Musical Identity and Culture: Exploring the Korean Diaspora through the Lens of Piano Pedagogy

This presentation explores the nature of identity and pedagogy through the study of Western classical piano training. Two groups of university students – one of Korean Canadians and the other of Koreans in Korea – describe their training, their aspirations and their expectations. How do these students come to study piano? Who are they and how does their musical education form their sense of self? We started a comparative study of Korean and Canadian methodologies in Southwestern Ontario (London, Ontario) and Cheonan, Korea, an hour outside of the capital Seoul. Populations of these two cities are comparable although there are more opportunities for piano instruction in Korea. Korean students experience piano training early on as part of their daily education; they spend at least an hour everyday at music school practicing and having a lesson with teachers. This approach is unique to Korea whereas piano pedagogy in Canada is most often considered as an extracurricular activity with training provided for one hour a week. By the time students arrive at university, they have developed different strengths and weaknesses relative to their earlier training. The factors we examine in this presentation are historical reasons for the differences in pedagogy, place of the piano in Korean and Canadian culture, gender roles and shaping of new identities in new contexts