The Wild Wild East

Via James Fallows:



What startled me about this video was the first dancer's hip-swinging in the opening seconds of the clip.  Clearly Agnes DeMille had been watching Elvis Presley, or had a prophetic vision of Bobby Brown.

Shin Jung Hyun

Today my Facebook Tabloid Friend posted a link to a story reporting rumors that Kim Jong-un had been assassinated in Beijing. The BBC says that analysts "say the story ... is highly implausible ... Rumours of deaths of celebrities and world leaders commonly spread on social-media sites like Twitter." Or Facebook.

What got my goat was the concern-trolling and crocodile tears that TF and his commenters indulged in. TF opined that from what he'd heard, things couldn't get too much worse in North Korea. Much hope was expressed that the North Korean regime would fall, with no thought given to the consequences of such a fall for most North Koreans, but hey, then ignorant Westerners could shed more great, salty tears: oh, the humanity!

I wasn't thinking about it consciously, but that story must have been in my mind when I wandered downtown a little later and stopped in at one of our independent local record stores, where I bought a new CD I'd noticed yesterday in their bin of World Psychedelica: Beautiful Rivers and Mountains: The Psychedelic Rock Sounds of South Korea's Shin Joong Hyun, 1958-1974. I knew nothing about Shin (remember, "Shin" is his surname), but I am interested in old (South) Korean pop music. ... What, I haven't mentioned that I recently got my hands on the CD reissue of the Devils' first two albums from around 1970? I knew nothing of Shin when I bought the CD, but I know now that he's still alive at 74, still performing. In 2008 he performed at a Korean Music Festival at the Hollywood Bowl, and in 2009 he was awarded a special Fender Stratocaster, part of Fender's scheme to market their guitar in Korea but still an honor. For some reason, Western media picked up on him around that time: NPR, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal (via). You can hear Shin's 1970 band playing the garage/psychedelic classic In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida at the NPR page, as well as a cover of Jefferson Airplane's Somebody to Love; and you can see him play in this clip from a mid-1970s Korean movie, Miin. (He's the singer-guitarist in the dashiki.)



Shin grew up desperately poor, orphaned and on his own after the Korean Civil War, but he managed to pursue his love of music. He got his start in the 1950s, playing at American military bases, influenced by the jazz and rock he heard on Armed Forces Radio. By the 1960s he was a successful singer / songwriter / producer; several of the songs on Beautiful Rivers and Mountains are performed by musicians he worked with. But this was also the period of Park Chung-hee's dictatorship in the South, and Shin got into trouble, partly for refusing to compose music at Park's command, and partly for being a hippie who played decadent, antisocial noise. In 1975 Shin was arrested for possession of marijuana, tortured by the police, and detained first in a mental hospital, then in jail. His musical career never recovered, even after the assassination of Park Chung-hee in 1979, but apparently his contributions to Korean pop won him some recognition in the 1990s and since.

The song on Beautiful Rivers and Mountains that caught my attention was "The Sun," written by Shin in 1973 and recorded by Kim Jung Mi for her album Now. It's an art/folk ballad, with a melody that resembles another song I can't quite remember, with a wonderful guitar riff pushing it gently along over the strings and rhythm section.

Duncan's Latest Mixpost

There was a substitute DJ on last night's Latin-music program on our community radio station, and his music choices varied from the normal fare. While I like the dance music and ballads that the others usually play, much of what I heard last night shook me out of mere hearing mode into listening, and online searching for more information. Even without listening closely I could tell that a lot of the lyrical content was political; not surprising because, as I found, the singers had political backgrounds.

I discovered that Sylvio Rodriguez, for example, is Cuban, a supporter of Castro's revolution, and has been very influential on people and musicians with left politics around the world. As he deserves to be, given what I heard last night. "Playa Giron," for example ("The Bay of Pigs," as we gabachos know it):



What caught my attention was the music rather than the lyrics, which I still haven't deciphered completely. The music reminded me of other Latin American guys with a guitar I've heard over the years. (Chicago's WFMT had a program called "The Midnight Special" that I used to listen when I was in high school. It's still on, apparently, but I haven't been able to access it for a long time. It introduced me to a lot of folkies and musical eccentrics, some of whom still matter to me, like Tom Lehrer. I don't know if I ever heard Sylvio Rodigruez on "The Midnight Special," but I'm sure I heard people who sounded like him and probably learned from him.) But it wasn't until I sat down to do this post and listened again that I realized that the late Korean singer Kim Gwang Seok also sounded like him.



