[KS] Jazz in Korea

Thu Nov 17 13:27:00 EST 2011

When considering the introduction of jazz to Korea in the 1920s and 1930s,
it would surely be worth checking out studies of jazz in Japan (such as E.
Taylor Atkins' Blue Nippon) and down in Shanghai (Andrew Jones's 'Yellow
Music') (I'm writing this from a conference, so cannot check details).
Taylor Atkins in his book and a couple of subsequent articles makes a
convincing case for not thinking of jazz in East Asia as a simple copy of
American jazz; with this in mind, although some American groups are known
to have toured the region (including Korea) in the 1920s, I would be
interested in any information about Korean musicians who took up jazz, and
where they learnt it. The are some SPs of the genre often called 'shin
minyo' from the 1930s where the backing bands are more jazz oriented than
anything else, and by then I assume they were being recorded in Seoul;
there is also some information emerging about Korean musicians working in
popular/jazz groups in Osaka. But, does this mean that Korean musicians had
learnt jazz in Japan or down in Shanghai and then continued to pay it when
they returned to Korea? (- at the moment I am aware of absolutely nothing
that makes the connection between Korean musicians and Shanghai, but note
that an unknown number of Japanese musicians were working there in the
1930s, a link that seems to have remained through the 1950s and 1960s after
the Shanghai music and film producers shifted operations to Hong Kong).

