examination of representative vernacular song collections alongside accounts of social connections formed through musical activities gives a glimpse into an intimate space of a new religion in which social relations and subjective interiors were both mediated and represented by songs. The author argues that this space was partly formed by Christianity’s fugitive status in the 1910s under the uncertainty of an emergent colonial rule and traces the genealogy of Korean vernacular modernity to the activities of singing in this space, which she calls a fugitive Christian public.
Ethnomusicology Forum, 2018
The rise of Japan as a regional empire and a model of Asian modernity in the late nineteenth cent... more The rise of Japan as a regional empire and a model of Asian
modernity in the late nineteenth century set in motion the
diffusion of particular forms of vocal music across East Asia. In this
article, I examine one important material channel within this intraregional
circulation of music: classroom songbooks published by
the Japanese colonial government in Korea for use in its
elementary schools throughout Korea. I analyse the contents and
sourcing patterns of authorised songbooks that represent the
three distinct phases of the colonial rule (1910–1945), exploring
how they crystallised the colonial government’s shifting stance on
Korean assimilation and difference. I also situate these textbooks
within a broader ecosystem of published songbooks in Japan and
Korea, which I argue constituted a multifaceted nexus between
the metropole and the colony, one that demonstrates the
interrelationship of coloniality and modernity in early twentiethcentury
East Asia.
The Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies, 2019
and Keywords In late nineteenth-century Korea, American-style hymn-singing and the related practi... more and Keywords In late nineteenth-century Korea, American-style hymn-singing and the related practice of praying began in missionary churches as the number of Christian converts grew at an ex ceptional rate that was not replicated in any other parts of Asia. Born within the context of colonial pressures from the United States and Japan, Korean Christian singing and praying in the early-twentieth century exhibit a trans-Pacific genealogy of the modern Ko rean voice, that is, a genealogy that materialized at the intersection of Pacific colonial projects, local experiences, and pre-existing cosmologies. This chapter investigates Kore an Christian singing and praying by examining missionary and Korean records, as well as some Japanese colonial sources. Activities directed by the missionaries, hymn-singing, and praying among Korean converts reflected a network of American aesthetic, moral, and economic ideologies. The author argues that Korean Christian singing and praying formed a complex site in which North American religious practices and Korean social mo bilization converged in the contexts of Japanese colonialism and US-Japan rivalry in the Pacific. This inquiry allows the author to hear and describe not a Korean voice in mimesis of or opposition to the West, but a trans-Pacific voice, exhibiting a trans-Pacific genealogy. The voice, then, can be understood as a kind of technology through which Korean con verts negotiated their way into a "global history" not as full agents or subjects, but in their markedly compromised positions, within multiple shifting power relationships.
The Series on Digital Humanities, Volume 7. Taiwan University Press. 335-364. , 2016
The meticulously internetworked structures of prominent K-pop groups and companies are a key aspe... more The meticulously internetworked structures of prominent K-pop groups and companies are a key aspect of "cultural technology," the successful and sometimes controversial system for developing internationally appealing entertainment products pioneered by S.M. Entertainment, a K-pop firm, under the direction of its founder, Lee Soo-man. To examine the formation of "production networks" within Korean popular music over time, we applied network analysis techniques to records in online data archives describing ~4,800 individuals, groups, and companies associated with recent Korean popular music, especially K-pop.