This song, whose title means roughly "Too Sorrowful Love Isn't Love", imprinted itself permanently on my memory the first time I heard it. (Kim wasn't nearly as good a guitarist as Rodriguez, though.) Some of the lyrics are translated in the comments to the video clip I've embedded here, but I think it communicates its meaning if you don't understand the words. (In one version of this song I have on DVD, a TV performance, the tempo is faster and Kim beams like any other show-biz singer as he sings it; a jarring incongruity. A Korean friend told me that Kim played in the US at least once, at a university in St. Louis; the concert was supposed to be released on CD a couple of years ago, but I haven't been able to find it.) I'm going to do a post on Kim later on, because I feel sure I remember a song of his that sounded like "Playa Giron"; I also want to try to find a clip of the song he did that sounds exactly like Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice." If I find them, I'll put them up here; I should have written about this guy before.

But I digress; back to the music I heard last night. First, another song by Silvio Rodriguez, "Ojala" ("If Only"):



I'm going to try to learn some of Rodriguez' songs.

Another singer whose music was played last night was Pablo Milanes. Hm, another Cuban, though according to Wikipedia he used to be "aligned with the government, Milanés has since distanced himself from the official line, to the point of, during the seventies, being sent to a reeducation prison; he has since taken a more discreet line, even occupying political posts in times of greater political freedoms." Sylvio Rodriguez, among others, has performed with him. This was the first song I heard last night that made me pay attention, "Nelson Mandela y Sus Dos Amores". (Yes, that's "Nelson Mandela and His Two Loves.")



Later the DJ played "Felicidad" ("Happiness"):



Sheer gorgeousness. These seem to be more keyboard- than guitar-oriented, but I'll see if I can make some of Milanes' music work on guitar too. It's not all that often that I still discover music that on first hearing makes me ask, "Who is that?" and makes me want to hear more. Thanks to Brother William at WFHB for bringing these great singers into my world.

The Rule 4 - GoGo 70

Today I watched GoGo 70, a 2008 Korean film about the Devils, a Korean soul band of the 60s and 70s. I should probably say "based on" them, because according to the author of a book on Korean rock of that period, the filmmakers consulted him on the historical background and then largely ignored it; the band in the film is "fictional." I'd already suspected that, since when I found a list of the real-life band's lineup, the names were completely different from the names of their movie counterparts.

(N.B. I have only the most rudimentary knowledge of Korean, but it was easy to find the band's names in that article because the names of their instruments are printed in English. Any interested reader who can read Korean ought to look at the article: it apparently consists largely of interviews with surviving members of the Devils.)

The movie Devils started their career playing in bars servicing US Army bases in Daegu, while the real-life band began in Itaewon, the shopping and entertainment district of Seoul that also caters to US servicemen. The film alludes to the black/white segregation of those bars, in the music they supplied and the girls who "went with" the soldiers. Their music, according to this blogger, seems to have been much less soul-oriented than what we hear in the movie, though they recorded covers of "Proud Mary" -- presumably Credence Clearwater Revival's version instead of Ike and Tina Turner's -- and the "Theme from Shaft." (Some of the sites I link to here have links to samples of the Devils' music, but all seem to be broken.)

But that's par for the course in biopics. I'd like to know more about the real band (they're not mentioned in Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave [Global Oriental, 2006], edited by Keith Howard, a great but incomplete source of information on the history of Korean pop), but GoGo 70 is still quite a good movie -- not great, but solid, well put together, and entertaining. I'm not sure why the online reviews I've read mostly disagree with me, but I think it may be because of the political and historical context of the Devils' history.

In the 1970s South Korea was ruled by a harsh military dictatorship, and GoGo 70 shows that very clearly, to a young South Korean audience of today that may be almost as ignorant about the period as Americans of any age. The film begins with archival footage of parades and period patriotic songs that may lead many viewers to believe that the film is set in North, not South Korea. South Korea in those days had a curfew from midnight to 4 a.m., which in the movie is used by promoters and bands to their advantage for a while. As in numerous countries, the Park regime cracked down periodically on "decadence," shutting down clubs, forcibly cutting the hair of young men too influenced by Western pop trends, jailing musicians, banning songs, and the usual beatings, torture, and murder. One commenter at Internet Movie Database declared that "In fact the entire setting is unnecessary, and could have easily taken place in modern day." Well, no it couldn't: the dictatorship ended in 1987, and as far as I know South Korean musicians are no longer jailed for decadence, nor are nightclubs raided by club-wielding storm troopers who lob in tear gas to drive the crowd into their clutches. (Which doesn't mean police violence in Korea is a thing of the past, of course.) Interestingly, the trailer (embedded above) puts the political context, and the police violence, squarely in the foreground.

One reviewer, who mostly liked the movie, complained that he "was less than taken by the ensemble cast of whom none seemed to really shine through as a charismatic lead ... [O]n the whole the film could have used a more clearly defined protagonist." I think that the band itself is the protagonist, but then I'm partial to ensemble films where there is no clear lead, and different characters take turns at the center. One of the things I like about Korean films is the political awareness and sensibility so many of them have, the integration of social and political factors with individual ones. Which doesn't mean that there aren't Korean movie stars who often dominate the films in which they appear, or for whom films may be constructed as vehicles to show off their talents and please their fans -- only that there's a wider range of possibility in Korean commercial cinema.

That being said, it's true that GoGo 70 is a very conventional biopic even by American standards. You have the story of the band's rise from obscurity to fame, you have the conflicts of egos among its leaders, the tension between commercial success and artistic exploration, the climactic show that almost ends prematurely but is saved by someone's determination and quick thinking. But these conventional elements are treated quite competently, aided by the large amount of performance footage -- more, I think than in most such movies. The cast handle their performing duties very well, and one of the leads, Cho Seung-woo, is a musician who's also performed in stage musicals. (He broke into movies in 2000 as a romantic lead in Im Kwon-taek's Chunhyang, which had a limited US release.) He sings his own parts, often in English, and does a good job on the 60s Stax-Volt material.

Korean rock was as much a boys' club in those days as Western rock was, but the presence of only one real female character in GoGo 70 is a bit noticeable I think. Shin Min-a (also of Kitchen) plays a young woman who prefers to be called Mimi, who still manages to strain the limits of the stereotype for such a character. Though she follows the band devotedly from the sticks to Seoul, and we learn she had a one-night stand with the leader Sang-gyu (Cho) and got him to try to teach her to sing, she is more of a would-be impressario. She makes the Devils' often elaborate costumes, nags the music journalist who opens the Seoul music scene to them, and finally rescues the band's faltering career by becoming their go-go dancer, training two more young women to join her in that role, and finally taking an exuberant vocal solo in the climactic show of the movie. Korean women are expected to be entrepreneurs, which is at odds with the shared Western and Asian masculist belief in female subservience, but there you are. If you want a clearly-defined protagonist, Mimi's it.
This photo is the only one from here that shows a girl with the band. Mimi, is that you?

But that in itself doesn't make for conformance with the Rule, which requires that a movie have at least two women characters, who talk to each other about something besides a man. GoGo 70s manages to squeeze in even that, a scene in which Mimi and one of the women who'll join her as a dancer are working on costumes and talking about music. The other young woman is the daughter of the motel where the band squatted when they first arrived in Seoul; she connived with her brother to sneak them in past her father. It's not much, but even in the canonical statement of the Rule, a single conversation in Alien does the trick. That's a reminder that the Rule is not meant to be a guarantee of high feminist consciousness, but only a minimum requirement for watchability. On other fronts, though, GoGo 70 is fun, well-made, and worth your time -- another Korean movie that American audiences should have seen, but didn't.

Nerd-Rock Meets K-Pop

Jang Gi Ha and the Faces seem to be the hot new item on the K-Pop scene, at least according to their fans. I don't know their demographic -- college students seeking Coolness, perhaps? A friend recommended them to me, so I looked them up. See what you think.



