I read law with a girl from Korea. She and I quickly became fast friends. She introduced me to Korean culture and I assisted her with grammar and writing trying to get her on Law Review.
Once while we were watching a Korean broadcast of a pop musical performance, I commented that Korean pop music was primitive. Oh boy did she object.
However, I stuck to my position, it was primitive. The culture and civilization is not at all primitive. In fact it’s substantially more sophisticated than most western cultures. However, the pop music, the stuff the kids like, is based on an American model and they haven’t got it right. To my jaded ear, the rhythms and melodies of most Asian made “imitation American” pop music are simplistic; almost childish.
What do you all think? Is Asian Pop primitive or is on a direction all its own rendering it independent of comparisons to American Rock and Roll.
My hearing is influenced by sounds such as Lou Reed, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, post Sgt Pepper Beatles, and a whole wide plethora of underground music only heard on 1960’s college FM stations. Possibly I am being unfair to the Asian effort?
Once while we were watching a Korean broadcast of a pop musical performance, I commented that Korean pop music was primitive. Oh boy did she object.
However, I stuck to my position, it was primitive. The culture and civilization is not at all primitive. In fact it’s substantially more sophisticated than most western cultures. However, the pop music, the stuff the kids like, is based on an American model and they haven’t got it right. To my jaded ear, the rhythms and melodies of most Asian made “imitation American” pop music are simplistic; almost childish.
What do you all think? Is Asian Pop primitive or is on a direction all its own rendering it independent of comparisons to American Rock and Roll.
My hearing is influenced by sounds such as Lou Reed, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, post Sgt Pepper Beatles, and a whole wide plethora of underground music only heard on 1960’s college FM stations. Possibly I am being unfair to the Asian effort?
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Re: Pop music in the Pacific Rim - - - -
Sun, November 13, 2005 - 6:41 PM
Perhaps not primitive but a new, refreshing realm where music is concern. East Asian kids are very much influenced by the superpowers but they make it better out there. Guess every continent has its own originality where music is concern.
East Asians are very much different from the North/South Asian, South East Asians...but at the end of the day, pop musical performance caters to a niche group of kids.
mmmm....interesting dialogue ;P -
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Re: Pop music in the Pacific Rim - - - -
Mon, November 14, 2005 - 6:33 AMLong long long long ago I said the same thing about Reggae.
That was back when Jimmie Cliff was still among us and the movie "The Harder They Come" was still new.
Yah that was a while ago.
It seemed to me that the genre was sort of like the music that Bill Haley and the Comets had prior made just with an Island back beat.
Reggae has (I think) become stuck, failing to evolve. After thirty or so years it's merely repeating itself lacking enough inherrent diversity to generate new patterns. It seems to me that the only any music from that genre manages to achieve any thing like "freshness" is through attrition. The audience must be re-plenished. Each crop of new-comers dosen't recognize the repetition so starkly.
I haven't followed Korean or Japan pop closely enough to have a sense of whether it's evolving. I have however observed a shift in the use of tone.
In times past ( I'm going back about 20 or more years) the western ear would hear the melody as off key. This because traditional Chinese and Japanese musical scales are very different from Western scales. However, the Pop in the rim seems to be accomodating the Western scale to go along with its imitation of western music.
Is this the same thing you hear??
If so would you call that evolution or an unfortunate loss of traditional culture?
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