Roald Maliangkay’s Broken Voices: Postcolonial Entanglements and the Preservation of Korea’s Central Folksong Traditions examines the lasting effects of Japanese colonialism on the intangible heritage of South Korea. As the first English-language monograph on Korean folksongs, Broken Voices makes a significant contribution to a growing field of scholarship on developments of Korean traditional music since the twentieth century.

Maliangkay draws on anthropological and ethnomusicological methods, including fieldwork in South Korea and interviews with folksong musicians and officials involved in the National Intangible Cultural Properties (NICP) system, to show the post-colonial influence of Japan on Korea’s cultural preservation system. Broken Voices is organised into four chapters, and framed by an introduction and conclusion. Chapter 1 recounts the legislative history of preserving Korean cultural heritage. During the Japanese colonial period (1910–1945), the Japanese government actively sought to control the content and consumption of Korean heritage. In the postwar period, Japanese cultural policy continued to have widespread influence in Korea. In 1962, the Park Chung Hee (Pak Chŏng-hŭi) government based the structure of its Cultural Properties Protection Law (Munhwajae pohobŏp) on Japan’s 1950 Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties (Bunkazai hogohō). A key difference was that Korea’s law “prioritised folk arts and crafts rather than the arts of the nobility,” a move which facilitated the inclusion of folk traditions suppressed by Japan (p. 10).

Chapter 2 defines Korean folksongs (minyo) through an explication of their regional characteristics and variety. Korean folksongs were originally transmitted orally and often began as songs to accompany work such as farming. The chapter outlines the history of folksong commercialisation from the early 1900s, when recordings of minyo became available, and argues that Japanese musical standards shaped these recordings. Exchanges with the Protestant Church also modernised folksongs, where hymns became a significant source for ch’angga, songs based on Japanese or European melodies sung in a 4/4 beat pattern. During this period, growing numbers of Christian folksong practitioners attempted to efface Confucian, Buddhist, and shamanistic elements from folksongs by singing variations of minyo with Christian-themed lyrics.

Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the development of three major folksong traditions that have been officially recognised by the Korean government as Important Intangible Cultural Properties. The designation of Standing Mountain Songs (Sŏnsori sant’aryŏng), folksongs from Kyŏnggi Province (Kyŏnggi minyo), and folksongs from the Western provinces (Sŏdo sori) gave them status as cultural icons that could compete with national heritage in Japan. The chapters describe the transformation and adaptation of these traditions within the NICP system, including shifting gender dynamics and the decline of male performers, particularly for Standing Mountain Songs and folksongs from Kyŏnggi Province. Although Kyŏnggi minyo was initially transmitted from the early 1800s by prominent male singers, the first holders of the tradition were women who trained in schools for female entertainers during the colonial period. These schools taught Korean, Japanese, and Western forms of music and provided opportunities for women to perform on the radio, which popularised female voices in the genre. Chapter 4 addresses the impact of urbanisation on folksongs from the Western provinces, asserting that Sŏdo sori is now primarily cultivated and performed in Seoul, “cut off from the environment that spurred its creation and development” (p. 117). Despite the dislocation of the art form, Maliangkay argues that the tradition’s capacity to invoke nostalgia will sustain it in the long term.

Broken Voices is meticulously researched and builds on the work of scholars Keith Howard and Hyung Il Pai to excavate the colonial legacies of the Japanese empire on Korean folksongs. Maliangkay’s analysis of adaptations of central folksong genres since the twentieth century furthers scholarship on the interplay of change and tradition within the NICP system. Integrating the life stories of the holders of various folksong traditions enriches the book’s narrative and illuminates in close and frank detail how social networks and economic status facilitated the promotion of certain practitioners in the NICP system and disadvantaged others.

The book’s arguments could be strengthened with further theorisation of nostalgia and an application to more contemporary performances. Nostalgia is Janus-faced, as Svetlana Boym has argued; it is prospective as well as retrospective. Nostalgia permeates contemporary folksong performance in Korea, especially in renditions of “Arirang,” Korea’s most well-known song. The globally successful K-pop boy band BTS (Pangt’ansonyŏndan), for example, performed a medley of Arirang tunes in a 2016 performance in France and incorporated both the Kyŏnggi and Chindo styles in its adaptation. BTS’s version, which has nearly five million views on YouTube, indicates the flexibility of Korean folksongs and their relevance to a globalising Korean popular music scene.

Broken Voices makes a valuable contribution to the growing field of scholarship on Korean traditional music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The book is of particular interest to scholars and students of East Asian music, oral tradition, and performance across various fields, including ethnomusicology, social and cultural anthropology, and literary studies.