Kpop music or Korean popular music is music that comes from Korea, also famous in other parts of Asia such as Japan, China, Taiwan, Honk Kong and some South Eastern Asian countries. The rise of Kpop music is considered part of the rise of the Korean Wave (“Hallyu”). Korean music was challenged in 1992 when a Korean popular music group called Seo Taiji and Boys mixed traditional Korean music with American rap, rock and techno influences.

Their success, followed by other experimental groups (line panic) is what contributed to the present day’s popularity of Kpop. Korean popular music scene met afterwards the influence of dance-oriented acts such as the famous hip-hop duo Deux, followed by teen idol groups such as Baby V.O.X., Fin.K.L., g.o.d, H.O.T., Shinhwa, Sechs Kies, and S.E.S who were highly popular in the mid 90s.

Today, pop groups are still fashionable, despite the current emergence of R&B and hip-hop in Korean music. MC MONG, 1TYM, Rain, Big Bang and Epik High are some of the bands that have made hip-hop popular, together with other underground artists such as Drunken Tiger, Tasha and Dynamic Duo. Rock music has also gained recognition lately, represented by artists such as Yoon Do-Hyun Band and Seo Taiji. For techno/dance Korean music lovers, Lee Jung Hyun and Kim Hyun Jung, two of the veteran artists in the industry, are the favorites. Kpop music has become famous worldwide, thanks to artists such as BoA, who has become Korea’s highest-selling international artist.

Apart from BoA, other artists as well have contributed to the popularity of Korean music outside their country’s borders. Rain and Se7en are some of the artists who sold their albums in other countries from eastern Asia. However, the greatest challenge for Korean artists (in fact, for all Asian artists) is to enter the profitable English-language music market.

As English has become an international language, the only way for a singer to achieve international recognition is to sing in English, so that everyone should be able to understand the lyrics. Korean singers are aware of that and a few of them (Rain, Se7en, Skull, a reggae artist and Min form JYP Entertainment) are planning to make a debut on the USA music market soon. Once they have managed to conquer the American listeners, the door to worldwide fame will stay open for them.

R&B, hip-hop and dance are the popular music styles today in Kpop music, which one can compare, from this point of view, with English pop music. Boy bands, girl groups, pop singers and R&B stars, currently dominate the Korean music scene. Ballads are also very popular. Some people argue that more diversity is necessary in Kpop music, but perhaps the rock industry will also develop in the future and everyone will be satisfied. The future looks bright for Korean singers and it is probably just a matter of time until they will conquer the US charts and the rest of the world. Kpop is gaining more and more fans every day and Korean artists are gaining popularity in US and Europe.

About the Author: If chances for Korean music stars to become popular outside their country were rather low in the past, things are just about to change. Many Korean artists are preparing their US debut and, apparently, it is only a matter of time until Americans will turn charmed to listen to Korean tunes. The future is promising for Kpop music, as Korean singers are getting close to international recognition.
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Houston, Texas is home to one of the most prominent and independent hip-hop scenes in the world, largely influencing both gangsta rap and the larger southern hip-hop community.

The man credited with being the central figurehead for the uprising of hip-hop is the late DJ Screw (real name Robert Earl Davis Jr). Screw was the creator and pioneer of a new style of hip-hop, which was christened “screwing” after its creator. This method involves the key tracks of a cut being slowed down when remixed. DJ Screw began making mixtapes of the slowed-down music in the early 1990s. Originally, this process involved mixing two copies of the same record, slowed down either on the turntables using pitch shift or later through use of an after-mixer device. Phasing, flanging and echo effects were originally the result of the two records being played at millisecond intervals.

Many Houston area artists, such as Big Love, Willie D and Ganksta NIP began to incorporate the slowed tempo into rap songs. Willie D’s song “Die”, from the album ‘I’m Goin Out Lika Soldier’, featured a slowed-down sample of the line “all I have is my balls and my word” from the movie ‘Scarface’, well before “screwing” gained more mainstream acceptance.

The genre was associated with both the use of marijuana and the consumption of “syrup”, a cocktail of cough syrup, mixed with the prescription drugs codeine and promethazine (DJ Screw’s death in November 2000 was attributed to either an overdose of codeine, or a gradual build-up of codeine in his body’s system as a result of years spent abusing the drug). This has been credited as influencing the genre’s psychedelic style.

DJ Screw made a significant number of mixtapes (purported to be in the thousands), usually with a theme. This provided a significant outlet for MCs in the South-Houston area, and helped local rappers such as ESG, Lil’ Flip and Z-Ro gain regional and sometimes national prominence, and it is likely that hotels in Houston would have played host to several record labels’ talent spotters eager to check out the genre for themselves.

Early tapes were often “screwed” versions of instrumentals over which rappers would later freestyle, but later tapes were mostly vocal tracks with occasional toasting or freestyle intermissions, and by the time of Screw’s death, the genre had become widely known throughout the southern United States.

