Asian Ethnology Podcast

Interview with Roald Maliangkay: Korean Folk Music, Cultural Policy, and Preservation

Interviewer: Ben Dorman, co-editor Asian Ethnology

Recorded 7 September 2018, Canberra, Australia

This Asian Ethnology Podcast episode features Roald Maliangkay of the Korea Institute at the ANU College of Asia & the Pacific. In this episode, Roald talks about his interest in anti-Japanese folksongs in Korea during the colonial period as well as K-Pop and the contemporary scene. He discusses about his monograph, Broken Voices: Postcolonial Entanglements and the Preservation of Korea's Central Folksong Traditions (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017), and how Japanese colonial rule affected cultural policy, the system of preservation, and the way in which music is conceived and performed. He also talks about how he applies the concept of “cultural cringe” in the context of Korean society.

Publications discussed in this episode

Maliangkay, Roald. Broken Voices: Postcolonial Entanglements and the Preservation of Korea's Central Folksong Traditions . University of Hawaii Press, 2017.

Music used with kind permission of the performer, shamisen master Koji Yamaguchi.