Korean traditional music (gugak) is pretty fascinating, from their fairly well-preserved ancient pieces (in contrast to China), to their intense, almost free-jazz-like mystical shaman music, to a whole semi-classical chamber folk tradition called sanjo, which features a solo instrument improvising melodies to rhythms that gradually get faster, juxtaposed with a drummer who grunts now and then as a form of ad-lib, while the drumming itself is nothing like 4/4 or everything else simple that you mighy expect.
Many Koreans themselves are less interested in raw gugak, so some gugak musicians achieve commercial success by doing on the side fusion gugak, which employs pop and other Western elements, partly on the traditional instruments… A lot of it sounds really watered down compared to the real stuff.
Korean traditional music (gugak) is pretty fascinating, from their fairly well-preserved ancient pieces (in contrast to China), to their intense, almost free-jazz-like mystical shaman music, to a whole semi-classical chamber folk tradition called sanjo, which features a solo instrument improvising melodies to rhythms that gradually get faster, juxtaposed with a drummer who grunts now and then as a form of ad-lib, while the drumming itself is nothing like 4/4 or everything else simple that you mighy expect.
Many Koreans themselves are less interested in raw gugak, so some gugak musicians achieve commercial success by doing on the side fusion gugak, which employs pop and other Western elements, partly on the traditional instruments… A lot of it sounds really watered down compared to the real stuff.