The Council on East Asian Studies presents
Grace Kao - IBM Professor of Sociology; Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration (by Courtesy); Faculty Director, Education Studies; Director of CERSI, Yale University:
“The Importance of K-Pop to the Sociology of Asian Americans and Music.”
This is a two-part talk.
First, I propose that the popularity of K-Pop in the west has transformative possibilities for the lived experiences of Asian Americans. I will introduce K-Pop and BTS in particular. Second, I will present a working paper (co-authored with Wonseok Lee, School of Music, Ohio State University) titled, “Are Friends Electric? The Influence of 1980s British New Wave on 2020s K-Pop.” Given the centrality of the music video to the development of both K-pop and the British New Wave, we argue that there is a shared musical and visual aesthetic between these two genres.
Our paper is also accompanied by a YouTube playlist of the music videos we analyze. I have a YouTube playlist for the paper:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_rwmmJ1FoaAdx1MVft2JTNSWXp8Rj7H0 (link is external)
Her most recent article on K-Pop is forthcoming in the Journal of Popular Music Studies (“’I Need You’: The Importance of Audience Participation in Online K-pop Concerts During COVID-19”, co-authored with Wonseok Lee.