The practice of imagining idols within romantic and sexual relationships, known as “shipping,” is central to the global fandom of K-pop, allowing fans to develop affective relationships with celebrities through practices such as writing fan fiction. In particular, shipping that reimagines boy groups such as BTS within romantic or homoerotic relationships is especially common as a method of articulating fandom and exploring sexual agency, thus producing spaces within Korea’s patriarchal society where women’s sexual desires can be safely explored. International aspects of BTS shipping, particularly within Japanese and Anglophone fandom spaces (in Australian and the Philippines), is then analyzed. While BTS shipping in Japan tends to conceptualize homoerotic relationships between men via sexual practices and behaviors divorced from identity, Anglophone shipping tends to instead overtly deploy LGBTQ identity politics. Nevertheless, both practices possess queer potentials that allow fans to affectively explore their sexuality. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of shipping in affirming the presence of queer fans within global K-pop culture.

This chapter focuses on so-called proto-K-pop, just prior to the birth of K-pop as exportable good in the late 1990s, and the subcultures based on nightclubs and discotheques from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. The dancers and DJs who gathered at Seoul nightclubs (and in other cities) emulated dance and music from the United States, Europe, and Japan, and constructed their own “authentic” genre. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, dancers began their careers as backup for the established singers and gradually repositioned themselves as “dancers who sing.” During the same period, some DJs who became producers, managers, and songwriters successfully challenged the existing record industry. This chapter investigates the transformation of the small-scale and scattered subculture based in nightclubs into a lucrative business associated with the organized music industry. Three production-cum-management companies – SM (Hyun Jin-young and Wawa), Line (Kim Gun Mo), and Yoyo (Seo Taiji and Boys) – are closely examined. It is inevitable to contrast the rap/reggae/techno-oriented 1990s with the folk/rock/ballad-oriented 1980s. But this chapter eschews the dichotomy by showing the genre diversity consciously designed by the industry. It aims to show the ground zero of the so-called K-pop machine, without making any teleological assumptions.

With their Billboard chart-topping albums and sold-out stadium concerts around the globe, BTS today is the biggest success story of international K-pop. The unprecedented success of BTS challenges the understanding and study of K-pop, as it simultaneously reinforces previously existing perspectives while demanding several new ones. This chapter traces the career of BTS, surveying the historical implications of their rise to the dramatic change in the landscape of music consumption in the era of new media. Rather than depending on music industry insiders or media gatekeepers, the pop stars of the internet era form a strong and direct connection with their fans. ARMY, BTS’s global fandom, is emblematic of this change. ARMY fans do not merely buy albums or generate publicity for their stars; they open new fronts in the discourse and creative derivative work centered around BTS, further fueling the group’s worldwide success. In the US mainstream pop music market dominated by US and UK acts, these shifts in defining BTS’s success demand reconsideration of the future possibilities of Asian stars.

The invention of the MP3 and its distribution on the internet affected the South Korean music industry in multifarious ways, instigating a sharp decrease in CD sales but also contributing to K-pop’s shift from audio to visual culture. Because many scholars contend that K-pop is driven by the visual, academic analysis has been dominated by discussions of visual aesthetics; other aspects of K-pop, especially its use of acoustic techniques and vocalization, have largely been neglected. Drawing on R. Murray Schafer’s definition of “soundscape” – where sound is the combination of layers of culture, place, acoustic space, and technology – this chapter provides an overview of K-pop’s soundscapes over the past thirty years. The industry has responded to new recording technologies and new media, which are linked to specific aspects of South Korean time and space. The mediation of sound in studio recording booths, where K-pop singers give literal voice to their self-expression, has become an integral component of the sonic form. In addition to the vocal styles of K-pop artists, the chapter addresses the auditory practices of recording artists ranging from singer-songwriters to K-pop boy bands as well as the interventions of sound engineers and producers in the recording process.

This chapter examines the emergence of hip hop in contemporary South Korea. Drawing on Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s concept of “signifying” and Achille Mbembe’s idea of “becoming black,” it looks at hip hop as a phenomenon where “Blackness” has gained a fungible agency that counters neoliberalism. The chapter explores the ways hip-hop performers in South Korea draw on their own experiences of social marginality in the ghetto-like world produced by unrelenting academic and economic competition to create their work. It also considers how the Korean language obliges rappers to experiment with its syntax and prosody in order to generate the rhymes and repetitions associated with hip-hop poetics. The author argues that rap in the South Korean context has become a successful adaptation of a foreign musical genre, in a manner that recalls the discovery and mastery of Western popular music by Korean musicians in the years following the Korean War. The recent popularity of hip hop reestablishes ties to premodern and precolonial practices of oral musical storytelling that were neglected and overlooked during the period of modernization.

