Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism / Korean Culture and Information Service

Korean fusion band ADG7. Courtesy of ADG7

• ●“SsingSsing” opened the door for Korean folk bands’ success overseas.  

• ●Traditional musicians have launched organized efforts to find opportunities abroad.

One after another, Korean fusion bands have generated buzz since SsingSsing broke onto the world stage in the United States in 2017.  

Now disbanded, SsingSsing’s six members became the first Asian singers to perform on New York-based NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts during their North American tour. That NPR concert became a turning point for the once unknown Korean fusion band, and their career took off. In a media interview, lead vocalist Lee Hee-moon said tickets for their concerts in Seoul sold out immediately.    

During their North American tour, SsingSsing performed at globalFEST, one of the most important world music platforms in the United States. Bob Boilen – host of NPR’s “All Songs Considered” and from whose desk the Tiny Desk Concerts were launched – attended the festival and named SsingSsing one of globalFEST 2017’s top discoveries. Several other Korean fusion bands, including the nine-member band ADG7, have caught the attention of world music experts in the United States since SsingSsing.  

Some experts coined the term “K-folk pop” to refer to the rise of fusion musicians who have presented Korea’s traditional music in creative ways.  

Their overseas successes, meanwhile, have sparked a debate at home whether the genre is here to stay or a passing fad. Some doubt that K-folk pop can be as successful as K-pop, which has reached new heights with the phenomenal success of BTS, while others speculate that “gugak” (traditional Korean music) could become the epicenter of the next Hallyu or Korean Wave.  

Kim Hee-sun, a professor of ethnomusicology at Kookmin University in Seoul, voiced cautious optimism about the future of K-folk pop.  

“Compared to the pop music industry, heritage music has a relatively small market,” she told Korea Here & Now. “I think Korean fusion bands have the potential to continue their success at least in the heritage market. Are they going to be as commercially successful as K-pop bands? The answer depends on whether or not their success can be linked to other Hallyu products.”  

Kim noted that after a decade of desperate efforts by traditional musicians to find opportunities abroad, several Korean fusion bands have started to get favorable reactions from world music fans overseas.  

“Among people involved in gugak, there was a consensus about the need to break into the world music market outside of Korea, and they have consistently made an organized effort to achieve that over the past decade,” she said.           

To find overseas opportunities, traditional musicians and their supporters invited world music experts, journalists and critics to Korea to view their performances.  

Korean fusion bands began performing at globalFEST and other popular world music platforms in the United States where music promoters go to look for new talent, and some caught the attention of experts there.  

“Their success didn’t come overnight. Through their decade of endeavors to make themselves known to foreign audiences and interact with other musicians and world music connoisseurs, traditional musicians came to realize how they could succeed in the world music market,” said Kim. “And their decade of multifaceted efforts has finally borne fruit with some folk bands finding moderate success since SsingSsing.”  

Mainstream U.S. media coverage has brought critical acclaim to some of these musicians.  

One group is ADG 7, which made their world debut at WOMEX and globalFEST in 2019. The nine-member band opened the virtual K-Music Festival 2021 on October 6. Seventeen other fusion bands performed there.  

Boilen of NPR called ADG7’s globalFEST performance the “most astonishing show musically and immensely entertaining.”

Another fusion band, Leenalchi, rose to global stardom last year after appearing in three tourism promotion videos titled, “Feel the Rhythm of Korea.” The videos have gone viral all over the world with hundreds of thousands of YouTube views. The band, which debuted in 2018, has become one of the most in-demand folk music bands in Korea.      

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