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Music

First, bear in mind that this is very much an introductory page. It was written a while ago when I knew even less about Korean music than I do now. The page isn’t going to be going through a major overhaul any time soon, but maybe you may find some things of use here. But also please browse the various music-related articles on this site, in particular

Now read on.

Traditional music

For a quick two-minute introduction to Korean traditional music I can’t do better than the article in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_music. Follow the links in that brief article and you can end up in all sorts of interesting places.

At the other end of the specialism scale, there’s a body of international academics focusing on Korean traditional music: the Association for Korean Music Research www.akmr.org. That website has a useful bibliography page if you want to explore further.

What’s tricky is to find guidance / recommendations for CD listening. Searching Yesasia for traditional music is like looking for a needle in a haystack. But they do have recordings by the master composer / player of the kayagum, Hwang Byungki. SOAS also has issued a CD of the artist Lee Chaesuk on their SOASIS label (distributed by Harmonia Mundi in the UK). It’s well worth a listen.

Professor Keith Howard of SOAS says one day he’ll put a discography on his web page, so it’s worth keeping an eye on his site.

In-between / cross-over

Generally a category to be avoided. There’s the work of fusion artists which among other things play western music on Korean traditional instruments. A vicious torture. And then there’s the Lyric song genre. Think soft-focus chocolate box pictures, think Mantovani, Richard Clayderman and Andrea Bocelli and you’re getting close. Weepy songs by operatic voices with lush orchestration. I’m probably doing the genre a disservice and I’ll return to it in my dotage and think it’s the most wonderful artform ever, but in the meantime there are other things I want to listen to. Like…

International / K-pop

…Roller Coaster. My favourite Korean band. But before I say anything more on the K-pop scene I ought to make it clear that I’m a complete ignoramus when it comes to popular music. I don’t know my house from my garage, my trance from my trip-hop. I could probably distinguish country from urban, but that’s as far as it goes. As a reference point for any recommendations that I make below, the sort of western popular music I listen to includes the Cardigans, Steely Dan, Brand New Heavies, Herbie Hancock. And of course Slade. So now you’ve written off my musical taste, here goes.

How to find out about K-pop

Firstly, if anyone knows of an English language website where one can legally listen to the latest in Korean music, and legally buy downloads, please let me know. The websites of this nature that I can find aren’t of much use to me because they’re in Korean.

There’s a website www.kpopmusic.co.uk, but I struggle to engage with that site. What the web needs is a site like koreanfilm.org, only for the Korean popular music scene. I’m not sure that kpopmusic is it. If anyone knows of a better one, please tell me.

A site I’ve just discovered is KBS’s music pages. These contain musician biographies, discographies and audio & video clips of recent songs. And I’ve now worked out how to play the clips: it seems you have to surf using Internet Explorer - somehow the KBS music player seems to be incompatible with my favoured browser, Firefox. Worth exploring further now I’ve sussed that out.

The way I’ve explored Korean popular music is

  • to make an occasional speculative purchase from Yesasia (very risky, because all the editorial content plugs each album as the best ever by that particular band, and customer reviews tend to be based on whether the reviewer fancies the lead singer or not. However, Yesasia does kind of help in terms of understanding what bands are particularly popular at the moment.)
  • to make a point of listening to the K-pop channels on any international flights I happen to be on (and I try to persuade my employer to book me on non-American airlines as far as possible so there’s half a chance of getting something half-decent on the entertainment channels)
  • to browse in the only shop I know of which sells Korean CDs (it’s on the south side of W32nd St in New York, between 5th & 6th Avenues), where if you get chatting to the owner he’ll play you stuff before you buy, gauge your reactions, and then make suitable recommendations and steer you away from the obvious rubbish
  • to ask my Korean friends for recommendations. Not always a good idea.

At the moment, Wikipedia doesn’t have a dedicated section on K-pop, so you have to look for articles on individual groups or singers. There’s a pretty comprehensive one on BoA, for example. Have a rummage through their Korean index for your favourites. Many of the articles contain further links for you to while away your time.

Helikoppter’s blog is worth checking out for her occasional posts on Korean indie music. And Orienkorean’s YouTube Channel has a huge collection of videos for you to sample, focusing on indie rather than mainstream music.

I’ve never really explored the K-pop forum Soompi.com, though it looks like it might be worth investigating further. Finally, orienkorean reminds me of Mr Kwang, a useful online store.

Firstly, Jazz

Nah Youn-sun and Malo. Nah is a Korean musician based in France. Her most recent album is a bit avant garde for my taste. Reflet, her first, is however perfect. Malo’s third album is also rather lovely.

Next, everything else

At the poppier end, there are the megastars Bi (aka Rain) and BoA. At this end of the scale my own personal favourite is Bada from the now defunct girl band S.E.S., but I don’t expect anyone to agree with me. She doesn’t have the following of the first-mentioned artists, but her second album, Aurore, doesn’t have a weak spot, whereas albums I have for Bi and BoA (the third and second respectively) both have one or two duds. I haven’t really explored the FinKLs, g.o.d.s or Fly to the Skys of this world or their breakout solo artists (I’m open to recommendations), but for sheer novelty value one day I’ve got to explore the ultimate manufactured band Lady, whose unique selling proposition is that all the shapely artists were once men. And they’ve done a nude photoshoot as an additional marketing gimmick.

There are probably Korean analogues of most western genres. For punk there’s Crying Nut and RUX, for electric-guitar-based rock there’s Sanullim (raw, exciting, at the heavy metal end of the spectrum, though with some quieter moments); there are Korean rap artists; for soul/R&B there’s Park Jung-hyun; and then there’s the real gem: Big Mama, a brilliant female R&B vocal quartet.

My own favourites in the space I’m most comfortable in (see introductory paragraph above — except I’ve never found any band ever to compare with Slade) are Roller Coaster, Sweet Pea, Fortune Cookie, and Clazziquai.

In between are acts which seem to me to be more distinctively Korean. The musical equivalent of the Korean melodrama might be the ballad style, of which the queen is Lee Soo-young. Her 6th (The Colours of my Life) is recommended. One of the leading male ballad singers is Shin Seung-hoon. I have his 8th and it’s OK, though a bit of a mixed bag and not the sort of stuff I would want to listen to all day. For something a bit different, Kim Gun Mo is hugely versatile (an extremely unrepresentative consensus is that his 3rd album is the best); J’s fourth (Dim the lights) and Park Jiyoon’s 5th are also worth investigating.

If you’re reading this, please let me know of your own personal recommendations. I’m always keen to explore new things. Just don’t expect me to like Freestyle. I bought their 3rd album for one track (Y / Please tell me why) which was the dialling tone on a friend’s mobile phone, and hated the rest of it.

Coming soon: more on Korean music, but in the meantime here’s a link to a Korean punk forum,
http://www.brokeinkorea.proboards46.com/index.cgi

and a Korean punk zine:
http://www.skunklabel.com/eman.html

both courtesy of orienkorean. I haven’t had a chance to look at the sites properly yet, so can’t vouch for their contents, but at first glance they look rather lively. Enjoy.