[Culture Op-Ed] Are Popular Culture Trends Driven by Public “Taste”?

If the title above were a “misunderstanding,” many people would be horrified. It would sound as though every trend up to now had been created regardless of popular taste. It could even sound like saying that BTS, Girls’ Generation, and TWICE did not become stars because the public liked them, but were forcibly made popular by some “unknown force.”

But that is not the point. The point is that “taste” alone—that is, the fact that the public likes something—changes nothing by itself. That “taste” has to generate “money” for the product to gain vitality and become a trend. Put that way, it almost sounds like stating the obvious. After all, who likes TWICE without “consuming” TWICE in some way? Even if someone does not buy CDs, almost everyone listens via streaming, and those streams lead to advertising revenue. Once broad popularity is secured, ad model deals follow and create additional income. There are countless ways for a popular artist to make “money.”

But there are also many cases where that does not happen. The further back in time one goes, the more common such cases become. The competitive relationship between the two major popular music genres that divided the 1930s—new folk songs and trot—is one such example. Let us look at them one by one.

The center of the popular music market in the 1930s changed dramatically in just four years—was that really the public’s choice?

Most people have probably heard of trot, but many likely have no idea what new folk songs were. In brief, trot was an imported music form that was nearly identical to, or effectively the same as, Japanese enka, while new folk songs were a hybrid genre based on traditional Gyeonggi folk songs, combined with various foreign musical trends and instruments. And until the mid-1930s—roughly a quarter century after the Japan-Korea Annexation—the center of Korean popular music was still occupied by new folk songs.

That is clear even from the “Final Results of the Record Singer Popularity Vote” published in the October 1935 issue of the monthly magazine Samcheolli. In the men’s division, Chae Gyuep ranked first, followed by Kim Yonghwan and Go Boksu. In the women’s division, Wang Subok came in first, followed by Seonwu Ilseon and Lee Nanyeong. Aside from Chae Gyuep, who came from a classical vocal background and sang art songs, and Lee Nanyeong, who unusually sang jazz-style popular songs, these were generally singers grounded in new folk songs. This becomes even clearer when one looks beyond the top three and examines all 19 popular singers mentioned in Samcheolli. At the very least, up through 1935, these were singers for whom new folk songs still held significant weight.

In particular, the top two women, Wang Subok and Seonwu Ilseon, were former gisaeng, and their specialty was always folk-based music. Wang Subok, who ranked first, was especially devoted to new folk songs; in a 1939 interview with a Japanese newspaper, she even said, “Just as Choi Seunghee revived Korean dance, I want to sing many Korean folk songs.”

What matters, however, is that Wang Subok made that comment in 1939. Had she said it around 1935, when new folk songs were actually in fashion, it would have meant little. But by 1939, just four years later, the atmosphere had changed completely. By then, the center of the market was already shifting decisively to trot-enka. In other words, Wang Subok’s answer carried the nuance of “Even so, I will protect new folk songs.”

The atmosphere can also be seen in the “Character Sketches of Record Singers” chosen by another popular monthly, Sinsegi, in its September 1939 issue. The article described impressions of 27 singers who were popular at the time, and it shows that many of the popular singers of 1935 had been substantially replaced. Park Danma, Hwang Geumsim, Nam Ilyeon, Kim Youngchun, and above all Nam Insu and Kim Jeonggu are mentioned there. Of the 19 people cited by Samcheolli in 1935, only 10 appear among the 27 in Sinsegi in 1939. Half had been replaced. And even among the 10 who “survived,” most had attempted to convert from a new folk song base to trot-enka.

Could such a thing really happen? If it had unfolded over 20 years or so, it might seem plausible. But this happened in just four years. New folk songs had, after all, won popular support by taking traditional folk music people had long heard and simply adding a somewhat more refined touch. Could such a public-friendly genre really be so suddenly replaced by trot-enka, a genre that was in effect “unfamiliar”?

Even in today’s media environment—filled with television, cable TV, web platforms, and countless other outlets—such a rapid shift in genre dominance is rare. How, then, could such a sweeping transition have been possible in the 1930s, when the speed of trends was incomparably slower than today? Did the Japanese colonial authorities forcibly impose policies requiring people to listen to trot-enka?

