I express my confusion over at the Jukebox

[koganbot]

Not at all clear yet as to what I'm hearing when I listen to the new 2NE1 single. I express my confusion over at the Jukebox. Can't say I'm able to pick out the non-Western sounds the band are talking about in interviews* (trot, enka). Sounds like R&B-based dance-pop to me, but pushed into interestingly disparate melodic sections. But then, I'm not

Comments

What's the MV's concept?

[koganbot]

Also, what's the video's concept (other than that the "you" in question never shows)? I like the look - they're beautiful - and it seems to be shifting decades without deliberately signifying a specific retro period, or staying in the past. Maybe there are specific illustrations of the lyrics that I've not yet noticed, not looking yet at the translations. There's a phone booth!

[sub_divided]

Xposted from elsewhere

[koganbot]

Is someone really saying it's the first electronic trot song? Seems to me that pretty much all LPG songs, for instance, are electronic trot songs. I mean, they use electrobeats. If this isn't electronic trot, I don't know what is (except they won't let me embed):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cypljQqft9s

[And Super Junior-T and SHINee have done versions of this song, too, though not as electronically as LPG. It's a relatively old song, I guess.]

And speaking of East meets West:

From several months ago, here's Lay.T, whom allkpop describes as trot disco:

[sub_divided]

I went looking for the interview(s) I remembered but all I can find are interviews where other people say it's new or unique, and 2NE1 say it's a hybrid of trot and electropop that should appeal to all ages in Korea and Japan and might sound "fresh" to their international fans. Whoops

[koganbot]

What strikes me most in those interviews is the - to me - strange use of the phrase "sexy concept," as if what 2NE1 were doing before wasn't already very sexy. I mean, just what is all the strutting supposed to be, not to mention Minzy rolling on the floor and twitching her cute butt? And I wouldn't call Bom's bare-legged look "frumpy." But then, "sexy concept" probably means something far more specific and focused in Korea. (I was going to say "specific and nonaggressive," except it would be hard to claim that HyunA's sexiness, for instance, is at all passive.) I suppose there's a difference between sexy concept and merely looking/dressing/being sexy.

As I said last April, my guess is that 2NE1's got a better shot than T-ara at getting a male audience in the U.S., even though in Korea it's 2NE1 who are having trouble crossing to males (supposedly; I wonder if anyone has published the numbers that would back up such observations).

[anonymous]

Hi Frank, I've been reading some intriguing background on enka in a book I've been reading, Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop by Michael K. Bourdaghs. The chapter on Misora Hibari, which I'm reading right now, is particularly fascinating. Among other things it discusses the post-war movement of Japanese music away from embracing a broader Asian context and toward a bi-polar world of Japan on one side and America on the other, other Asian cultural elements even being taken by way of the U.S., rather from the source.

Honestly, I'm not sure how far this would go in helping you understand the Korean music you are interested in, but I think you might find the book worth reading on its own terms, since it seems close to your concerns (even if the music it covers is pretty alien to you).

Rudipherous

[koganbot]

Thank you. The Denver Library has another book by Bourdaghs* but not that one. But Inter Library Loan usually comes through for me, though it sometimes takes a while.

*The Dawn That Never Comes: Shimakazi Tōson And Japanese Nationalism

More on a Korean connection to enka

[anonymous]

Just read something of potential further interest to you, from the book I mentioned, during my lunch break:

"Koga's [sic] music is said to provide a paradigm of Japaneseness in music, but Kogan himself was raised in colonial Korea and acknowledged that he had developed his style around the songs he heard laborers sing there. Even Yamaori Tetsuo, the stalwart defender of Hibari's essential Japaneseness, acknowledges the ongoing debate over whether enka might not best be considered an essentially Korean, rather than Japanese, genre."

And so on.

Bourdaghs has a blog here, in case you were not curious enough to google: http://bourdaghs.com/

Rudipherous

Re: More on a Korean connection to enka

[anonymous]

oops, I did slip up and make Koga into Kogan. It's Koga Masao.