Talk by Keith Howard, Professor Emeritus, SOAS, University of London; Fellow, National Humanities Center.

Howard (Professor Emeritus, SOAS, University of London; 2017-18 Fellow, National Humanities Center) explores ‘P’i pada/Sea of Blood,’ a North Korean operatic genre. Styled after Cultural Revolution-era operas of China, it mixed music with dance and spectacle, popular melodies with folksong, and combined traditional instruments with a Western orchestra. The new genre abandoned Korean p’ansori, reportedly spurned by Kim Il Sung as too sentimental for the socialist revolution. ‘Sea of Blood’ also abandoned operatic arias, deemed unfit for socialist realism, and turned instead to couplets and choruses designed to be sung by the audience as well as the assembled musicians. ‘Sea of Blood’ operas remain celebrated today, and based on two field trips to Pyongyang, Dr. Howard analyzes their artistic components, asking why the operas continue to be performed some 45 years later.