Protestant music in South Korea has received little attention in ethnomusicology despite the fact that Protestant Christianity was one of the most popular religions in twentieth-century Korea. This has meant a missed opportunity to consider the musical impact of a religious institution that mediated translocal experiences between South Korea and the United States during the Cold War period (1950s–1980s). This article explores the politics of music style in South Korean diasporic churches through an ethnography of a church choir in California. I document these singers’ preference for European-style choral music over neotraditional pieces that incorporate the aesthetics of suffering from certain Korean traditional genres. I argue that their musical judgement must be understood in the context of their lived and remembered experience of power inequalities between the United States and South Korea. Based on my interviews with the singers, I show that they understand hymns and related Euro-American genres as healing practices that helped them overcome a difficult past and hear traditional vocal music as sonic icons of Korea's sad past. The article outlines a pervasive South Korean/Korean diasporic historical consciousness that challenges easy conceptions of identity and agency in music studies.

If the ideal artistic collaboration is one of shared vision, open communication, and exquisite professionalism then Martha Graham and Carlos Chávez strayed far from it in the making of Dark Meadow (1946). As this article documents, their relationship was full of antagonism, misunderstanding, disdainful gossip, and regret on both sides. Three sources of conflict are examined: 1) a misunderstanding between the two collaborators on the meaning and utility of Greek allusions in art created conflicting aesthetic expectations for a dance with a plot derived from Greek mythology; 2) both artists defied the modernist community's expectations about how each of them should perform their gender identity as artists; and 3) similarly, the press's consistent Othering of Chávez in racist, nationalist terms was contagious, influencing Graham's beliefs about what Mexican music could or should be. Despite significant obstacles, Chávez and Graham produced a work that continues to represent the mid-century Modernist aesthetic.

This article addresses an emerging phenomenon in which Brazilian popular musicians have begun to depart from popular song (canção popular) in favour of free improvisation in response to rising authoritarianism. As a case study, I examine the creative project Carta Branca, which brings together popular and experimental musicians from styles such as MPB and hip-hop to perform freely improvised concerts. Following a consideration of the history of Brazilian canção popular, the article discusses how contemporary popular musicians engage in free improvisation as an alternative means of musical critique. I contend that their actions constitute evidence of a broader ‘post-canção’ moment, with the potential to facilitate more flexible and collective ways of responding to Brazil's reactionary moment. The article further discusses how the musicians’ improvisational turn fosters a renewed engagement with a form of cultural improvisation tied to understandings of national identity and being in the world specific to Brazil.