Music and Korean America

172 Lie

Chapter 8 Music and Korean America

John Lie

Sawada Kenji, Viktor Tsoi, Cui Jian. These three names evoke little or no flicker of recognition in the anglophone world, and surely among contemporary Korean Americans as well. Yet they are arguably the founding figures of rock music in Japan, Russia, and China, respectively, and they are all diasporic or ethnic Koreans. As the lead singer of Za Taigāsu (The Tigers), Sawada was a major figure in what the Japanese called “group sounds,” or the Japanese appro- priation of the Beatles and other soft-rock British and American boy groups, in the late 1960s.1 He would go on to have a superstar career as a solo singer, even breaking into the French charts in the 1970s.2 Tsoi pioneered rock music in the Soviet Union in the 1980s and had a profound impact on youth culture.3 His early death in 1990, at twenty-eight years old, added to his legend—perhaps appropriately for a rock star—and by 1999 he had been canonized in a stamp issued by the Russian government.4 Cui is frequently identified as the “father of Chinese rock” and became a household name by the late 1980s.5 Like Tsoi, who was associated with protests against the calcified Soviet government, Cui would be linked to the protest movement that culminated in the 1989 Tianan men Massacre.6 Ethnic Korean presence in popular music is by no means restricted to rock ‘n’ roll. Popular music genres, ranging from rock to jazz, folk to classical, in many countries feature notable diasporic Korean performers. This state of affairs is clearest in Japan where the history of popular music is inextricably

1 Jun’ichi Isaomae [for what it’s worth, the current scholarly convention in Asian Studies would be to list surname first, so it should be Isaomae Jun’ichi], Za Taigāsu (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2013). 2 Given the pervasive ethno-racial discrimination against the Korean minority population in Japan, many Zainichi performers, as for Zainichi in general, employed Japanese-sounding pseudonyms. Most Japanese fans therefore do not realize or recognize Sawada, or virtually any Zainichi music stars, as ethnic or diasporic Koreans in Japan. Symptomatically, Sawada’s autobiography is silent on his ethnic origins. See Kenji Sawada [ditto as 1 above], Waga na wa Jurī (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1986). 3 Marianna Tsoi, Viktor Tsoi (Moscow: Lean, 2001). 4 Iurii Aĭzenshpis, Viktor Tsoi i drugie (Moscow: Eksmo, 2011). 5 Andreas Steen, Der lange Marsch des Rock ‘n’ Roll (Hamburg: LIT Verlag, 1996). 6 Daizaburō Hasizume [ditto as 1], Tsi Jen [Cui Jian] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1994).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004335332_009 Music and Korean America 173 intertwined with Zainichi (ethnic Koreans in Japan).7 The relationship is almost akin to that of African Americans and us popular music: few would dare downplay the influence of African Americans when they recount the history of us popular music.8 But as the global blockbuster YouTube video “Gangnam Style” demonstrated in 2012—and anyone with a global perspective on rock ‘n’ roll might have gleaned—global popular music has a healthy dose of Korean representation and participation. In the mid-2010s, K-pop—export- oriented South Korean popular music—is about as well known as anything Korean in the wider world.9 Korean Americans—the widely lauded “model minority” in the United States—stand therefore as something of an anomaly in the global Korean dias- pora. Few Americans, including Korean Americans, would be able to name a single notable Korean American popular musician. Unsurprisingly, there is virtually no scholarly or popular writings on the topic of Korean Americans and popular music. In contrast, European classical music—henceforth, classical music—has become something close to an ethnic music for many Korean Americans, especially among those who emigrated to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. The strange juxtaposition—very little association with us popular music but avid participation in Western classical music—lies at the heart of Korean American life.

European Classical Music

In the globalized, if still largely Eurocentric, sphere of classical music, numer- ous expatriate South Koreans have made their mark: from composers Isang Yun and Unsuk Chin to performers Sumi Jo and Kyung-wha Chung. Not only have there been an overwhelming number of South Korean nationals pursuing musical training and schooling in Europe, the United States, and Japan, but some have also reached the summit of recognition and influence, such as Myung-whun Chung, the former conductor of the Bastille Opera.10 Indeed, a stereotype linking ethnic Koreans with classical music has developed around the world.

7 John Lie, Zainichi (Koreans in Japan) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); An- Jong Song (or Song An-Jong), Zainichi ongaku no 100-nenshi (Tokyo: Seidosha, 2009). 8 Peter Van der Merwe, Origins of the Popular Style, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). 9 John Lie, K-Pop (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015). 10 Korean Culture and Information Service, K-Classics (Seoul: Korean Culture and Informa- tion Service, 2011).