Keith Howard

2011/11/17 <koreanstudies-request at koreaweb.ws>

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> <<------------ KoreanStudies mailing list DIGEST ------------>>
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> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Re: Jazz in Korea (johnfrankl at yahoo.com)
>   2. Re: What was it like to be Koreans in 1905? (johnfrankl at yahoo.com)
>   3. Part-Time English Editor Needed for the Korea Journal
>      (Korea Journal)
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: johnfrankl at yahoo.com
> To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:05:14 -0800 (PST)
> Subject: Re: [KS] Jazz in Korea
> I have heard a few times that Josephine Baker also performed on the
> peninsula.
>
> A search for "jazz" and "cafe" in the online versions of major daily
> newspapers will likely turn up a good amount of information, including
> conservatives' bemoaning the pernicious influence of both keywords.
>
> Best,
>
> John Frankl
>
> --- On *Wed, 11/16/11, Robinson, Michael E. <robime at indiana.edu>* wrote:
>
>
> From: Robinson, Michael E. <robime at indiana.edu>
> Subject: Re: [KS] Jazz in Korea
> To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Date: Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 5:39 AM
>
> Jazz came to Korea by the mid to late 1920s.  Paul Winfield's band toured
> a number of times.  There were sporadically Jazz features on radio in the
> 1930s but it was not popular in the mainstream sense of pop songs.  There
> were Jazz Tabangs in the late 1960s when I first went to Korea, but not as
> many as Classical.
>
> Mike Robinson
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: koreanstudies-bounces at koreaweb.ws<http://mc/compose?to=koreanstudies-bounces@koreaweb.ws>[mailto:
> koreanstudies-bounces at koreaweb.ws<http://mc/compose?to=koreanstudies-bounces@koreaweb.ws>]
> On Behalf Of John Eperjesi
> Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2011 7:46 PM
> To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws<http://mc/compose?to=koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws>
> Subject: [KS] Jazz in Korea
>
> Hi Everybody, I just joined the group, so thought I should introduce
> myself.  My name is John Eperjesi and I'm an Assistant Professor of English
> at Kyung Hee in Seoul.  I received my Phd in cultural studies from Carnegie
> Mellon and published a book on U.S. imperialism in Asia and the Pacific
> ("The Imperialist Imaginary").
>
> I am planning to interview the owner of All That Jazz, which opened up in
> Itaewon in 1976, and I understand it is Korea's first jazz club.
>
> I'm curious, what was the attitude toward jazz in Korea in the 1970s?
> Did the authoritarian regime see it as a decadent western import like rock
> and roll?  Who was into jazz?  So I'm generally interest in the politics
> surrounding the culture.
>
> Any important Korean jazz artists from that period?
>
> I did read that jazz came to Korea in the 1920s, so if anyone has broader
> historical narrative, that would be appreciated.
>
> btw, I am studying Korean, but am far from fluent so unfortunately can't
> read Korean documents.
>
> Thanks in advance!
> John
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: johnfrankl at yahoo.com
> To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:28:23 -0800 (PST)
> Subject: Re: [KS] What was it like to be Koreans in 1905?
> I agree with Don, and always find the accounts from those on the ground in
> the early-1900s interesting and valuable.
>
> Having said that, however, I also find the undifferentiated approach to
> "being Korean in 1905" a bit problematic and outdated. We have come a long
> way in our understandings of non-nation-based (or non-minjok-based)
> identities in the last couple of decades. Koreans--like everyone else in
> the world--experience history as individuals, too. And class, gender,
> religion, region, and simple individual situations and proclivities often
> have more to do with identity and, as such, "what it was (and is) like to
> be a Korean" at any given time.
>
> Best,
>
> John
>
>
>
> --- On *Wed, 11/16/11, don kirk <kirkdon at yahoo.com>* wrote:
>
>
> From: don kirk <kirkdon at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [KS] What was it like to be Koreans in 1905?
> To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Date: Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 7:54 AM
>
> Fascinating, little known material.
> Thanks,
> Don
>
> --- On *Wed, 11/16/11, Kwang On Yoo <lovehankook at gmail.com>* wrote:
>
>
> From: Kwang On Yoo <lovehankook at gmail.com>
> Subject: [KS] What was it like to be Koreans in 1905?
> To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Date: Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 6:05 AM
>
> Hello All,
>
> 106 years ago today, on November 17th, 1905, Japan forced the Eulsa
> Japan-Korea Protectorate Treaty (을사늑약,乙巳勒約) upon Korea. This so called
> treaty effectively deprived Korea of it's diplomatic sovereignty and made
> Korea a protectorate. The Eulsa Japan-Korea Protectorate Treaty was the one
> of the first steps culminating in the complete annexation of Korea by Japan
> on August 22, 1910,  leading to 35 years of Japanese colonial rule over
> Korea.
>
> The unseen effects of the treaty had dramatically altered everyday life of
> ordinary Koreans,even that of the Emperor Kojong, as sampled from three
> books in English:
>
>
> 1. The Passing of Korea, Homer B. Hulbert, 1906
> "During the year 1905 there was no such thing as justice for the Korean,
> either from the private Japanese or from the officials. The military put
> their hands upon eight (8) square miles of the most valuable land near
> Seoul, simply for the building of barracks and parade grounds for twelve
> thousands men, when experts affirm that one-sixteenth (1/16) of that space
> would have been ample. That land could be bought in open market for six
> million dollars, but the Japanese knew the government could not pay a
