K-Pop As a Means to an End Among Thai Youth: Korean Wave As Costume, Food, and Image Keith Howard and Great Lekakul, SOAS, University of London
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ISSN: 2635-6619 (Online) Journal homepage: https://culturenempathy.org/ K-Pop as a Means to an End among Thai Youth: Korean Wave as Costume, Food, and Image Keith Howard and Great Lekakul, SOAS, University of London To cite this article: Keith Howard and Great Lekakul, “K-Pop as a Means to an End among Thai youth: Korean Wave as Costume, Food, and Image.” Culture and Empathy 1(1-4): 18-33, DOI: 10.32860/26356619/2018/1.1234.0003. To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.32860/26356619/2018/1.1234.0003 Published online: 8 Oct 2018. Submit your article to this journal Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://culturenempathy.org/terms-and-conditions CULTURE AND EMPATHY Vol. 1, No. 1-4, pp. 18-33 https://doi.org/10.32860/26356619/2018/1.1234.0003 K-Pop as a Means to an End among Thai youth: Korean Wave as Costume, Food, and Image Keith HOWARD, SOAS, University of London Great LEKAKUL, SOAS, University of London Abstract Assessments of the impact of K-pop beyond Korea, and of other aspects within the broader Korean Wave, often focus on groups of fans. The research reported here began from an intention to move beyond fandom, encouraged by a challenge to demonstrate that ARTICLE HISTORY members of the British Thai community, aware of their heritage in Received 10 August 2018 Southeast Asia but growing up in the eclectic cultural mix of Revised 24 September 2018 Accepted 30 September 2018 contemporary Britain, were interested in K-pop. We respond to academic literature on popular culture, on specialized music and dance training, and on the musical tastes of diasporic groups, by working with teenagers and students who study and perform Thai KEYWORDS classical music and dance in two organizations, the Thai Music Korean Wave, K-Pop, Thai Circle in the UK and the Thai Dance Academy. We present the Youth, Globalization, results of a survey, and contextualize our findings by exploring Glocalization, recent Thai literature and television programs about Korean Wave Polymusicality, Multiculturalism and K-pop. Introduction Assessments of the impact of K-pop beyond Korea, and of other aspects within the broader Korean Wave, usually focus on groups of fans. These can be identified through festivals and events, or can be self-selecting respondents to questionnaires. The research reported here began from a desire to move beyond fandom. We were challenged to demonstrate that members of the British Thai community, aware of their heritage in Southeast Asia but growing up in the eclectic cultural mix of contemporary Britain, had any interest in K-Pop. Our response was to narrow the lens of our study further, to explore knowledge of K-Pop among teenagers and students learning and performing Thai classical music and dance in two London-based organizations, the Thai Music Circle in the UK and the Thai Dance Academy. To what extent would students of Thai classical music and dance associate with K-pop? This paper reports our findings. CONTACT Keith Howard � [email protected] © 2018 Culture and Empathy CULTURE AND EMPATHY 19 Setting the Scene A body of discourse sits behind our choice to work with British Thai specialists in Thai music and dance. First, most research on the global impact of K-pop has explored fandom, the fans who Ien Ang (1985) states comprise enthusiastic audiences and consumers of cultural products. Fans can be defined through participation, hence, are those who display fandom in overt and public ways. Literature once tended to characterize fans as obsessive, or as loners who become frenzied within crowds of like-minded enthusiasts, perhaps suffering from contagion (e.g., Jenson 1992). More recent accounts soften this characterization and see fans as individuals engaged through social participation (Duffett 2013; Williams 2016), and this is seen in studies on K-pop in Thailand (Siriyuvasak and Shin 2007; Käng 2012, 2014a and 2014b). However, concentrating on fans can skew analyses on consumption: fans self- select, and we may miss “passive fans” (or “passive consumers”, Rhein 2000) – consumers who do not overtly demonstrate behavior associated with fandom. Second, studies of Western conservatoires often report an expectancy of monoculturalism (Kingsbury 1988; Nettl 1995), with teachers arguing that the commitment required to master a Western art music instrument and its repertoire precludes any diversion towards genres such as pop or jazz or, indeed, Thai classical music. Again, ethnomusicologists often make distinctions between Western art music and traditional musics elsewhere, with the structures and grammar of each considered sufficiently distinct to limit a musician from a given cultural group gaining high competence in Western music. Discussions of difference, representation and appropriation couple to the observation that Western art music can struggle to gain acceptance when local art traditions are strong (Born and Hesmondhalgh 2000; White 2012), and this would