Securing the Canon

SamulNori strengthened their claim to be the masters of their canon of pieces by developing an aesthetic that informed both performance and training. Merriam (1964: 259-73) has argued that aesthetic concepts are uncommon in traditional music cultures, while Bohlman has commented that the reason for this is because music functions as part of a contextualized broader performance complex in which distinction in ideas about sound is redundant (1999: 30-1). If this is so, then it is reasonable to expect an aesthetic sense to have evolved since the first SamulNori concert in 1978 that had never formerly been articulated by either local percussion bands or itinerant troupes. This, broadly, is what I seek to show in the following pages. However, the issue that Merriam and Bohlman address is one of verbalizing as opposed to appreciating: I would argue that aesthetics do exist amongst performers and form an essential core for so-called ‘emic’ accounts of music (for performers and form an essential core for so-called ‘emic’ accounts of music (for example Feld 1982 ; Zemp 1981 ; Turino 1984 ; Roseman 1991 ). 1