The history of the Korean popular music industry dates back a century before the beginnings of K-Pop, to when the Korean peninsula was still under Japanese rule. Though Koreans didn't have an independent country, they were still able to use recorded music to assert a distinct cultural identity.
Brother Is a Street Musician chronicles the development of Korean popular music over the first half of the twentieth century, examining both industry trends and talented composers and performers like Nam Insu and Yi Nanyo?ng. Drawing from rare archives of gramophone records and lyric books, musicologist Zhang Eujeong shows how Korean musicians drew from folk traditions to create totally new genres, ranging from comic songs to Western-influenced jazz records. She also includes English translations and detailed analyses of lyrics from some of the era's most popular songs.
A landmark study of Korean music, now available in English for the first time, Brother Is a Street Musician tells the inspiring story of how a colonized people developed their own form of popular music, planting the seeds for an industry that would grow to export Korean culture around the world.
Foreword: O Brother,
There
Thou Art: An Odyssey
to Colonial (Pre)Modernity in Korean Popular
Music
vii
PIL HO KIM
Translator's Note xi
Preface to the 2006 Korean Edition xiii
Preface to the 2026 English
Edition xix
1 Introduction 1
Why Popular
Songs from the First Half of the Twentieth Century?
1
The Birth of the Consumer Public and Popular
Songs 4
Beyond the Limits of Autogenous Generation and Transplantation 8
Recorded Album
History by Era 11
Close Examination: The Faceless Singer 13
2 The Gramophone Record
and the Creation of Popular
Songs 21
Why the Focus on Gramophone Records?
22
The Emergence and Distribution of the Gramophone Record
23
The Characteristics of Domestic Record
Labels and Their
Transformation in Each Era 33
The Creators of Popular
Songs 40
Types of Popular
Songs and Their Characteristics 45
The Creation and Development of Popular
Songs 54
Close Examination: Kisaengs Became Popular
Singers? 86
3 The Consumption of Popular
Songs 91
The Attitude of the Consumer Public 93
The Perspectives of Critics 114
Close Examination: Who Was Korea's
First Singer-Songwriter? 131
4 Literary Expressions of Popular
Sentiment 133
The Search for Pleasure
in Jazz Songs 136
The Comedic Traits of Manyo 144
Fulfillment and Deficiency Expressed in Sinminyo 166
Loss and the Will
to Overcome One's Struggles
as Reflected in Trot 187
Military Songs in an Era of Darkness 228
Close Examination: A Look at Korea's
Very First Popular
Song 236
5 The Historical Status and Significance of Korean Popular
Songs from the First Half of the Twentieth Century
239
Traditional Songs and Their Tendency to Inherit the Past 240
Characteristics for Future
Survival 248
The Future
Path of Popular
Songs 253
Acknowledgments
257
Notes 259
Bibliography 291
Notes on Contributors 303
Index 000