Currently, the style is best exemplified in the music of Swishahouse DJ Michael 5000 Watts and Chamilitary DJ OG Ron C. Their work has helped establish current rappers Chamillionaire, Paul Wall, Mike Jones, Slim Thug – all of whom achieved massive mainstream success and placed Houston firmly back on the hip-hop map, as well as rap groups such as The Colour Changin’ Click and The Screwed Up Click. More major recording labels have embraced the genre, and chopped and screwed albums occasionally outsell the unmixed version.

About the Author: Andrew Regan is an online, freelance author from Scotland. He is a keen rugby player and enjoys travelling.
Source: http://www.articlesbase.com

I claim to be a music lover and I attend a lot of concerts and recitals, so I don’t try to write a review every time, except for a few notes for my journal. But sometimes the playing is so perfect, the interpretations so poignant that the experience demands a record, if only to help publicise real, perhaps exceptional talent. And so it was with Young-Joo Lee, a Korean pianist. She gave her concert to the Amigos de la Musica de la Marina Baixa on November 9 2007 in Altea’s Palau on Spain’s Costa Blanca.

In summary, her programme looked rather conventional. It featured Haydn, Rachmaninov, List, Ravel and Prokofiev. I envisaged a classical sonata played as a loosener, a couple of preludes, a showpiece, perhaps a little dead princess and then something from the tuneful end of Prokofiev to round things off. I am not suggesting that concert programmes offered to the Amigos de la Musica tend to be predictable. Quite the contrary, they tend to the ambitions, but then I am always sceptical of programmes that list only the composers’ names.

Young-Joo Lee did start with a Haydn sonata, but it was much more than the predicted loosener. She played the piece, Hob XVI:34 in E-minor, with charm, wit and real invention, with some of the rhythmic turns and cadences being delivered with an air of unexpected surprise. Haydn sonatas are rarely played this well, and, when they are, they are a revelation, a real ear-opener.

She followed on with a quite rarely played set of variations by Rachmaninov. We all know the Paganini Rhapsody for piano and orchestra, but how many of us have ever heard a concert performance of the composer’s opus 42, the Variations on a Theme by Corelli? It’s a late work, written in a tougher style than the composer’s more familiar and generally more popular works. But it is a remarkably demanding piece, both in its execution and its realisation. Its twenty variations, plus intermezzo and coda, present a formidable challenge to the performer. They begin after the statement of Corelli’s little, apparently stalling tune, and require tremendous interpretive skill as well as technical mastery and Young-Joo Lee displayed brilliance in both areas to bring out the very best in the music. A set of variations can often descend into the presentation of a list, with each item interesting in itself, but the whole lacking coherence. Not so with this Rachmaninov, and much of the credit must go to the performer’s ability to identify and then communicate the grand design.

Then we did have a real showpiece. Young-Joo Lee played the last of Liszt’s Paganini Etudes. It’s in A-minor and is based on the well known theme of the 24th Caprice for solo violin, the same theme that Rachmaninov used for his Rhapsody. Liszt’s treatment of the material is nothing less than pyrotechnic and as Young-Joo Lee played, there were times when her hands and arms were nothing but a blur. But often pianists present such pieces as if they were nothing more than a gymnastic display. It’s essential that everything should be in the right place, of course, but to achieve that state many players sacrifice the musical vision, as elegance and interpretation are muscled out by sheer technique. Not so with Young-Joo Lee. Not only was the piece a pianistic tour de force, it was also a thoroughly satisfying musical experience. The pyrotechnics made sense and became much more than the coloured bangs and flashes of random display.

After the interval Young-Joo Lee presented her Ravel, which was the Valses Nobles et Sentimentales. Essentially this was the third piece in variation form on the trot. Under lesser hands, this could easily have become tedious, but Young-Joo Lee made it into a triumph. It was more than just an opportunity to show that she could handle the legato ambiguities of Ravel’s idiom after the confident force of the Liszt. She played with poignancy and power when needed. But she also never let the sense of the waltz become subsumed within the detail.

And then the Prokofiev. Young-Joo Lee offered us no less than the Seventh Sonata. Now the pianistic pyrotechnics needed an extra toughness, an almost industrial delivery through which the composer’s thematic and harmonic genius must shine. And Young-Joo Lee’s playing was not only up to the piece, it provided a complete revelation. To say that in the third movement she drove the car straight into the garage would be an understatement! It’s a piece that races towards its abrupt end, but to work it must be utterly relentless in its pursuit, never stalling, never anticipating. To describe her playing as close to perfect would be to do her an injustice. It was much better than that and, frankly, I think the audience was left utterly stunned.

She offered a perfect encore in the form a Piazzolla tango and then retired for a well-deserved rest. Young-Joo Lee is an incredible talent. I do hope that her career as a soloist blossoms.

About the Author: Philip Spires; Author of Mission, an African novel set in Kenya
http://www.philipspires.co.uk. I was born in Wakefield, west Yorkshire in the United Kingdom and grew up in Sharlston, then a mining village. After London University I lived in Kenya. Then I taught in London before moving to Brunei and then the UAE. Since 2003, I have lived in Spain, completing a PhD and my first published novel, Mission.
Source: http://www.articlesbase.com