Set It To A Beat
My last post elicited a response from "Blake" back in the States, in the always happening borough of Brooklyn, who informed me about a project he's working on to create educational Korean hip-hop music through Swagger Lou Press and his company, Flocabulary, which creates hip-hop themed educational material. Any of you that know me also know that hip-hop is one of my many passions, so of course I was intrigued. You can check out one of the songs, "Ahn-nyeong-ha-sam," here on the Flocabulary website (there are also links to other Flocabulary projects, which have been lauded by the likes of Cornel West and Howard Zinn). From what I can gather, the MC is a whitey waygukin like yours truly, living in Korea, most likely in Seoul. The lyrics are especially amusing for any foreigner living over here; I urge my fellow waygukins to take a listen. Incidentally, Korean hip-hop is alive and well, as the musical genre has become a worldwide phenomenon over the past 30 years or so of its life. I am told by my friends that most Korean hip-hop songs are about girls and partying, a little tamer than some of the crime tales that are popular back home. Korean is actually a very aesthetically pleasing language for hip-hop, given that it sounds quite staccato to begin with (at least to an outsider's ear) and there are so many words that rhyme. The only Korean hip-hop megastar that I can recognize is the televisually ubiquitous MC Mong, who seems to be a funny, gimmicky rapper, sort of like an early Eminem without the references to abusing prescription pain medication and fantasies about killing his girlfriend. B-boy culture (break dancing/locking/popping to the uninitiated) is also popular in Korea; there are several b-boy contest specials on Korean TV, mostly held in Seoul I gather. And since there's been a dearth of good hip-hop coming from the States recently (although I urge everyone back home to buy the new Devin the Dude album on Tuesday!), the Korean take on the art form is a welcome break from the same-old-same-old.
posted by TSF in Ulsan | 10:35 PM
4 Comments:
Ha ha, Korean hip-hop is silly. A big difference from the stuff out here in Oakland.
I found these videos with MC Mong on YouTube. It's interesting that the form has been embraced worldwide without carrying any of the cultural baggage that inevitably comes with hip-hop in the states. I guess the musical revolution is nearly complete, time for black folks here to invent yet another form of music.
Ice Cream (I thought maybe they were gonna cover the Raekwon classic!! Oh well.)
I Love You, Oh Thank You
Yeah, it's a far cry from Keak Da Sneak and Too $hort, huh? I think a lot of that has to do with how censored pop music was during the decades of military dictatorship; pretty much every song written in that period is about love, boyfriends and girlfriends and breakups, etc. (which has always made good fodder for pop songs). Obviously, other social differences, such as the social hierarchies of organized crime, make for different subject matter entirely.
Interesting post/blog. Just discovered it. Hmm... just out of curiosity, would you say korean sounded closer to japanese or chinese?
I'm sure this question is well-intentioned, but you should know that most Korean people (and maybe Chinese and Japanese, too) would probably find it a little funny, if not offensive. Before I came over here, I couldn't distinguish between the three, but now it's really easy, especially since I've started studying Korean. They actually sound extremely different from each other; once your ear becomes accustomed to the sounds it's obvious which language is being spoken. Japanese sounds really good in hip-hop too, by the way. Thanks for reading!
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