Roald Maliangkay, Broken Voices : Postcolonial Entanglements and the Preservation of Korea’s Central Folksong Traditions

Roald Maliangkay.Nurtured through his enduring interest in Korean folksong and the intangible heritage system, the book takes readers through a decades-long journey to understand and interpret the ways by which Korea's intangible heritage system preserves, shapes, distorts, and recreates Korea's cultural heritage.The book strikes a careful balance between exploration and critique of cultural policy, with a consideration of the people entangled in this system.A carefully researched and thorough ethnography of mid-and northwestern minyo (folksong) included in Korea's intangible heritage system, it represents a much-needed addition to contemporary scholarship on Korea and Korean music.The book's six chapters, including an introduction and conclusion, explore deeply Maliangkay's central contention that the Korean heritage system is a derivative of the Japanese colonial system, an assertion both evident to scholars of Korea yet controversial within the Korean context.His primary argument centers on the "strategies and notions developed by the Japanese during the colonial period [as they] have impacted Korea's folksong traditions" (3).The introductory chapter covers the roots of such notions through a look at the development of the heritage system and its imbedded selforientalization.He argues that, as the system took hold, it influenced specific choices to adapt folksongs to ideals of the system.Through a survey of repertoire, music, representation, and performance styles, Maliangkay explores the impact of the preservation system on constructs of authenticity.In his "attempt to show how Korean folksong traditions have evolved and what factors have caused them to change" (15), Maliangkay artfully weaves together the many strands of intangible heritage, national culture, and paradigms of authentic tradition.Chapter 1, "Colonial Foundations of Korean Cultural Policy," dives into the many complexities of the heritage system in Korea and introduces the three genres of focus-Kynggi minyo, Snsori san t'aryng, and Sdo sori.The chapter also covers the history of and parallels between Japanese and Korean systems of cultural legislation.In his discussion of authenticity, Maliangkay explores the complexities of recording (45) in "Western" notation, integrating the ongoing debate in the Korean music world regarding its ineffectuality at capturing the nuances of Korean sound.Although he does not mention that this system remains the primary form for recording and analysis, such details regarding the complexities of determining "authenticity" are central to the discussion of intangible heritage in Korea.