Aside from Japanese R&B and hip hop music, South Korean pop music has also swept over East Asia for the past decade and still expands its power via the trend of Korean Wave. In the definition of Korean Wave (2008) edited by The Korea Herald, the term Korean Wave “refers to the phenomenon of Korean popular culture, which is disseminated through the mass media and is enjoying the popularity outside of Korea” (13-14). Korean Wave (also known as Hanliu 韓流 / 한류 hallyu) covers
a broad range of cultural and commercial consumption, from TV drama, movie, reality show, fashion, to popular music to propagate Korea popular cultures, even to endow the audience with the imagination concerning the country itself. In fact, South Korea’s media liberation during the late 1980s to the mid-1990s is considered to be a fairly crucial turning point for the rise of Korean Wave. Doobo Shim indicates that the rapid increase in foreign television and the television channel expansion and the open film policy toward Hollywood are two important factors awakening Koreans to pay attention to their domestic industrial development in local culture (Shim 31). After the first blockbuster Korean film Sopyonje (1993) topped the box-office chart, Korean public and the government were excited to believe that the idea of culture could be an industry, that the cultural industry had the potential to advance the national economy (Shim 32). The initial rise of Korean Wave was the popularity of Korean TV drama, which caught the East Asian (majorly among China, Japan and Taiwan) audience’s eye in the late 1990s as Korean TV networks (KBS, MBC, and SBS) began to sell the copyrights overseas (Hyejung Ju 75). With a great quantity of drama series export, Korean TV drama, in this case, has been regarded as the outset of Korean cultural product and the leading factor of Korean Wave, which has more or less dominated the popular trend in many East Asian countries after 2000. Korean Wave then circulates as an immense cultural phenomenon, in light of Sang-Yeon Sung’s elaboration:
[Korean Wave] Hanliu is a global flow of a national product which circulates only within regional boundaries. Although it is not a new trend, it should be recognized as a different type of global flow, one in which “Asianness” is emphasized, and one that is affected by the accelerated speed of the cultural movement through new technologies.
(Sung 57, my italics)
However, Korean Wave goes beyond the regional boundaries to other countries
outside Asia after 2009 such as USA, Iraq and Australia, continuing to broaden its growing power. It is not extraordinary to mention how Korean Wave is spread under the process of globalization, but what it actually signifies within such global flow is to share its Asianness with other Asian countries, and how it has been rooted in other cultures to thus transform or localize by different means matter substantially.
I would particularly emphasize the later prosperity of K-pop music, for it has earned the reputation and success and has also been well-connected in both Asian and global market. Furthermore, the K-pop music itself contains the very deep core from hip hop and R&B elements to thus be cultivated as “the localized hip hop” in Korea.
Before the rise of Korean Wave, according to Shim, the Korean pop music scene is under the basis of two categories: Korean ballads and ppongjjak. The Korean ballads have been classified into love songs with melodic sound and romantic lyrics that are similar to American folk music. Ppongjjak, which has often been onomatopoetically called “the Japanese enka-influenced musical style by Koreans, is “[l]argely
associated with the pathos of the older generation” and “has experienced periodic ups and downs” because the government would ban the hit songs with elements of
“morbid Japanese aesthetics” (Shim 35). Shim also mentions that before the 1990s, either the Korean pop music or the entertainment industry was prosperous. In addition, South Korea’s two public television networks, Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) and Munhwa Broadcasting Company (MBC) control most of the music distribution and the consumption of the music genre; that is to say, the television medium mainly manipulate the taste of local pop music, judging which songs or singers should be considered popular.
Shim indicates that the tremendous change of South Korea’s media emerges after Seoul’s 1988 lifting restrictions on foreign travel and the considerable quantities of people purchasing satellite dishes in the 1990s, so more and more musicians begin
to adopt different music styles into their works and fans are also eager to “have a better grasp of global music trends and hunger for new tunes from local musicians”
(Shim 36). Against this backdrop, Western music is channeled as “an integral part of this rapidly urbanizing world” and “[t]he seemingly homogenization of music in the case of Korea…is replete with new innovations, both musical and societal” (Morelli 249).
