Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 09:12:57 -0500 
From: Woncheal Choi <wc1q+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Korean pop songs
	<1992Dec16.215432.22811@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>
Distribution: soc.culture.korean

Some people argured that korean pop songs are not very smart and their
lyrics are childish. I would like to make comments about the issue.


1) I agree that korean pop songs are less sophiscated.

Most korean pop songs have similar code runs. As somebody mentioned
korean songs are always 'predictable'. Especially, songs that are
regarded as adults songs have quite similar melody patterns which makes
people who don't like those kinds of songs disgusted.  In most songs,
base line is not seriously considered, which makes korean songs lack of
rhythms and simple.  Once korean people lost their own traditional
rhythms, they cannot enjoy much with rhythms of songs. They just feel
comfortable with slow 'go-go' type rhythms. The arrangements of songs
are still way behind to western or japanese pop songs.  There are some
young arrangests like 'Cho Dong-Ik', 'Kim Jong-Jin', 'Yun Sang' who are 
better than others, but still their level is imitating western or
japanese pop songs. If you listen to songs of their arrangements,  you
can feel that the songs are quite familiar to you. So, in 'Form', korean
pop songs are the way behind High quality musics.


2) People have their own unique ears for appreciating music

According to the professor 'Lee Kang-Suk', music is like a language. If
you are grown in a environment of a certain type of music, you will have
the ears of appreciating the music. If you listen to music which is
outside the boundary of your language of music, you cannot appreciate
and feel the music. If you are accustomed to western style of music,
korean pop songs would be just silly simple child songs as old korean
hate 'Heavy Metal' before it is just a noise to them.  If a certain type
of music sounds very strange and aggressive to you, if there are many
people who like the music, the music is not inferior to the one your
like because simply you might not have the ears to appreciate it.
Personally, I liked western style music when I was young (and I still
do) . I didn't listen to korean songs unless I was force to do so (like
in buses). However, now I am re-evaluating korean pop songs. Even though
they are in western forms, their lyrics are silly, their quality of
sound is less sophisticated, I found something which I can never find in
western musics. That is the 'korean emotion' or 'korean feeling'. Even
though I get easily tired of listening to same songs, I like korean
songs a lot now. It is possible to judge quality of a music, but In my
opinion, the reason why korean music sounds not great is that the korean
emotion is embedded in those less sophisticated styles. And the style is
DIFFERENT from western style. 


3) Many korean people are not rich enough to have high cultural taste. 

People with higher income have more chance to enjoy lesure life. It is a
common sense. One of my personal observation is that when I was high
school student in korea, my friends who liked metal or progressive rocks
are mostly children trom relatively rich families. I was wondering what
is the connection between those types of music and rich kids. One thing
I figured at that time was the difference of music systems. If you have
just a small mono radio, what you can hear is only melodies of songs
because all the high frequency and low frequency sounds are diminished
and distorted. With those source, you cannot quite tell 'Pinkfloyd' from
'Oxen 80' unless you are familiar with them. With a good stereo system,
however, you can actually hear the sound of all instruments.  I think
still most koreans do not have good quality of sound system (I am not
talking about things like 'Marantz' here), and don't care about the
system. In those environment, korean pop songs are the best.




Woncheol
Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean