MY SONG IS MY POWER: POSTCOLONIAL SOUTH KOREAN POPULAR MUSIC by JARRYN HA Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Music CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY May 2018 ii CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the dissertation of Jarryn Ha candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.* Committee Chair Robert Walser Committee Member Francesca Brittan Committee Member William Deal Committee Member Susan McClary Date of Defense March 26, 2018 * We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. iii Table of Contents • List of Tables iv • List of Figures v • Acknowledgments vii • Abstract ix • Introduction 1 1. “Love, Goodbyes, and Tears, All in Four Beats”: The Birth and Develop- ment of Tŭrotŭ, a Twentieth-Century Korean Popular Song Genre 13 2. Decadent Ruckus, Celebratory Anthems: A History of Korean Rock Bands and Their Music 50 3. “My Song”: Korean Singer-Songwriter Music, the Veneration of Originality, and Musical Assertions of Sociopolitical Agency 89 4. Girls’ Generation: Idol Vocal Groups’ Performance of Adolescent Femininities and “Broken Virtuosity” 128 5. Riding the Airwaves in the Age of the Korean Wave: South Korean Popular Music in the Context of Television 166 • Bibliography 204 iv List of Tables • Table 1.1: The event schedule for the first annual Gwangjingyo Bridge Festival, 26 August 2017 46 • Table 5.1: A summary of artists featured in Sketchbook and Music Bank (both KBS-2TV), aired during the week of 15 June 2015 170 v List of Figures • Fig. 1.1: Lee Nanyoung, “Mokpoŭi Nunmul” (1935) 19 • Fig. 1.2: Nam Insu, “Ibyŏrŭi Pusan Chŏnggŏjang” (1954), beginning of verse 19 • Fig. 1.3: Baeho, “Toraganŭn Samgakji” (1967), mm. 11–41 23 • Fig. 1.4: Nam Jin, “Pin Chan” (1982), mm. 5–25 24 • Fig. 1.5: Park Wangyu, “Chŏnnyŏnŭi Sarang” (1999), excerpt 40 • Fig. 2.1: Shin Jung-hyeon’s 1959 compilation album Hiky Shin Keetah Melodui (Hiky Shin’s Guitar Melodies) 55 • Fig. 2.2: The teaser poster image for PSY’s single “Paektŭpokhaeng” 61 • Fig. 2.3: Poster image for Pumhaeng Chero (Geun-shik Jo, dir., 2002) 62 • Fig. 2.4: Boohwal, “Heeya” (1986), mm. 1–8 68 • Fig. 2.5: YB, “O pilsŭng koria,” hook (mm. 1–8) 82 • Fig. 3.1: An Chi-hwan, “Sarami kkotboda arŭmdawŏ,” opening riff 110 • Fig. 4.1: The syncopated drum pattern from the SNSD remake of “Sonyŏsidae” (2009) 156 • Fig. 4.2: Sonyŏsidae, “Sonyŏsidae” (2009), mm. 9–16 (verse) 158 vi • Fig. 5.1: A still image from Muhan Tojŏn (30 April 2005, MBC-TV) 182 • Fig. 5.2: Still images from the inaugural Muhan Tojŏn music festival 183 • Fig. 5.3: A still image from Hidden Singer (12 October 2013, JTBC) 196 • Fig. 5.4: A still image from Misŭtŏri Ŭmaksho Pokmyŏn Kawang (27 March 2016, MBC-TV) 198 vii Acknowledgments “He lives in the basement and does nothing,” writes English professor and writer Roger Rosenblatt in an essay in The New York Times, quoting his granddaughter’s introduction of him to her fourth-grade class.1 The pursuit of intensive, specialized knowledge often renders the pursuer a “misfit,” to borrow Rosenblatt’s word, as the child’s introduction brilliantly captures. In my case, the intellectual adventure and scholarly training that culminated in this writing represent my first major step as an academic, and I owe many thanks to my professors and mentors who have guided me along the way (thus jump-starting my “basement residency”) as well as those whose love and care have helped me through the process. I am grateful first and foremost for words of guidance and encouragement from Dr. Robert Walser, my advisor and defense committee chair. The members of the committee, Drs. Francesca Brittan, William Deal, and Susan McClary, provided not only advice and direction for the research and writing for this project, but also insights and encouragement that helped me grow as a writer, teacher, and scholar at times when graduate school seemed an endless and futile struggle. I extend my warm thanks to my army of knowledgeable and inquiring readers. My colleagues at Case Western Reserve University spent many hours reading and critiquing portions of this project, and the members of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) heard an early version of Chapter 3 at their annual meeting in February 2017. I am grateful for their warm reception and insightful feedback. 1 Roger Rosenblatt, “The Writer in the Family,” The New York Times, 13 May 2012, p. BR43. viii The time and attention I devoted to research and writing meant I inevitably have had to divert the same from other aspects of life, most often at the expense of my family and friends. Many of them showed seemingly endless patience and grace when my hours were odd and my company may have been less than wholly present, and I am deeply grateful. Most importantly, this project would have not been possible without the unwavering support of my parents, who saw and encouraged the scholar in me before I saw him. I extend my deepest love and gratitude to them. ix My Song is My Power: Postcolonial South Korean Popular Music Abstract by JARRYN HA Ever since South Korea’s popular entertainment industry began to produce musical talents that appeared less than organic and self-made, questions about the legitimacy of those musicians have plagued the products, as they were, of the industry. Those questions concern less the mechanics of what constitutes a musician—a person who engages in music-making—and more the moral judgment that underlies music production, performance, and consumption, regarding what one should expect from a worthwhile musical act. The increasing exposure and popularity of a growing subset of Korean popular music branded as “K-pop” in the West invite the question: what drives so many musicians from South Korea to have constructed a musical tradition that so closely mirrors its Western counterpart yet seems different enough from the latter to attract curious foreign listeners? Questions like this are worth asking because the structure of the post-1990s popular entertainment industry of South Korea, conglomeratized and micromanaged, x effectively ensures that it produces nothing without first vetting and strategically crafting it. The outward-looking, arguably passive mode of reception and standard-setting, I theorize, largely stems from the country’s modern history of having foreign powers determine its political position and fate as a nation: first the Japanese during the colonial occupation that lasted from 1905 to 1945, then the American with their postwar military and cultural influx. This political and cultural climate forms a backdrop to the construction of Korean modernity as well as a Korean sonic national identity that musicians I discuss in this project construct. In this project, I present ways in which different historical and stylistic moments in Korean popular music—the love song (tŭrotŭ), rock of the 1970s onward, folk, and turn-of-the-century idol pop—exhibited what I call the foreign vogue, as well as how the television as the preferred medium for musical consumption reinforces its prevalence. Each instance shows musicians proactively engaging with expressive vocabulary available to them to construct a stylistic compendium and patchwork of meanings. 1 Introduction “But are they even real musicians?” One student in the back of the room scoffed in dismissal, following a presentation on the construction of gender ideals in K-pop. Far from uncommon in discourses about contemporary Korean popular music, the question implies not only scrutiny about musical authenticity but also a hierarchy present in popular culture: the notion that there is a class division (and, by extension, a moral one) of sorts, between music that one finds worthwhile and music that is cheap, inferior, or unworthy of attention and time. The construction of such ideals and institutions does not happen in a vacuum. In the case of contemporary popular music of South Korea, the postcolonial construction of the nation’s modernity following the Japanese occupation and the Korean War shapes the underlying values and ideals, and the structure of the entertainment industry gives rise to the institutional conventions and practices. Scholarly literature on postcolonial musics routinely points to the role of modern historical developments and the history of modernization in shaping the construction of cultural ideals as manifested in aesthetic and musical phenomena of many postcolonial cultures today.1 However, the increasing presence and relevance of South Korean popular music in soundscapes abroad notwithstanding—particularly the popularity of K-pop among young Western listeners—the scholarly literature on the music’s development that does exist rarely covers the musical and cultural choices that musicians make in various 1 See, for example, Moses Chikowero, “‘Our People Father, They Haven’t Learned Yet’: Music and Postcolonial Identities in Zimbabwe, 1980–2000,” Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 34, no. 1 (March 2008): 145–60; Tariq Jazeel, “Postcolonial Spaces and Identities,” Geography, vol. 97, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 60–67; Godwin Sadoh, “Modern Nigerian Music: The Postcolonial Experience,” The Musical Times, vol. 150, no. 1908 (Autumn 2009): 79–84; Imani Sanga, “Postcolonial Cosmopolitan Music in Dar es Salaam: Dr. Remmy Ongala and the Traveling Sounds,” African Studies Review, vol. 53, no. 3 (December 2010): 61–76. 2 genres within Korea’s popular music as well as their implications. However, the upbeat idol pop that constitutes most of K-pop introduced to foreign listeners is only a small subset of the nation’s popular music output, and musicians employ vastly different sonic, compositional, performative, media-presentational, and commercial strategies according to what cultural capitals and affordances they deem desirable for their musical genre and style.