The center of the popular music market moves according to the tastes of the group that will actually pay for it, even if that group is only a minority

The explanation is simple. The “profitable direction” differed from the tastes of the actual majority. Up until the late 1930s, radio penetration in Joseon was strangely low. It is said that only about 100,000 units were in use. By contrast, phonograph penetration was high. Records indicate that around 300,000 phonographs had been distributed.

That is odd. After all, radio programming at the time consisted largely of music broadcasts. In practical terms, then, this means that phonographs—which were far more expensive than radios as music devices—were three times more widespread. And with a phonograph, consumption did not end with the machine itself. One had to keep buying records in order to continue hearing new music. In the long run, the additional consumption could be even greater.

The reason, however, is simple. This was a period when there were very few “middle-class” consumers who could buy radios as a cheaper substitute because phonographs were too expensive. Most of those 300,000 phonographs were concentrated among the upper class and the social elite.

The problem was that among this social elite, new folk songs were regarded as a “rustic old musical form.” This is evident from the fact that theater performances charging high admission prices dealt very little with new folk songs. Even in 1935, one can confirm that in theater performances, new folk song singers generally appeared only as so-called intermission singers.

Among the social elite, the clear trend was trot-enka. As colonial-era elites, they naturally tended to admire Japanese culture. One can also infer that enka’s distinctive tragic beauty and pessimistic lyrics felt more sophisticated than new folk songs, which conveyed cheerfulness and love of country. This also aligned with the general mood of the Western cultural sphere after World War I. It was a period in which a kind of pessimism and self-pity seeped out through various cultural products. The tastes of the social elite of the time, who were also deeply interested in Western culture, had much in common with that atmosphere.

In the end, the trends of the group that would “actually consume” diverged greatly from the trends of the overwhelming majority, who lacked the ability to “actually consume.” Indeed, while the total number of phonograph records sold in Joseon in 1936 is estimated at about 1 million, only 300,000 of those were Korean-language records. In other words, among songs by Korean singers, there were not many that appealed to the group that would actually pay. Since Western music did not yet occupy a dominant position at the time, one may infer that most of the rest were records by Japanese enka singers.

It was precisely under these conditions that Korean singers rapidly converted to trot-enka, as an attempt to replace the large “pie” held by Japanese enka singers with Korean-language songs that would feel more familiar. It was an extremely common-sense process.

At this point, however, another question arises. How, then, did the overwhelming majority of the public listen to music? If they preferred new folk songs, how were they consuming popular music in such a way that it did not become “money,” allowing the center to shift to trot-enka despite popular preference? One common form, often seen today in TV historical dramas, was to listen to singers who came to the marketplace and performed on an open yard stage, then give a few coins to someone collecting money midway through. Since this was basically just a seating fee for commoners, the income was naturally nowhere near what theater performances earned. But there was another form as well—an even stranger one.

“However, in writings from the 1930s by the folklorist Song Seokha, there is a record showing that, in place of singers who wandered from marketplace to marketplace, people began carrying phonographs around, playing songs, and making money from them (...)” (Lee Yeongmi, Popular Songs)

This was not an era with a modern concept of copyright, so naturally the money earned this way did not go to the singers or the record producers. Even if one middleman collected money from hundreds or thousands of people, the number of records actually sold was just one.

In practical terms, this resembles the relationship between Korea’s comics industry and book rental shops in the early 2000s. In the atmosphere following the IMF foreign exchange crisis, when comics and various magazines were not selling well, book rental shops where people could borrow comics and magazines at lower prices became popular. The comics industry, under immediate pressure, even reorganized its sales structure around these rental shops, only to end up entering a path of extinction. The reason was the same: many people were reading comics, but the number of comics actually sold was limited to the number bought by rental shops. New folk songs ended up following precisely the same path of decline.

For reference, if one looks at various writings on marketplace culture at the time, the music people most enjoyed in marketplaces—whether through live singers or phonographs—was centered on new folk songs. No matter how strong public “taste” may be, if an actual “market” is not solidly established so that “transactions” are active, and if the resulting “profits” do not flow to the actual performers and copyright holders, that industry will collapse. That is exactly what this shows.

