Songs of Seoul: An Ethnography of Voice and Voicing in Christian South KoreaSongs of Seoul is an ethnographic study of voice in South Korea, where the performance of Western opera, art songs, and choral music is an overwhelmingly Evangelical Christian enterprise. Drawing on fieldwork in churches, concert halls, and schools of music, Harkness argues that the European-style classical voice has become a specifically Christian emblem of South Korean prosperity. By cultivating certain qualities of voice and suppressing others, Korean Christians strive to personally embody the social transformations promised by their religion: from superstition to enlightenment; from dictatorship to democracy; from sickness to health; from poverty to wealth; from dirtiness to cleanliness; from sadness to joy; from suffering to grace. Tackling the problematic of voice in anthropology and across a number of disciplines, Songs of Seoul develops an innovative semiotic approach to connecting the materiality of body and sound, the social life of speech and song, and the cultural voicing of perspective and personhood. |
Contents
part one the qualities of voice | 27 |
Voicing an Advanced Korea | 48 |
Cultivating the Christian Voice | 80 |
The Clean Voice | 112 |
part two the sociality of voice | 139 |
The Voice of Homecoming | 175 |
Feeling the Voice | 201 |
Conclusion | 226 |
| 267 | |
| 289 | |
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Common terms and phrases
abroad acoustic aesthetic alignment arirang audience audition chapter chest voice cho˘ng choir Choso˘n Chris chronotope classical music classical singing clean voice cleanliness concert congregation context cultural described differentiated discipleship embodied emotional ethnonational European-style classical evangelical event expression feeling hago Hananim heart homecoming recital human voice hymn institutions Jesus Kim Yo˘ng-mi Kim’s kind Korean Christian Korean singers kyohoe Lee Myung-bak March First movement mau˘m missionaries moksori narrative nation neo-Confucian one’s opera p’ansori singers Park Geun-hye Pastor Kim performance person Pharisees phonation phonic phonosonic nexus practice prayer Presbyterian produced professional professor Protestant qualia qualities relations ritual role ru˘l sang Sang-u secular semiotic Seoul sermon singers in Korea Sino-Korean so˘ngak singing so˘ngak voice social soloists Somang Church song sonic soprano sori South Korea speech spiritual style sung teacher throat tian tickets tion told traditional transformation University vocal cords vocal sound word yangban