Seoul Music

 

 

Time recently named its annual (duh) Person of the Year, which happens to be President-elect Joe Biden. That's not much of a surprise. In the last 24 presidential elections, the winner was accorded the honor 12 times--that's half if I doing my math right--the year of the election. In the last 20 years alone--that's five election cycles--we've seen two George W. Bushes, two Barack Obamas, one Donald Trump (thank God only one) and now Biden. So it it isn't really something that piqued my interest. However, Time has other "of the year" categories, including Entertainer of the Year, the 2020 recipient of which is South Korean pop band BTS, and that surprised me. I've heard of the band, and I think their hit single "Dynamite" may have drifted into the vicinity of my ear drums at one time or other, but I had no idea they were the dominant form of entertainment of the past 12 months. This is my fault, and not theirs. Unlike others my age, or, really, anybody over, say, 40, I don't pretend that pop music has declined in quality simply because I don't keep up with current trends as much as I used to. As one gets older, staying attuned to tunes has to compete with such things as earning a living, trying to figure out where it all went wrong, and taking daily doses of prescribed medications that either make you dizzy, have to go to the bathroom, or both. With all that going on, who's got time to check out the cover of Rolling Stone, much less Time? Do they even publish Rolling Stone anymore? (I looked; they still do but it's now a monthly.) Moreover, who's even had time for entertainment with a pandemic going on?...Um, actually, with all the school closings, layoffs, and 10:PM curfews, most people now have the time, as long as the entertainment is emanating from an electrical device in your home. And that kind of works in BTS's favor. You can find them on the radio, on television, and on the dominant entertainment venue of our era, the Internet. Speaking of the Internet, you can find them here: 

Watching that video, I can't help but get the sense of a torch being passed. Androgynous young men singing (or rapping) a song packed with pop culture references that celebrates youthful rebellion. Sure, that kind of thing's been done before, but usually by artists operating inside the United States-United Kingdom pop music dominium. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Asians are beating us at our own game. But I'm not complaining. If freedom is to survive at all in our sorry world in the near term, it will have less to do with shameless politicians goose-stepping to the beat of the most incontinent campaign donor, and more to do with bands like BTS reminding us that freedom can be a viable option in the first place, as pop music acts have demonstrated since Elvis (or Louis Armstrong.) And it's not just a youthful rebellion without a cause, either. At the height of this year's race riots, the band sent a one million dollar check to Black Lives Matter, and challenged their fans, via social media, to match that number, and they did, in a single day (See? People without MAGA hats are allowed to use Facebook and Twitter, too.) And they've spoken out in favor of LGBTQ rights, otherwise a taboo topic in South Korea.

All well and good, but old fogey that I am, my mind can't help but turn to another musical video set in Korea. OK, it's actually a Hollywood set pretending to be Korea, and the performers aren't Korean themselves, but in its own way it's about that most basic of freedoms, the freedom to express oneself: 

You may want to come up with your own lyrics in case martial law is declared between now and January 20.