2. ORIGINS: K-POP
K-pop is an abbreviation of Korean pop which is the musical genre made in
South Korea.
Its cultural origins are from the 1990s
The genre is made up of a great variety of audiovisual elements which is
exposed through their music and music videos being very expressed.
It doesn’t only provide pop music but the wide variety of music, covering
R&B, dance-pop, pop ballad, electronic, rock, hiphop, jazz, classical, folk, dance.
Hip hop however was introduced to Kpop by 1990 being the turning point of
kpop, as they become more conforming to western culture and applied
this to their music, introducing rap, rock, techno and hip hop.
3. KEY ARTISTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
GENRE / AT THE MOMENT (WHO HAS THE
BIGGEST PROFILE?)
G Dragon - Rapper
He is a well known rapper to be fitted
into the genre of ‘k-pop’. He is the
leader of the boy band Big Bang which
is also a well known international k-pop
band which was once featured and won
the international music awards. He as
an individual is a
rapper, singer, songwriter, dancer, lyrici
st, producer, model, endorser and a
fashion icon. Besides being a in a boy
band, he has also gained achievements
as a solo artist from releasing his first
solo album ‘Heartbreaker’ and his recent
one ‘Coup d’etat’ With his solo’s, in
January 2013, he embarked 4 dome
tours in japan and 1st solo world tour.
With such great achievements he has
collaborated with Grammy Awardwinning Missy Elliot an American
musician.
PSY
He is well known for his
international 1 billion hit single
Gangnam Style which went viral in
the year 2012. He helped open
eyes to many countries on the
whole genre of K-pop. He is a
singer, songwriter, rapper, dancer,
record producer and television
personality. With his success with
the single, he was recognised as
the “king of youtube” and “global
superstar”. This allowed him to
release new songs and be
publicised else where but korea.
4. AUDIENCE
The hip hop/rap genre is directed towards the younger generation from to
young adults as a majority because their more open to the explicit
language and portrayals.
However throughout the whole genre of kpop the majority are orientals,
most likely because other oriental countries like China and Japan are
closer to korea and concerts are likely to be held at other oriental
countries rather than world wide.
Due to the improvement of world wide communication and publicity, Kpop
is an international known genre.
5. Hip Hop
Rap
Oriental culture
Dancing
Girls
Hip Hop
The moodboard consists of imaged of both fans
and artists and the majority countries that the
genre is popular in. The genre is famous for being
apart of oriental culture, giving up-beat music to
dance to and for the having a lot of groups. K-pop
is the name summed up for many other genre‟s
like hip hop, pop, rock, indie etc. so the variety is
Boys
6. SUB-GENRES
The other genres link K-pop are known as C-pop (China), J-pop (Japan) and
Mandopop(China).
These are the music genres located in other oriental countries that link to
one another. K-pop links to J-pop most likely because K-pop artists
expanding their audience also make Japanese albums or short versions
of their own Korean songs into Japanese.
PUBLIC PERCEPTION
It isn’t the type of genre open to all cultures, it is gradually becoming
known to the western society more and more by the day or so from
being added to music awards shows nominations, newspapers or
magazines and social networking. It is becoming a mainstream genre to
be listening to however still at the niche side
7. COMPETITION
They include famous featured
artists such as
2NE1, SNSD, MBLAQ etc.
with sell lines advertising „love
advice‟ „interviews‟, movies
and the top hits and music
producers etc. They aim to
relate to the public in a certain
personal way and their music
taste.
8. CROSS MEDIA
K-pop is covered with other media’s such as TV Shows in Korea or in other
oriental countries however they also are mentioned internationally
through YouTube, fan based blogs, websites that feature the new news
of music artists e.g Allkpop, Eatyourkimchi (youtube channel)
RECORD LABELS
YG Entertainment is one of the well known labels because they contain the
artists that are known worldwide e.g Psy, BigBang/Gdragon and 2NE1 who
all have international contact and friends.
SM Entertainment is another label that is a publisher of Pop music. The
groups that go under this label as Super Junior, SNSD, Shinee, f(x), EXO.
9. PREDICTIONS FOR GENRE’S DEVELOPMENT
I think this genre is at the stage of great development with PSY kicking
in, K-pop as been worldwide known. With Youtube and social networking it
can be heard through at a wider scale rather than just asia. The genre will
develop widely as perhaps American artists plan to collab with one of the
korean artists with their songs it’ll open more doors to the genre and south
korea itself. Especially with K-pop adapting western culture e.g rap, hip hop
etc. it allows the people at the favour of those genre’s to gain an open mind
set to listen to k-pop’s version of that genre. It is heading at a positive
direction towards more success as well as more recognition.