Friday music: KPOP!

Happy Friday! I’m clearing icons off my desktop and came across this, which I wrote at least a year ago (the links were to ANTPAC– remember that?). I don’t quite remember why I wrote it, but it’s time to delete…

I’m putting it here because it contains some good Friday music to listen to. Also… it contains the answer to a recent crossword clue.

KPOP

One of the benefits of working in the cataloging department is that we get to see most of the new ‘stuff’ that the rest of the library is ordering. It’s really interesting! Y’all buy some good stuff.

I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight one group of material that we’ve recently received, talk about why I find it interesting, and also some of what makes it challenging to catalog.

Ying has recently ordered a significant amount of material for the Korea Corner relating to K-pop. We have received scholarly works examining the genre as well as CDs of contemporary popular groups. I’m sure I’m not alone in often listening to music at my desk, and so I thought that it would be interesting to listen to some of the music as it was passing through my hands. I’d previously dismissed K-pop as Backstreet Boys-type boy bands—I think because I’d first heard of the genre in the 1990s, dismissed it, and never really thought of it again.

Apparently, however, the genre includes a wide variety of groups (male, female and mixed) making music in a wide variety of styles. Here, for instance, are a few of the musicians and albums that we have in our collection:

• Wings by BTS
  Library Search link | listen on Youtube
• Still by Urban Zakapa
  Library Search link | listen on Youtube
• Seoulite by Lee Hi
  Library Search link | listen on Youtube

Most of these can be found by browsing Antpac Library Search for ‘subject’ Popular music – Korea (South).

As is obvious, my previous assumption that K-pop is simply generic pop, but sung in Korean, was completely wrong.

One of the other interesting aspects of looking at this material is that many of the CDs are deluxe editions, with accompanying books (some superficially appear to have the CD as an afterthought) filled with soft-focus pictures of the musicians staring mournfully into the middle distance. I haven’t bought a physical CD since I was in my teens, so I don’t know if that’s something that happens much with popular music in other genres. But they’re pretty amazing… see some photos here. For what is essentially a glorified CD case, this is pretty special. I wrote something a couple of years ago about how book covers and dust jackets are often works of art in their own right—they say something about the culture in which they were produced and to which the book is being marketed. Similarly, I think these CDs and their surrounding paraphernalia say something important about the role of the physical CD in music and fandom; about who buys this music and how it’s perceived (for instance, the visuals are obviously very important); and about the way that a generation of South Koreans are marketed to. All very important and worth of study, above and beyond simply listening to the music and saying ‘cool’ (which is as far as I get. Because this stuff is cool!).

This is the kind of subject that I suspect is being tackled in the following two academic monographs about KPOP which Ying has also recently purchased:

• Pak, Chang-sun, 1955- author

K-pop Yuga esŏ kil ŭl ch’atta / Pak Chang-sun chiŭm

CALL #   ML3502.K6 P35 2016

• Yi, Sang-uk, 1983- author

K-pop yŏn’gu / Yi Sang-uk chiŭm

CALL #   ML3502.K7 Y47 2016

—

So, as well as being interesting, why is this material challenging for us? Well, for a couple of reasons!

First of all, nobody in the cataloging department speaks Korean (along with German and Armenian, it’s one of the three significant languages that we lack). Still, we mostly manage—Kathryn Jeong in the Acquisitions department is able to provide a great deal of assistance which enables the catalogers to process a significant amount of Korean-language material. In addition, we have been able to work with Sukim Bae, this year’s Korea Foundation intern (as well as her predecessors Kayoung Cho and Jun Sup Kim), to produce high-quality catalog records that we would otherwise need to outsource at significant expense (and time).

Second, this material is going into the Korea Corner, which is treated a bit differently from other areas of the library. Normally, CDs and DVDs would go to a special area (like the MRC). So the way we process the material is generally focused on standardizing the material so that it fits into a specialized shelving unit (thus maximizing use of space). For the Korea Corner, this isn’t sufficient—what we’re interested in here is making a friendly, browseable collection that makes a welcoming space within Langson Library. And this material is off all sorts of shapes, sizes and formats, so it can present challenges.

However, these are challenges which are worthwhile, because I get to listen to some interesting music. And I guess students and faculty also get access to stuff as well? IDK. Mostly because I get to listen to some interesting music.