Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA

Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA

Ch.10 "Who is a Dancing Hero?": Rap, Hip=Gop, and Dance in Korean Popular Culture

by Sarah Morelli

Watching a television camera descend into a basement practice space located in one of the poor sections of Pusan, South Korea, I was struck by the loud hip-hop music, Korean style. Youthful voices, high-pitched synthesizers, and a strong, pulsing bass filled the air as teenage boys practiced their dance moves in front of a wall of mirrors. Other walls were covered with graffiti, including one slogan that translates as "If it is impossible, make it possible."(안되면 되게 하라..-_-) This Korean saying, traditionally invoked by students preparing for exams, here inspires young people who see music as their means to success. The young men who come to this practice space devote hours after school honing what they believe to be their most marketable skill, dance.

For teens in Korea today, such hopes of stardom are not entirely misplaced. In a country where approximately half the population is under age thirty, rap, hip-hop, and other types of dance music are the best-selling styles. Current pop music is said to receive 70 to 75 of available air time on Korean radio stations ("Inroads" 1998) p.248

To a newly arrived Westerner, these scenes may seem to exemplify the growing homogenization, the "cultural gray-out" cautioned against by the likes of Alan Lomax(1977) in the late 1970s... However, as scholars have recently observed, seemingly unchallenged appropriations by those on the periphery of a globalized cultural network are often embedded with new and unique meanings. Arjun Appadurai writes, "If 'a' global cultural system is emerging, it is filled with ironies and resistances sometimes camouflaged as passivity and a bottomless appetite in the Asian world for things Western" (1990:3) The seeming homogenization of music in the case of Korea, in other words, is replete with new innovations, both musical and societal. (249)

A mix of Western genres is common in gayo, or Korean popular music. Genres are both juxtaposed within an album and overlaid within one song. Album jackets at times explicitly label the genres represented in each song. In one rather extreme example, the group Solid designated a genre for every song on their album. The broad range of genres and creative descriptions included a cappella, Latin house, R&B ballad, hip-hop techno, 1970s ballad, funky, house, and P-funk (Solid 1995)

Though this patchwork of sytyles and representations might be problematic for American listeners, who as Mark Slobin (1993:86) claims, are often "highly sensitive to finely tuned distinctions in style," they do not hold the same symbolic meaning for Korean musical consumers. In the words of one Korean styudnet, this simply "keeps the album from becoming boring" (H.J. Lee, interview by author 1996). In this case the genres have been lifted from their historical and cultural contexts, resituated and "indigenized" (to use Appadurai's term) into Korean culture. In the process, these Western popular genres have been emptied of some of the extramusical associations that would disrupt a listener's expectations of stylistic coherence. Instead, this music has been transformed and new musical associations created.

This amalgamated style of popular-music is an important marker of identity for Korea's shinsaedae, or "New Generation"; "[Korean] newspapers are filled with stories about the New Generation-those born after 1970- 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 (Kim 1993). Kim Byong-suk, a professor of sociology at Seoul's Ewha Women's University, further described this group: "The New Generation is loosely identified as those in their twenties, with rap music and Seo Taiji at the center"(Kim 1993)

The Korean censorship board banned portions of the songs, so instead of changing the lyrics, the groups released the songs as an instrumental. The second issue of the album included the remaining lyrics that were permitted, and to make their audience aware that the song was being censored, the group replaced the outlawed lyrics with bleeps. Finally, the third issue of the album included the song in its entirety. (252)

This account illustrates a few significant aspects of Korean youth culture. First, it emphasizes the deep reverence that many young people in the 1990s had for Seo Taiji (and the extent to which Korean youth idolize many pop groups). In one Web site dedicated to Seo Taiji and the Boys, titled "To the greatest Korean musicians ever", the author announces, "Seo Taiji...has become the best there was and the best there is, and the best there will ever be".... Second, the story reveals gender patterns common to contemporary popular-music culture in Korea. Few women perform as musicians in this music scene, yet they play strong roles behind the scenes as fans. Those who do perform are often ballad singers or are in the minority within larger pop groups. In music videos as well, females are, to use Walser's term (1993), "excripted"- conspicuously absent from situations that articulate ideals of masculinity and exhibit male bonding.

The video for one of Taiji's songs, "Hayeoga"(Anyway), illustrates different levels of endogamous and exogamous male bonding The video begins with a crowd of men gathered at the bar of a nightclub. Korean and African American men dressed in trendy clothing, some with dreadlocked hair, sway back and forth to hip-hop music. When thy begin to dance, the three African American males jeer (in English with Korean subtitles) at their Korean counterparts: "Man, these guys can't dance!" The Korean men do their best to impress their critics, without success. At this point, one anxious Korean makes a phone call to Taiji , whom he asks to come and help them out. Predictably, Taiji and the Boys step in and save the day. We then cut to a studio location, where standard backdrops provide the setting for the music video, in which the unnamed black men continue to play cameo roles. (253)

This video clip is not only a celelbration of Afrodiasporic cultural aesthetics, but a competition as well. Through this contest of masculinity as well as dance, we see the reification and expansion of a racialized hierarchy of hipness, in which, globally, the African American man now defines the standard. This scenario compares remarkably with a long-standing social dynamic in the USA in which, as Tricia Rose states, "young white listeners are trying to perfect a model of correct white hipness, coolness, and style by adopting the latest black style and image"(1994:5). By gaining the respect of these black men and savinf face for his fellow Koreans, Taiji establisses both alliances. He not only proves his own capability to compete in this now international music space, but also suggests that his superior capabilities are something for other Korean men to aspire to.

Other groups in Korea also try to demonstrate their authenticity through the use of English words and Western cultural markers. Adopting specifically African American phrases to give authenticity to nonblack versions of rap music is prevalent, though certainly not unique to Korea. Many current groups emply one member who specializes in rapping. (253)

The importance of the visual and somatic elements of this music has been recognized from the beginning. Taiji, whose music was instrumental in establishing rap's popularity in Korea, chose the other two members of the group- "the Boys"- based not on their musical but their dancing abilities. According to fans, their role within the group continued to be primarily dance and image oriented throughout the group's career. Likewise, the most important criterion for record-company scouts is the ability to dance well, and they often find new talent at dance competitions for high school-aged people. (254)