"What? Pansori?"

has become a reply that I have heard many times in the past few years whenever I get to meet someone new. "Yes, I research pansori." Ever since 2019, I have been very interested in studying pansori. I might not be Korean, but my country does not have a musical tradition like this. In my opinion, pansori is unique compared to other existing traditional music styles. It would be great if Korea could preserve pansori.

My name is Linda and I am from the Netherlands. I first gained an interest in Korean music and culture when I was 14 years old. This interest was kickstarted by Korean bands such as CNBLUE and F.T.Island. Soon, however, I developed an interest in other K-pop music and became a big fan. During high school, I would include issues surrounding Korean music in my essays and presentations. When I went on to study International Studies at university, I focused on East Asian studies and studied the Korean language. Here too, I made sure to focus on Korea as much as my studies allowed me.

When I first went to Korea as an exchange student in 2018, I took courses completely dedicated to Korea for the first time. That was when I decided I wanted to continue doing Korean studies. I wrote my thesis on governmental influence in the Korean wave and applied for a Korean Studies master’s program in 2019. I was sure that I would study Korean contemporary music more diligently as that is what I had been doing up and till that time. However, there was an opportunity to gain an extra master’s degree if I took courses in heritage studies. My professor convinced me to challenge myself and take the opportunity. I had to decide on my thesis topic in advance of my master’s, and it now had to include a form of heritage. Because my interest in Korean contemporary music was so big I wanted to continue studying music. Therefore, I spent a while listening to different Korean traditional music styles to decide which one I liked most to focus on. This is when I found pansori.

I had known about pansori before but had never spent time actively listening or researching it. As the Korean used in most songs is hard to understand, especially to someone who is still studying Korean, it was mostly the strong emotions that sorikkun used in their performances that stood out to me as well as their vocal ranges. I researched the different epics and read several books on pansori. I gained enough courage to attend a course at Korea University called ‘the understanding of pansori’thought completely in Korean. For the first time, I learned about pansori’s history, its essential factors, and outstanding pansori artists. But most importantly, she taught us how to listen to pansori. Even though my Korean was not good enough to have followed the course, I learned a lot from the course.

Because of this class, I decided to write about how to conserve pansori and how to bring it back as part of Korean everyday life. I wrote about LEENALCHI and their hit song ‘Tiger is Coming’ and finished my master’s with a good grade. However, I am not done studying pansori. Now that the covid-era is ending, I came back to Korea to further research pansori and understand the music genre even better.