인기 음악 폄하 현상 — The Phenomenon of Popular Music Disparagement, Translation
by Hwang Deok-ho
The following is a translation of OPs tweet they shared about a music column within a Korean journal published.
Apologies in advance if the translation isn’t as accurate. If you have any suggestions to make, let us know. We hope you understand.
Original Tweet:
It happened on July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park, a baseball stadium in Chicago, United States. The stadium was scheduled to host a double-header game between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. That year, the Chicago White Sox lost consecutive games from the beginning of the season, and the stands were already empty in July. However, that aspect was completely different from the match on this day. 50,000 spectators gathered at the stadium. The reason was an event prepared in the middle of a doubleheader game. It was the Disco Demolition Night. A DJ from the local FM suggested a disco eradication campaign on the air, and rock and roll fans who sympathized with it flocked to the ballpark. Comiskey Park allowed the event to take place on expectations that it would attract about 5,000 people, something unusual was going on. Even before the game began, large banners reading “Disco Suck!” were flying here and there in the stands.
After the first game, the scheduled event was held inside the field. As the spectators piled up disco LPs thrown into the stadium, the organizers blew up a pile of LPs with gunpowder (I don’t know how far the event was agreed with the stadium), and excited spectators stormed into the stadium and burned disco records everywhere. Naturally, the second game was not held and the game ended in a forfeit by the home team, the White Sox.
If you look closely at this skit, which was ridiculous and ridiculous when you think about it now, there is a reason. As you know, the 1970s was the age of rock. It was a time when top rock groups such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Eagles recorded millions of sales per album. The albums played high artistic achievements and fans were intoxicated with the music and proud of its popularity.
However, disco suddenly appeared. When the 1977 film “Saturday Night Fever” became a huge hit, disco musicians such as Viz, Donna Summer, and Chic began to rise to the top of the popularity rankings “Top 40” compiled by each radio station. Rock and roll fans who were absorbed in heavy metal and progressive rock were stunned by disco’s repetitive simple rhythm and popping electronic sounds. But the scare didn’t just end in a panic. Rock and roll fans, most of whom were white, felt racial sympathy from disco, which developed based on black music funk, even linking the music to homosexuality, citing that disco began in the early days at gay dance clubs. Extreme rock-and-roll fans didn’t see the fact that disco was already loved by the majority of young people regardless of race or sexual orientation, and even leading rock artists such as Rod Stewart, KISS, and Queen were already mixing disco with rock by that time.
The paradox is that at the same time, Rock and Roll were also under the same hateful attack. Around that time, some extremists in Protestant churches, which saw a sharp drop in the number of believers in the United States, felt the need to create a new public enemy after communism and unite the inside and used it as a rock and roll target. They claimed rock as Satan’s music, which has been circulated quite widely and for a long time in the country.
Every time new music appeared, the phenomenon of baseless denunciation and even abhorrence of it was always repeated in history. When Elvis Presley’s rock and roll appeared in the 1950s, Frank Sinatra, a popular singer, said, “Rock and roll is the music that stupid people listen to,” and some psychologists have given false statistics that rock and roll fans are low in intelligence. In the 1940s, when R&B secularized black church music, African Baptists accused R&B of corrupting the gospels (the most criticized person was Ray Charles), and when jazz appeared in the 1920s, Henry Ford, the king of automobiles. When Seo Tai-ji and Boys appeared in the 1990s, a famous singer attacked them, saying, “Rapping is not music.”
Such new music or stars are likely to cause friction with other existing music fans. One of them may be the attitude of some music officials, experts, and enthusiasts toward BTS, which has recently reached the top of the U.S. music scene. There is nothing we can do about it because our tastes are different. However, the attitude of refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of BTS, which is a stark reality, is related to hatred in that it distorts reality without seeing the reality that is happening in front of it. You know better than anyone else that hate of absurd logic has often occurred in music history. Taste is just taste, not the truth. It’s a pity if you can’t see reality because of your taste.
Original Author: Hwang Deok-ho
Hwang Deok-ho is a is a jazz columnist.
Published: 2020/2021
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