> proper price so they gave two hundred thousand dollars to cover the cost of
> removal only. And this is all the Koreans could ever hope to get. The most
> elementary laws of human right and justice have been daily and hourly
> trampled under foot."
> (This is the present site of the US Forces Yongsan Garrison and Yongsan
> High School, Seoul)
>
> "A Korean boatman attempted to go under the bridge at Pyengyang while it
> was under construction. This was forbidden, but there was no proper sign to
> indicate the fact. The Japanese railway coolies threw him out of his boat.
> He clung to some timbers in the water, but the Japanese beat his hands with
> railroad bolt until his fingers were broken, and he fell off and drowned."
>
> "In the city of Seoul, almost within a stone's-throw of the Japanese
> Consulate, a Korean widow came to the house of the writer and begged him to
> buy her house for five cents, and put his name on the door-post, because
> she has reason to believe that unless she
> sold the house for half price to a Japanese living next door he would
> under mine the wall of her house and let it fall upon her head.
> The Koreans say deliberately that time and again naked Japanese have run
> into Korean houses and shocked the Korean women
> outrageously, simply in order to make the owner willing to sell out at any
> prices."
>
> "The Country was flooded with counterfeit nickles, made largely by
> Japanese in Osaka, and brought over to Korea by the millions."
>
> "Meanwhile the Korean merchants were going to the wall because they could
> not meet their notes, owing to the tightness of the money market. Some of
> them were trying to save themselves by borrowing from Japanese usurers at
> six per cent a month. At this
> most painful juncture the Emperor proposed to lend some three hundred
> thousand dollars of his private funds to his suffering merchants; but when
> he sent cheque to the Japanese bank, where his funds were deposited, the
> Japanese Adviser ordered payment stopped, and would not let him draw out
> his private funds even to help the merchants in their desperate straits.
> There is no language too strong in which to denounce this outrage."
>
> 2. The Foreign Destruction of Korean Independence, Carole Cameron Shaw,
> 2007
> "It is well known that the Japanese maintenance of order cost more than *twelve
> thousand Korean their lives* before the annexation in 1910.
> *Less known is the Knife Law, where every five Korean households were
> ordered to use one kitchen life. When the knife was not in use, it was
> required to hang publicly from a hook so it was in view of the Japanese
> police at all times. *That of course was one of the lesser restrictions
> imposed upon the Korean population"
>
> "This account appears in the official Memorandum admitted to President
> Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, by Kim Ku*, ***(김구,金九)and
> the Provisional Government recently formed that year in Shanghai, China.
> Author located this document in an old document box, in the basement of
> Widner Library at Harvard University. Among other things the memo
> documented a broad list of grievances against Japanese policy in Korea."
>
> (The Japanese devised this measure to prevent Koreans from donating their
> knives to the Eulsa Euibyeong {을사의병, 乙巳義兵, Righteous Army against Eulsa
> Treaty} to use to forge new weapons.)
>
> The Tragedy of Korea, Fredrick Arthur McKenzie, 1908
> "One act on the part of the Japanese surprised most of those who knew them
> best. In Japan itself opium-smoking is prohibited under the heaviest
> penalties, and elaborate precautions are taken to shut opium in any of its
> forms out of the country. Strict anti-opium laws were also enforced in
> Korea under the old administration. The Japanese, however, now permitted
> numbers of their people to travel through the interior of Korea selling
> morphia to the natives. In the north-west in particular this caused quite a
> wave
> of morphia-mania."
>
> (Foreigners fared no better, especially religious foreigners.)
> "It is difficult, for instance, to restrain one's indignation when a
> missionary lady tells you of how she was walking along the street when a
> Japanese soldier hustled up against her and deliberately struck her in the
> breast.The Roman Catholic bishop was openly insulted and struck by Japanese
> soldiers in his own cathedral, and nothing was done."
>
> It was indeed a trying time for Koreans, but yet, still darker days were
> ahead of them.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Kwang-On Yoo
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Korea Journal" <kj at unesco.or.kr>
> To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:00:44 +0900
> Subject: [KS] Part-Time English Editor Needed for the Korea Journal
>
> ******
>
> The *Korea Journal*, quarterly Korean Studies journal with a half century
> of history, has an immediate need for a copy editor in its Seoul office. *
> ***
>
> ** **
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> *Job Description:****
>
> - Editing and revising articles for the journal ****
>
> ** **
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> *Qualifications:****
>
> - Must be able to read, write, and speak English at the level of a native
> speaker. ****
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> - Intermediate Korean language level is required.****
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> - Must possess a bachelor's degree or higher.****
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> - Academic editing experience and basic understanding in Korean Studies
> are highly preferred. ****
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> - Must hold a working or student visa for Korea.****
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> * Working conditions:****
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-- 
Keith Howard
Professor of Music, SOAS
Thornhaugh Street, London WC1H 0XG, UK
kh at soas.ac.uk; 0207 8984687; 07805 048801
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