Sarah Morelli, who focuses on Korean pop culture finds out that rap, hip hop and R&B and dance music take large part of Korean pop music. She observes that “[i]n a country where approximately half of the population is under age thirty…the sounds and styles of rap and hip hop are now common place” (Morelli 248). However, what even more marks the mix of globalization and indigenization is the appearance of Korea’s shinsaedae 16. Shinsaedae’s voice, as Morelli drawing on Kim Byong-suk’s definition, is “loosely identified as those in their twenties, with rap music and Seo Taiji at the center” (Morelli 250).
Seo Taiji is regarded as the most powerful and influential popular singer during the 1990s, who represents the threshold for “an introduction to the musical culture of the shinsaedae” and the leading role of musical transformation in K-pop (Morelli 250). Seo Taiji’s group, Seo Taiji and boys, composed of one singer, and two rapper-dancers, release their first single “I Know” in 1992, which is believed to be the first rap track in Korean language. According to Morelli, Seo Taiji and the boy’s hybrid music styles utilize numerous elements of contemporary Western music, such as rap, hip hop, soul, rock, hardcore and dance music. Seo Taiji even sets the criterion on creating the musical form which “employs rap only during the verses, singing ________________
16. Shinsaedae, or New generation in English, Kim Byong-suk refers to those who were
born after 1970, and “whose values and customs seem alien and irresponsible to their elders. These are youth who cut holes in new jeans, prefer pizza to rice, and don’t believe that the old are necessarily wise.” 1993. “Rap Setting New Beat in S. Korea” Chicago Sun-Times, 29 November
choruses in a pop style” (Morelli 250). Yet, as Seo Taiji’s career progresses, he tends to express his thoughts through critical lyrics and he is later concerned about social issues, e.g., miseducation, inequality and political corruption.
Shim considers that Seo Taiji’s music excites local listeners in Korea because they have already been fed up with the ballads and pongjjak that lacks “dynamism and musical experimentation” (Shim 36). Seo Taiji successfully creates a whole new music style intermingling Western music, affects the composing and performing styles for the succeeding artists and expands the scale of the local music market. Moreover, as Morelli discovers, Seo Taiji and boys establish a group style based on hip hop culture, and many of whom “not only use rap, R&B and other ‘black’ musical styles, but also model their visual images after the b-boy styles of the USA” (Morelli 254).
Seo Taiji and boys’ overall impact could be very significant to the development of Korean popular music and to the following trend of Korean Wave. The formation of the group, one singer and two rappers/dancers influences the latter style of Korean pop bands or groups; the adoption of hip hop, R&B and rap music in their musical compositions serves as the standard model of K-pop music. Yet, they do not obey the rules from television networks to sing only ballads or ppongjjak; instead, they turn to political or social issues as the topics of their music works. The group’s success leads to the expansion of record company and talent agencies as well. Even when Seo Taiji and boys disband in 1996, one of the group members, Yang Hyun-suk continues to produce hip hop music and founds his own company YG Entertainment in 1996. I would conclude that hip hop music has been growing strong in Korea after Seo Taiji’s achievement on the music transformation, and the K-pop inherits many of Seo Taiji’s style of hip hop music. Hip hop is a fairly active music genre in Korea, and many youngsters pursuit their success through the mode of Seo Taiji and boys.