appear pertinent to Thailand (Miller and Williams 1998). At the same time, however, the ethnomusicological concept of bimusicality has broadened as crosscultural and intercultural expert musicians have emerged (Hood 1995; Trimillos 2004). Globalization has brought an awareness of variety which, coupled to the changing economics of production, has increased musicians’ polymusicality (Cottrell 2004, 2010). Likewise, a Thai studying traditional Thai music or dance (or a Korean studying traditional Korean music or dance; see Howard 2010, 209–11) masters old and new repertoires, but also listens to multiple pop musics as well as Beethoven’s symphonies. Polymusicality has an implication for studies of diasporas. So far, studies typically focus on music and dance traditions of homelands and adopted lands (Reyes 1999; Um 2005; Grau 2002, 2008; O’Shea 2007; Meduri 2008; Zheng 2010), but the broader spectrum of musics coexisting within culturally diverse environments needs consideration. At the very least, musical tastes and practices have today become multicultural, intercultural or transcultural (Schippers 2010, 30–31). Hence, British Thai teenagers studying Thai classical music and dance have interests beyond the duality of Britain and Thailand. Third, contemporary K-pop challenges standard models of what the music industry is (Howard 2014). Such models have long considered that music is made by creative artists; scouts find artists to sign, managers take artists under their wing; engineers mix and 20 Keith Howard and Great Lekakul producers package recordings; promoters and distributors, consolidators and retailers bring music to its audiences. The industry may be argued to have “colonized leisure” (Chapple and Garofalo 1977); it has its hooks, standards and formulae, “imposing conglomerate control” through major labels, and forcing conformity to “bland apolitical” easy-listening formats that “order potential chaos” (Hirsch 1972; George 1988; Manuel 1991). It seeks to protect revenue streams generated from sales of products, arguing that since it underpins the livelihoods of a diverse array of creative minds governments should counter “piracy” and peer-to-peer file sharing. While the international music industry is routinely considered to be declining, Korea remains vibrant, because its industry works with new models. That this is so is shown by the success of K-pop as a core component of the Korean Wave. The domestic market was never dominated by international majors, and, as it began to expand in the 1990s, it had to face both the 1997 Asian economic crisis and the digital revolution. One of its key reactions was the development of the now-familiar entertainment companies, in respect of which, The Economist reported on October 26, 2013, SM Entertainment’s market capitalization stood at 780 billion won, YG Entertainment at 515 billion won, and JYP Entertainment at 120 billion won; SM Entertainment’s profits were 9,300,000,000 won in 2009, 25,600,000,000 won in 2010 and 20,300,000,000 won in 2011 (Seoul Sinmun, April 4, 2012). Business-to-business (B2B) models have emerged (Oh and Park 2012) that generate revenue less from recorded music sales than through the promotion of additional/other products. Although Thai teenagers consume K-pop, they rarely buy music recordings, rather, investing in Korean fashion, make-up, food, and technology. Thus, and as we signal in the title to this paper, K-pop is a means to an end. The Thai Music Circle in the UK and the Thai Dance Academy The Thai Music Circle in the UK was formed in June 1991 under the patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. Its first performance was held on July 6, 1991 at Taplow Court in Berkshire to accompany an exhibition of photographs taken by His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej (who, until his recent death, was the longest serving monarch in the world). Its first members were recruited through advertising at the Royal Thai Embassy in London, at the South Bank Centre, and by word of mouth. It is the only fully-fledged Thai music ensemble in Europe, and has performed in Denmark, France, Ireland, The Netherlands and Poland, as well as throughout Britain; it has released two double CD compilations, in 2004 and 2010. It was established primarily to teach and perform Thai classical music, and to this end Princess Sirindhorn donated instruments and supported a series of musicians to work with the Circle while studying for postgraduate degrees in London and York. Of its membership of more than 40 at the time of our survey of the Circle (February 2014), almost half were teenagers and students. Our respondents consisted of 13 teenagers who were learning Thai music, and six university students who performed with the Circle at the time. The Thai Dance Academy essentially began in 1997, when Poranee Johnston was asked to teach a small group of Thai children to perform for cultural events. Its formal establishment came four years later, in 2001, when Johnston and a group of teachers and dancers choreographed and mounted a dance drama, “Manora”, at London’s Bloomsbury CULTURE AND EMPATHY 21 Theatre.