Oberlin’s Korean Student Association, in collaboration with the Conservatory Dean’s office and the Assemblies Committee, organized a weekend of events celebrating Korean folk music. This weekend’s events include a traditional drumming workshop, a lecture by Dr. Donna Kwon, OC ’93, and a concert in Finney Chapel. Locations and times can be found on the KSA’s Instagram.
These events have been in the making for several years. For Erin Koh, College fourth-year and KSA co-chair, it stemmed from a generational passion for Korean folk music.
“My mom studied ethnomusicology in undergrad and grad, and she studied Korean folk music,” Koh said. “My grandmother was also a gayageum performance major in Korea.”
With her Musical Studies major, Koh carries on her family’s tradition of Korean folk music study. When she started at Oberlin, she knew she wanted to do something to celebrate it and bring it to a larger audience.
“I started the KSA at the end of my freshman year with [Max Rho,] another … current fourth-year,” Koh said. “I always imagined some kind of event almost modeling the Artist Recital Series in the Conservatory where we would bring Korean music to this campus [and] put it on the big stage, on the same level as typical Western classical music.”
Although Koh came up with this idea in her first year at Oberlin and made moves to execute it in the spring of 2024, she said that KSA had to halt all preparations due to funding and scheduling issues. However, in the fall of 2025, she decided to revive the project. College third-year Anais Lowenthal, College third-year Maeve Choi, and College second-year Hyunbin An also helped organize the event, which the KSA carefully selected its guests for.
“With the help of all these amazing people here, we got back in contact with KPAC [and] the deans of the Conservatory, as well as with the lecturer that’s coming in,” Koh said.
The Korean Performing Arts Institute of Chicago is a nonprofit organization with the mission to promote and share Korean folk music.
“They’re the only [group] of the kind in the entire United States to bring in professional artists and residents who trained in Korea and come here for a few years’ residency, where they do lectures [and] performances,” Koh said.
According to Koh, the Korean folk music community in the U.S. is tight-knit. She said that Dr. Donna Kwon, the Ethnomusicology lecturer and Oberlin double-degree alum, already knew KPAC very well.
“Because they’re all so well-connected and acquainted already, it was really easy to put this whole event together,” Koh said.
Lowenthal, KSA’s social media and promotion manager, talked about how bringing in KPAC meant having a hands-on workshop coupled with a culminating performance. The intersection of music and study, however, is exemplified in Dr. Kwon’s lecture.
“We felt like to round it out, an ethnomusicology lecture would bridge the gap between the Conservatory, hands-on type of thing and the performance where anyone can just watch,” Lowenthal said. “You can learn a bit hands-on, listening, and then see a final performance.”
Koh expressed KSA’s intent to engage College and Conservatory students in these events and also involve the Korean community outside of the College.
“With a lot of our promotion and outreach, we’ve been trying to also engage Koreans in Cleveland and the Korean church … to try to expand that reach,” Koh said.
Even the event location choices were intentional. Koh said that, while the lecture is in King Building (a College-affiliated building) and the drumming workshop is in the Conservatory, the final concert is in Finney Chapel, a landmark venue on campus for all. Choi, KSA’s secretary, emphasized how unique this weekend of Korean music is for the Oberlin community.
“I feel like the really good thing about this event is that you can actually give people opportunities of getting exposed to some sort of music that you haven’t really experienced before,” Choi said. “Even just going through the performance or being in the workshop and knowing that, ‘Oh, there’s this kind of music, I like this part of this culture.’ … I feel like that kind of experience itself would already be a huge thing for people who haven’t had experience in Korean music.”
Apart from offering the Oberlin community valuable experiences in learning about Korean music, KSA’s organization of this event is particularly exciting due to the fact that it brings together the College and Conservatory.
“To our knowledge, I haven’t really seen College-based orgs, and identity orgs nonetheless, really collaborate with the Conservatory in this manner,” Koh said.
Conservatory second-year Christian Won was the Conservatory liaison for this weekend of events. He heard about this project last fall, when Koh decided to revive it.
“For me, it was very interesting because, obviously, I’m a musician but I’m also Korean, and the conservatory also has a pretty strong Korean base,” Won said. “We have around five faculty members alongside the students, but, to my knowledge, we haven’t had any events in the Con that had to do with Korean music.”
Won expressed his interest in bringing Korean students and faculty together in a performance. The final performance on Sunday features collaborative performances from KPAC, Conservatory faculty, and Conservatory students.
Won said that he met with Chair and Professor of Piano Haewon Song about the event last semester and remarked on how passionate she was about this weekend of events.
“When we started talking about this event, she was super excited and super supportive, and she mentioned that for a while she’s been wanting to do something for the Korean students and the faculty in the Con,” Won said. “And so, the way she’s participating in these events is that she’s playing with one of the guest artists. They’re playing a duet of ‘Arirang,’ which is one of the most, if not the most, famous Korean folk song.”
Won is also a part of the student trio performing at the event.
“I’ll be playing the piano, [and] two other Korean students will be playing violin and cello,” he said. “We’ll be playing classical arrangements of pieces based on Korean folk tunes and dances.”
With this weekend of Korean music, KSA sets a precedent for a College-based student organization working with the Conservatory and regional practicing artists. Their programming offers opportunities to learn about Korean folk music or reconnect with it. This weekend of Korean music paves the way for future cultural music-focused programming between the College and the Conservatory.