“Trot,” “folk,” “idol music”... in the end, all trends shift according to the group that will actually pay

What happened afterward is also interesting. By the 1940s, most new folk song singers had converted to trot-enka. As a result, the overwhelming majority of ordinary people who had enjoyed new folk songs had no choice but to listen to trot. This was a phenomenon caused by the fact that money and popularity did not meet on the same plane. As the market moved in that direction, trot naturally came to occupy the center of the popular music market.

Then the generation that had become accustomed to trot passed through liberation and the Korean War and became the middle-aged and older “established generation.” On the ruins left by the war, and until economic revival arrived in the 1960s under the banner of an export-driven nation, younger generations found it hard to accumulate much capital. As a result, the established generation remained for quite a long time the generation with a much stronger economic base than the younger one. That is why, even into the 1960s, there was no particular change in the trot-centered popular music scene. The group with the means to actually spend money on music products was precisely the older generation that had experienced the popularity of trot during the colonial era. Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones may all have been popular on radio, where people could listen for free, but the conditions were not yet in place for younger musicians influenced by them to become truly popular in the market.

The atmosphere began to change around the 1970s, during the period of rapid economic growth. As the national economy clearly improved, jobs increased, and opportunities for young people, including college students, to earn income grew substantially. Only then did folk music—something that could truly be called “the trend of youth”—begin for the first time to replace trot in the popular music market. It was a phenomenon brought about by the fact that young people had finally acquired the “ability to consume.” Riding this mood, TV broadcasters also began planning folk-centered events such as the College Music Festival and the Riverside Song Festival, spreading the boom further.

What followed was even more interesting. The 1980s were precisely the period when society was just beginning to enjoy the fruits of rapid growth. After the 1988 Olympics, the middle class became firmly established, and an atmosphere emerged in which even teenagers in ordinary households received generous allowances from their parents. Then, cultural products preferred by teenagers also began to sell like hotcakes, and so-called “allowance market” stars newly began to appear. A representative early example of such an “allowance market” star was Seo Taiji and Boys, who debuted in 1992 and achieved phenomenal popularity.

And now we come to the present. As mentioned at the beginning, a variety of revenue models have now been developed so that if the public likes something, it can generate income “in one way or another.”

There was once criticism, especially in the period right after the IMF foreign exchange crisis when overall cultural consumption had shrunk, that only idol music based on highly loyal consumer groups was dominating the market. But with the development of digital music sales sites and streaming services, that problem also disappeared. Once a structure was created in which even listening to music “for free” could generate advertising revenue for the musician, ballad and hip-hop musicians soon came to occupy the center of music platforms, and the market was able to diversify. In other words, the market has gradually evolved into an environment where the tastes of the “majority public” are actually transmitted into the market and rewarded.

Perhaps that is why younger generations today may not easily grasp the idea that public “taste” and actual popular culture “trends” and “currents” may fail to coincide. But if the proper environment is not in place, that mismatch can return at any time, and an atmosphere can emerge in which what the public wants is not reflected.

An environment in which simply “watching and enjoying” something is enough to form a market, generate transactions, and return profits to the actual creators—if such an environment had existed in the 1930s, then naturally new folk songs would not have died out. Even if they had not remained at the center of trends up to the present, it is possible that we would still be able to find their traces and influence here and there. At the very least, we would not be in the current situation where “people know trot but have no idea what new folk songs even are.”

In conclusion, the history of popular culture shows that the proposition “popular culture trends move according to popular ‘taste’” is itself false. But that is not the end of the story either. Efforts to overcome the problems of “market,” “transaction,” and “profit” through the development of new media have changed the picture. At the same time, however, this also proves the reverse: for content that nevertheless fails to create such a structure, the same conclusion will remain reinforced by yet another example.

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Original title: [문화칼럼] 대중문화 유행은 대중의 ‘취향’에 따라 움직인다?

Author: Moon-won Lee

Date: 2019-10-16

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=12&idx=21970