Paper short abstract:

In order to share the responsibility of becoming indigenous in the little known history of an underground groove music scene in Seoul, now I invent a new question as an indigenous cosmopolitan anthropologist in the fullness of time. “When is indigenous art?”

Paper long abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ontology of a minority of underground groove musicians in Seoul, South Korea. Although small, a new style of underground music scene somehow came into being spontaneously in Seoul in the early 2000s. The primary goal of musicians seemed simple in its embryonic stage. Introducing various genres of foreign groove music such as soul, jazz, funk, reggae, afro-beat and the other exotic indigenous rhythm, a passionate few tried to their best to reproduce the original style with complete fidelity. No one disputed the basic premise that authenticity could be verified by the power of mimicry. By the way, after an unexpected mainstream success of one underground jazz-funk band in 2003, a potential conflict inherent in the scene was actualized with two similar but mutually incompatible agendas. Both are the same in that they set the next phase of performance as becoming more indigenous, but one party made an effort to invent a new style of indigenous Korean-ness targeting a broad world audience, while the other denounced that the project is neither indigenous nor authentic. The latter seemed to deepen what they had been doing from the start. Nowadays the players and supporters of the scene still continue to ruminate on the issue of becoming indigenous, for importing and exporting indigenous groove music at the same time causes an inevitable paradox. To clarify what these problems really are, I finally invent a new question as an indigenous cosmopolitan anthropologist. “When is indigenous art?”