I'm not entirely sure what I think about them yet, even after several viewings of this video; I haven't listened to their CD yet. The song itself is sort of abstract: the title ("The Moon Is Getting Fuller -- Let's Go!") sets the tone. Jang Gi Ha, the lead singer, has an interesting voice and sings well. Though I enjoyed his choreography with the Mimi Sisters, it suggests to me a robotic alienation from the body that I both identify with and dis-identify with. Jang's look reminded me of the Feelies, whose first album I bought in 1980 just because of the way they looked:











And of Maynard G. Krebs, one of my most enduring early media crushes:








And the self-conscious oddness of the early B-52s:

Which I guess is not such a bad combination.

(P.S. July 1, 2009: Here's another musical forerunner of this song, and perhaps of Jang's performance style, though David Byrne is buggin' out compared to Jang's introversion:)

Park Hyo Shin

I haven't done a video introduction to a Korean pop musician in a while, and I still have a few who deserve your attention. This time it is Park Hyo Shin, whom a friend recommended to me a few years ago. I bought his fourth CD, Soul Tree, which at the time was his newest work. Much of it was pretty standard K-pop ballads, but a couple of tracks caught my attention, especially "Hey U Come On":



The distracting sax squeal (probably sampled) is mixed too prominently in this clip, but it's the best version I could find on YouTube; and aside from that cavil, it's a good performance. Park's voice reminds me of various American R&B singers I liked in the 80s, like Jeffrey Osborne or James Ingram.



Park has also performed with other singers, often from outside Korea:





And with other Korean singers. I'm trying to remember where I first heard this song, if it was on a compilation or on one of Park's albums:





The second, of course, is from Disney's Aladdin. (There seem to be a number of versions of this song by K-pop singers on YouTube.)

Park has also been doing some slightly different things, possibly trying to leave his teenybopper idol image behind. (He was only about 20 when he put out his first album, and I was surprised, when I first heard his singing, to learn how young he was.) This clip, for example, shows him improvising and scatting in a radio studio with a keyboard player and drummer, and then singing a trote, an older Korean pop form.



His voice is so distinctive that I doubt he will ever be able to broaden his range very far -- I suppose that's one reason, aside from Show Biz reasons, that he's doing all those duets and collaborations, to participate in some different sounds. I enjoy him enough, though, to want to keep track of his work. There's a lot of clips featuring him on YouTube (including a creepy news item from the time in 2007 he checked into a hospital suffering from stress), so look him up if you find these samples interesting.

Jaurim

It has been a while since I did a post on Korean pop music. Jaurim, an 'alternative' band with a striking female lead singer, had been on my mind, but I couldn't find enough video links by them that I liked enough to recommend. In particular, since I presume the people who read this are mostly, like me, English-speaking non-Koreans, I was looking for videos of some of the songs from their 2005 album of covers, Admiration of Youth. That CD contains interesting versions of a motley bunch of songs, ranging from Phil Collins' "Another Day in Paradise" and Neil Diamond's "Girl You'll Be a Woman Soon" to David Bowie's "Starman" and the Clash's "Lovers Rock." (I was misled a few months ago by their song "Magic Carpet Ride", which I hopefully mistook for Steppenwolf's song of that title.) So far I've only managed to find this live version of Ozzy Osbourne's "Goodbye to Romance":



Then there's "Carnival Amour", an amusing bit of cultural appropriation and gender-bending from their latest album Ruby Sapphire Diamond:



Finally, here's "Cheongchunyechan", the final song (and one of three originals) from Admiration of Youth (which I've also seen translated as Cult of Youth):



I dunno. Kim Yoon-a's voice is more interesting than those of a lot of pop singers, with some unusual colors that keep me coming back for more. On the other hand, I have their three most recent CDs, but feel no need to buy the earlier ones. Some people for whom I've played Jaurim's music really like it, so I thought it might be worth while to mention them here. There's a lot more of them on YouTube, including many live performances (and I think I may like them better live than in their studio recordings), and their CDs are easily available online or even at your local Korean grocery. See what you think.

Big Mama

One of the most remarkable Korean music groups I've encountered is Big Mama: four women, all (I think) in their thirties, and all utterly ravishing singers. I can't remember whether someone recommended them to me, or if I took a chance on a CD I found online. Start with an intricate and witty music video for "Break Away" (note the surprise at about 3:05):



Follow with a live performance of "Woman". The sound level is a bit low, but the power of their singing comes through:



Then the video of one of my favorites among their songs, "Sori":



I think it's a safe bet they started singing in church:



There's a fair amount of other material by them on YouTube, too. Look 'em up.