This will be done by first reviewing some of the different concepts of performance practice as found in ethnomusicology and secondly by describing a theoretical model comprised of a set of concentric circles that brings together these various concepts.

Having dealt with the theoretical side, I will describe a particular p'ansori performance in detail in order to illustrate the artistic processes of composition, performance, and transmission, their associated aesthetic values and the historical, social, cultural, and political forces that all help to give shape to the performance. These include, for example, the personal and artistic background of the performer, the performance setting, social institutions associated with recruitment and training of artists, various systems of patronage and questions of identity.

Fourthly, by employing the analytical framework of the theoretical model all aspects of the creative process will be related through the model from a specific p'ansori performance to the broadest of historical events by moving from the centre to the periphery and back.

Finally, I will review the various research methods and instruments that are required to describe each element in the model as used in my own analysis of p'ansori and address some of the methodological and practical questions that arose from my own research in Korea and the Korean migrant communities in the former Soviet Union and China.