That’s my hand, with “my” mic. I’d just introduced Cross Gene on Simply K-pop. That’s them, performing. I probably shouldn’t have taken that shot. Shh. Don’t tell anyone. (April 2015)

 

What’s all this, then?

Here’s my deal:

Hop in a TARDIS, head back a few decades, and look me up. You’ll find me capping off a lifetime-til-then of hysterical devotion to pop music by pursuing a split major  undergrad degree in Literature (19th Century Novel, Children’s Literature, and Folklore, amongst others) and Music, which I kept to Voice and– significantly– Ethnomusicology. I even spent a year in London, ostensibly to study writing and such, but actually spending an inordinate amount of my time going to the theatre, and immersing myself in the perfection of Britpop in clubs and the record stores of Oxford Street. At the time, I had the idea of being a rock star and author. Failing that, record producer and author. Failing that, not a clue on earth. In the end, I wound up running away and joining the circus, essentially, but that’s another story entirely.

Throughout my years and my travels, I followed pop music as it moved across genres: from   British import to mainstream American radio, until the mainstream shifted to New Jack Swing and hip hop and grunge, and pop music hid out in Country. Eventually, the jingoism and misogyny of Country drove me away from radio entirely, and I hibernated with my Goth and Futurepop and waited for a pop music revival.

Fast-forward to about three years ago: home recuperating from a hospital visit that made me rather ridiculously cranky, I idly flipped through my new cable lineup and found this new channel: Mnet. Now, several years previously, I’d gotten sucked into the trope-fest that is your typical K-drama by the glory of none other than Rain, that handsome devil. So I was already favorably disposed when my television filled with handsome young men with their perfectly-choreographed precision dancing and their equally perfect precision eyeliner.

At long last, I’d discovered where perfectly-crafted, beautifully produced pop music had gone: South Korea. Here was the unabashed devotion to melody and rhythm and the ardent pursuit of the perfect hook. Here were immersive, no-expense-spared concept videos. Here were the elements of style and feel that I hadn’t seen since before MTV forgot what the M stood for. Then my long-abandoned ethnomusicology training kicked in, and I looked deeper, and found an entire culture to explore:  young men and women who trained  so hard and for so long they made Olympic gymnastics hopefuls look like slackers. A dynamic in which idols enabled and encouraged their fans to think of them as real, if mostly untouchable, boy or girlfriends. And only mostly untouchable: K-pop fans enjoy a level of closeness with their idols that would be unthinkable in the West. Constant appearances, fan signs, guerrilla-marketing surprise shows, and opportunities after every show to meet and touch hands.

So here we are. I’ve stopped listening to Western-produced music. My voice training is in shreds because I can’t yet sing in Korean. (I’m learning to read it, though, know a few basic words and phrases, and am working my way up to speaking the language.) When my favourite group is promoting, I take it as a matter of course I’ll be getting up every morning at 4am to watch Korean music shows online. I spent ten days in Korea last spring, and will be heading back in a few weeks for a two-week trip. I’ve spent an entire day at a K-pop show taping, and even, with one of my friends, got to introduce a group on Korean TV. I’m planning a book about Hallyu from a Western perspective. I’ve got it bad, in other words, and it’s really good.

My purpose for this blog, then, is to develop the themes for that book. There’s much about Hallyu that confuses and sometimes even enrages me: the misogyny, the exploitation, the merciless cruelty of some fans who take possessiveness over their idols too far. But there’s more that I love, and that draws me in to study and dissect it. I wish constantly I had my old ethnomusicology professor, Dr. Riddle, here to bat around ideas. That man’s devotion to Chinese opera was legendary. But sadly, he died many years ago, so I need somewhere else to run things up theoretical flagpoles and see who salutes. I hope you’ll stick around and watch with me.