[KS] Monash Korea Seminar: Hallyu and Korean pop music

[Alison Tokita]

Korean Studies Lecture by Dr Keith Howard

"From ballads to rap and back to dance: Korean pop in the 1990s"

Date: Tuesday, November 8th, 2005, 2pm

Location: Menzies Building #11, SG02

Monash University Clayton Campus

Abstract:

As 1990s dawned, Korea had no pop videos, and had yet to join the global pop
market. Sales were sluggish, and reputations were made from TV and radio
appearances, in which studio bands and studio arrangers ensured that music
remained caught in a conservative time warp dating back to previous decades.
Then, as censorship declined and democracy dawned, rap appeared. This paper
charts what happened in the 1990s: Music videos first appeared,
individualism prospered, and the music market grew at an astonishing rate.
Korea came to lead the way in Asia, and Korean pop music began to be
exported, giving birth to the hallyu phenomenon.


Keith Howard is Reader in Music at SOAS, University of London, and Director,
AHRB Research Centre for Cross-Cultural Music and Dance Performance. He is
the author and editor of 13 books and more than 100 articles on Korean
culture, Korean music and ethnomusicology, including the forthcoming
Preserving Korean Music and Creating Korean Music. He is a frequent
broadcaster on Korean affairs, and has given several hundred guest lectures
and performances in Europe, America, Asia and Australia.

Dr Keith Howard will also give lecture for the School of
Music-Conservatorium on Monday 7 November at 6pm.
'Preserving the Spirits: Shaman Music in a Contemporary Korea'