Asia and the Rest: 동시대 아시아 전통음악의 연대 모색과 실천

Abstract

The current study investigates the background and contemporary meaning of the regionalism of Asian traditional music tracing its trajectory of solidarity and practice. Since 1990, the ever changing and accelerating concept of “globalization” has assigned Asia as a whole, at the same time regionalism, in regard to the sound geography that has become an important background in the cultural divisions of Asia. In the process of globalization, in particular, both regionalism and transnational popular culture have helped to unfold the cultural flow among nations which has eventually affected culture at large, including political and economic life, as well as intellectual discourse. From the background of Asian regionalism, the field of traditional music has become an “imagined sonic Asia,” and through music, a variety of practices has been launched in planning to promote Asia as a community. In the era of post colonialism, traditional music(s) is divided by, and classified with national geographical boundaries, with most of the nations promoting representative ethnic symbolism and nationalism from resources found in traditional music. However, since the 1990s some nations have worked together to establish <Orchestra Asia> and <Asia Traditional Orchestras>. These attempts have helped in repositioning the Asian ethnicity, as well as promoting an “imagined Asia” through music. In the meantime, people sought to create an “imagined community” through the solidarity of traditional music(s) collected from different nations with the certainty of “tradition with unchangeable and fixed meaning.” In addition, this has been used as a survival strategy for “preserving” traditional music—sharing mutual ground to support each other in the face of the rapid changes of Westernization in contemporary society. In reality, however, the “Sonic Asia” has been a failure and has been criticized as re-enacting the contradictions of nationalism and post colonialism of the modern West, causing a negotiated, distorted and contemporized “tradition.” This has also resulted in a wide gap and isolation among Asian nations emphasizing the idiosyncratic differences of the languages, politics and economics. In the mid 2000, under the direction of the Korean government, a variety of projects were undertaken, such as the <Cultural Partnership Initiative> and the <Asian Major Arts Scholarship> to support individual artists with the prospect and means of cultural development, rather than promoting contemporary traditional orchestras that display the contradiction of nationalism. In addition, through multifaceted practices and activities demonstrated by the selected artists with diverse cultural backgrounds, experimental space and resources are provided aimed at imagining an Asian cultural community. In particular, a number of on-going world music festivals in South Korea, starting from an understanding of the innate limitation and contradiction of “world music,” have successfully demonstrated the possibility of creating a cultural community of Asia. Despite of the contradictions in the beginning year of solidarity of Asian traditional music, the world music festivals in South Korea have given special meaning in providing self-awareness among the artists as the subject of change. Moreover, multifarious attempts promoting the solidarity of Asian traditional music and musicians have incessantly supplied dynamic alternatives and spaces for the possibility and development of Asian traditional music. It is no longer, “West and the Rest,” but now, “Asia and the Rest,” and one must recognize and acknowledge the historical event which is unfolding contemporary Asian music as an “imagined community,” rich in the diversity of cultures and traditions.