As Korean pop music starts to be promoted outside South Korea, along with the
Korean Wave, its distinguishing characteristics expressly catch the countries which are sphered by its power. Suh-kyung Yoon, who once interviews Bernie Cho, the host of Seoul Sonic on the music station Channel V, mentions in the article Swept Up on A
Wave (2001) to point out “Korean music, fashion and style has basically taken over
J-pops popularity” and he further agrees that “[t]houghtout Asia right now, people will grab anything that reeks of kimchi” (Yoon 92).In addition, the trend of Korean pop music in East Asia could be traced back from the boom of Korean artists and groups like CLON, H.O.T. (Highfive of
Teenagers), NRG, Fly to the Sky and Baby V.O.X. around the mid-1990s. However,
as Yoon continues to analyze the reason that Korean pop music would overtake the Asian market, he turns to hip hop as the possible answer. Yoon explains that Korean pop music has been affected drastically by American hip hop culture on a whole:
For the past decade, hip hop—the music, the clothes, the attitude of
America’s black ghetto—has been the dominant genre in Korean pop music.
Brought to the country by Korean-Americans, the hard-core raps and harsh beats have been toned down and adapted by groups like Seo Taiji, The Boys and UpTown. Today, almost all the bands sport at least one
Korean-American, usually a rapper, who adds vital street cred. (Yoon 92-93) Yoon specifically points out that Western hip hop culture has permeated into South Korean’s popular culture, especially the music industry. However, Yoon also indicates that “Korean hip hop gives the genre an Asia spin, making it more accessible to teenagers growing up in China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia” (Yoon 93). Korean hip hop’s influence on Asian mainstream popular music, as well as on Taiwanese pop music has “increasingly obvious in Taiwan and among Asians living abroad” (Korean Wave 13). Meanwhile, the fast dissemination of K-hip hop helps build up the
audience of R&B, funk and jazz music to a certain extent in Taiwan as well because
those music genres are often considered minor in the market.
In this chapter, I first address the notion of “Aaianism” in the past and present as the main idea to discuss the cultural exchange and interaction occurred in East Asia and how Asianness is employed and consumed through the dissemination of popular culture under the transnational flow. I also pay close attention to the development of Japanese and Korean hip hop music to further indicate the influence which later generate on specific issues of Taiwanese hip hop music. I would continue analyzing Taiwanese hip hop music’s trans-Asian experience in the next chapter to examine its recent transformation.
Chapter Three
Hip Hop Music in Taiwan: History, Culture and Trans-Asian Experience
In the previous chapter, I examine hip hop music’s transnational experience in East Asia, and how Japanese and South Korean hip hop and R&B music (K-pop in a way) intermingle or assimilate with Taiwanese hip hop music. As a country willing to absorb and digest new things from different cultures, Taiwanese hip hop music also encounters its myriad changing phases, and still grows and varies from time to time. I began to listen to hip hop and R&B music in the late-1990s when I was a teenager. At that time, I only enjoyed the rhythm, beats and the melodies. Later, I started to realize that hip hop culture contains more than what I had imagined; it could be a form of entertainment, but it could also be a weapon to resist against social injustice. In this chapter, I would first summarize the history and development of Taiwanese hip hop music to give a clear picture of how Taiwan hip hop music is formed and how it is interconnected with East Asian hip hop music on particular topics (Korean Wave and diaspora) to further discuss their interrelationship among each other. I will later take Taiwanese hip hop group Da Mouth (Da Zuiba 大嘴巴) and rapper Softlipa (Dan Bao 蛋堡 ) to be the cases, discussing their image and music style to elaborate the East Asian collaborations of Taiwanese hip hop music and the phenomena and effects they have brought about. I would also address Nicky Lee (李玖哲 이철구), the former member of the Machi crew and now leading vocal of the Asian band (as they name it), Aziatix, and also Jae Chong, the famous Korean-American producer in East Asia, who has been responsible for the music production in their albums and is the producer and rap vocal for many Taiwanese singers. Through their trans-Asian collaboration, they tend to construct an image of
“Asian band” in their debut album. Then, I would seek to address the issue of the possibility of transnational Taiwanese hip hop by arguing that there is no absolute
“authenticity” in global hip hop, because under the age of globalization, any claim of any “authentic” cultural form would be comparatively dubious when it comes to essentialism.