Hometown Songs:
Chinese Korean Pop
The majority
of the Koreans in China migrated to the northeastern provinces in the
first half of the twentieth century seeking land or jobs. Since 1949,
they have been classified as one of China's fifty-five minority nationalities
and, in accordance with minority autonomy laws, given the right to maintain
and develop their own culture. Nearly half of the 1.9 million Chinese
Koreans live in the autonomous prefecture of Yanbian, bordering North
Korea, where state-supported Korean language media, publishing, and
a cultural network headed by the Song and Dance Troupe are meant to
serve their musical needs.
* By ROWAN PEASE
A decade after Beijing and Seoul
restored diplomatic relations, Yanbian Koreans can watch South Korean
satellite TV, youngsters can buy the latest South Korean kayo
t'op (pop songs), and their parents can sing along to South
Korean ballads in noraebang
(karaoke singing rooms). Those unfamiliar with Korean culture
have alternatives elsewhere in China: the famous Chinese rock singer,
Cui Jian, is a Chinese Korean. As Pak Hongs(breve)ong, head of the cultural
programming department of Yanbian TV told me in July 1999: 'Young people
feel no need for a Chinese Korean culture. This is a complicated issue
because of the North-South divide of the peninsula, but they feel they
have their own culture in Korea.'
In the early 1980s, with reforms that followed the Cultural Revolution,
pop music from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the West became available, and
Yanbian Koreans were once more able to hear music from North Korea
and Korean popular songs (ryuhaengga)
of the 1930s and 1940s. In 1984, Yanbian TV held their first pop singers'
competition, won by a drummer from the Song and Dance Troupe, Hy(breve)on
Ch'(breve)ol. Throughout the 1990s, Yanbian musicians and musicologists
were preoccupied with creating a local popular alternative to the
dominant South Korean style, a 'Korean music with Chinese characteristics',
using local flavour 'updated for the modern age'. Folksongs, or Yanbian
songs of the 1950s and 1960s, were sometimes re-packaged in the new
style, crooned with synthesizer accompaniment and disco beats. Composers
and singers, amongst them S(breve)ong Kihwa, Hy(breve)on Ch'(breve)ol,
Ku Ry(breve)onok,
Han Haey(breve)on, H(breve)o Kwang, and Kim S(breve)ongsam, adapted
the ballad style to local subjects -- the hometown, love of family
or school, emigration, or exam pressure. A surprise success was Kim
Insuk, a singer known as 'Granny Swallow' after her trademark song
'The Swallow's Return' (Chebiga
torawanne, by Pak Hangnim). Kim won a TV competition in
1991, aged 60, and four years later released a cassette of old ryuhaengga,
local songs, and North Korean songs (Chaebi
Halm(breve)oni Kim Insuk). She used the folksong vocal
style known locally as t'ary(breve)ong
-- full throated, with some glottal articulation -- accompanied
by drum machine and synthesizer. 
Granny Swallow
Kim Insuk.
CASSETTE PUBLISHED BY NATIONALITIES AUDIO-VISUAL PUBLISHING.
Dance music now dominates the South Korean charts, but
this style has proved difficult to adapt in Yanbian. The Yanbian Chinese
Musicians' Association still attempts to force Yanbian media to promote
politically correct music on shows such as Maeju
ilga (One Song Per Week) and Toyo
Mudae (Saturday Stage). Programme makers told me that it
is hard for composers to meet audience demands using 'local flavour';
the Musicians' Association, meanwhile, protests at broadcasts of music
they see as imitative of South Korean pop. In 1999, Yanbian TV broadcasted
material from a singer-songwriter recently arrived from Beijing, Pak
S(breve)ongny(breve)ong. A self-styled maverick, Pak's style mixes laddish
Beijing rock with guttural rap in the style of the South Korean band
Clon. His best-known
song, 'Champion', written
to support the local football team, was published on a cassette of the
same title. Pak refused to join any local official unit, claiming on
his cassette that he wrote 'the music of an individual character for
which people thirst'. In April 2001, Pak said that he had given up writing
songs, and had opened a teahouse instead.
The Association of Yanbian Pop Singers, headed by Hy(breve)on
Ch'(breve)ol, attempts to support local pop singers who would otherwise
'just run about nightclubs like vagrants'. In July 1999, Hy(breve)on
told me they were struggling because of scant resources and little local
interest and, four years after the association was set up, half the
original forty members had emigrated and/or given up singing.
In the last year, Yanbian TV has broadcast a few local
rap singers on its shows. Mainly, these have trained at the private
Pop Music Training Centre run By Kim S(breve)ongsam and H(breve)o Kwang
to supply nightclubs with cover singers. With dyed hair and baggy South
Korean jackets and pants, singers copy moves from South Korean boy bands
and look strangely out of place on local TV stages, framed by plastic
flowers and thatched cottages as backdrops. It is unclear whether they
will gain the acceptance of cultural officials or audiences who are
indifferent to local identity. And, in such a situation, it is difficult
to imagine the future for Chinese Korean pop. *
in
Asia