P'ansori as Social Critique: Perpetuating a Musical Tradition in Twenty-First Century South Korea.

Abstract

This thesis explores the new form of Korean story-singing tradition, p’ansori, in the twenty-first century through the works of a South Korean performing group called Badaksori (sound from the bottom). Based on the musical and political actions of Badaksori’s members, this study details how this liberal group articulates nationalistic, antiforeign, egalitarian, and pacifist ideologies in its new p’ansori productions. Utilizing historical perspectives, ethnographic research, and textual and musical analyses of performances by Badaksori, this thesis illustrates how key elements of traditional p’ansori have been transformed, reinforced, or retained in the age of modernity. This thesis begins by challenging the conventional conceptualization of traditional p’ansori as a device to promote Confucian morality in the nineteenth century by showing how its subtexts allusively confronted the Confucian ideology. During the Japanese colonial period in the early twentieth century, performers began to use p’ansori to project antifeudalist and anti-imperialist ideas in a more explicit way. In the late twentieth century, this function of p’ansori as social critique was accentuated by incorporating minjung (“masses” or “people”) discourses that challenged the agenda of the authoritarian state. Drawing parallels between minjung discourses and Badaksori’s pursuits, this study draws upon minjung ideology as a theoretical and empirical basis for its examination of the identity, ideology, and performance of Badaksori. The goal of this thesis is to foreground the traditional role of p’ansori as a means of voicing social critiques of dominant ideologies, from Confucian ideology to stateimplemented discourses. I show that p’ansori emerged and has continued as a subversive vehicle to speak for socially and economically marginalized people in Korea. This study also shows that Badaksori has strategically and creatively made use of this traditional function of p’ansori in modern South Korea for its ideological work by altering the textual and musical presentation. I argue that even though musical, stylistic, and thematic appearances of p’ansori performance has continuously changed, its function as social critique has remained unchanged and central throughout its history in Korea.