My research broadly encompasses the topic of rhythmic play and social meaning, firstly in South Korean traditional percussion genres and more recently in North American and British rock music. I received my Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of London, SOAS, and was a postdoctoral research fellow in Korean studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to visiting posts at the University of Chicago, the Academy of Korean Studies, and the University of Oxford (St John’s College), in 2019 I was a Visiting Researcher at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

Select publications include P’ungmul: South Korean Drumming and Dance (University of Chicago, 2006, winner of the 2008 Lee Hye-Gu Award by the Korean Musicological Society), SamulNori: Contemporary Korean Drumming and the Rebirth of Itinerant Performance Culture (University of Chicago, 2012), “Radiohead’s ‘Pyramid Song’: Ambiguity, Rhythm, and Participation,” Music Theory Online 19.1.3 (2013), “Rhythmic Play, Compositional Intent, and Communication in Rock Music,” Popular Music 33.1 (2014), “Western Popular Music, Ethnomusicology, and Curricular Reform: A History and a Critique,” Popular Music and Society 44.5 (2021), and Finding the Beat: Entrainment, Rhythmic Play, and Social Meaning in Rock Music (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). I am currently Professor of Global Musicology at the University of British Columbia and a Research Associate of the Centre for Korean Research.

email: n.hesselink@ubc.ca

university web page: https://music.ubc.ca/profile/nathan-hesselink/