Singing along has aided songs to gain wide geographic distribution and popularity. In the case of K-pop, singing along is hampered by the lack of language skills. However, a key component of K-pop’s success has been the visual – music videos that feature beautiful stars and trending fashions – and, perhaps most of all, a prominent dance component. Fans from around the world have been moved to interact with K-pop by substituting dancing along for singing along. The barrier to participation is low – cover dancers benefit from a song and choreography created by other artists. While some dancers only practice, without uploading videos or performing, others attract viewers to private subscriptions for access to full videos and interactions with the dancers. Fans perform dances for crowds, upload them online, enter cover contests, and even develop new careers. They can become quite well known, their videos drawing millions of views. Just like the K-pop idols, the Korean government supports these activities. This chapter outlines the variety of cover dance activities, investigates the motivations of cover dancers using interview data, discusses the implications for cultural diplomacy, outlines the economy of K-pop cover dance, and touches on the ways it contributes to learning about Korea.

The global success of BTS demonstrates that their artistry and message have captured the attention of many. Similarly, their fandom, ARMY, has received attention for its ability to organize around social justice causes. While BTS and ARMY are pushing against and connecting across borders that often seem impermeable, this work does not happen with ease. How do people in a fandom that spans the globe both organize and educate within this fandom community? This chapter examines fandom through a case study. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests called attention to violence and racism against Black people after the murder of George Floyd. There were concerted efforts within the ARMY fandom to raise money and awareness for BLM. Many of these efforts began before BTS and their company announced support for BLM. It is important to recognize the fandom’s public-facing, collective work, and it is equally important to recognize the effort required to educate within the community about this and other social justice issues. This chapter identifies, tracks, and analyzes attempts being made in the fandom to educate and discuss race and racism around BLM by sharing stories of personal experience with racism, hashtags meant to encourage solidarity, and visual art.

The fashion for the guitar has fluctuated in intensity throughout the instrument’s history. Much of the eighteenth century appears to have been a period of retrenchment, when the guitar found few devotees in most parts of Europe, at least among the upper classes. This is true even of Spain, where it was largely confined to popular music until the end of the century, when there was a noticeable increase in the level of activity and musical ambition among guitar players, in Spain as elsewhere. There was one country, however, or more precisely one city, where the guitar was widely played during the second half of the eighteenth century, and that was Paris. The French capital had a bustling guitar scene, from the mid-1700s onwards, revealing an enthusiasm for the instrument that proved inspiring. Paris was then the second largest city in Europe after London, with a secure economic base that enabled the elite to cultivate an interest in music and other arts. With such a large and concentrated market to be served, music publishing was economically profitable, and the trade developed rapidly from the 1750s onwards, as advertisements in the press reveal. The number of Parisian music publishers increased correspondingly: the Almanach musical of 1783 records forty-four of them, and by 1799 this total had risen to some sixty. As we shall see, a considerable number of their publications were for the guitar.

The marked improvement in the guitar's fortunes around the middle of the eighteenth century owed much to the fresh impetus that the instrument gave to a well-established tradition of light songs, in which it was the perfect complement to the voice. The guitar could produce simple accompaniments without excessive study, and it was eminently portable. This renewed enthusiasm is corroborated by the oft quoted entry on the guitar in the seventh volume (1757) of the greatest single work of Enlightenment scholarship, the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, where we read that ‘Some devotees have caused the guitar to be reborn and have at the same time reawakened our taste for our vaudevilles, pastorales and brunettes, which have acquired thereby a fresh appeal.’ The guitar in question would have been the five-course instrument, which at that time had the two lowest courses tuned in octaves, tied-on frets and a rose filling the soundhole.

In the 1980s, I fell under the spell of the Baroque guitar, meaning the instrument with five courses of strings, which endured to the threshold of the nineteenth century and in some places beyond. It filled me with wonderment and led me to make numerous recordings. Strumming the music of Spain, Italy or France on a Baroque instrument is unlike sweeping the strings of any other kind of guitar. The light stringing, the thin top, the higher-octave strings on the lower courses (advocated by many Italian and Spanish treatises) and the re-entrant tuning ensure a crystalline sound that is both sensual and seductive. The Baroque guitar is a superb continuo instrument that is often completely misunderstood by non-guitarists; many modern conductors, for example, still confine it to dance music, and insist on what might be called a proto-flamenco sound. Yet the Baroque guitar can also imitate the delicacy of the lute, coupled with campanella (cross-string scales) and stracino (slurred) techniques. It is no wonder that this instrument created its own vogue during the 1600s.

Something magnificent again happened – an epiphany of sorts – when I picked up a Mirecourt guitar made in the early nineteenth century. Since then, I have been fortunate to use instruments by some of the leading nineteenth-century makers including Lacote, Panormo and Stauffer. I had played on a variety of lutes, before this time, so the experience of handling a period instrument was not new to me, but I immediately understood that the nineteenth-century guitar was different from what I had known hitherto. One of the most important divergences from the Baroque instrument was the low sixth or E string. This allowed for a two-octave range between the outer two strings, much like the classic six-course lute, and permitted the guitarist to play the roots of tonic (I), subdominant (IV) and dominant (V) chords in the key of A, using only the unstopped basses, plus other advantageous relationships, again using open strings, in the keys of E (chords I and IV) and D (chords I and V). Another departure from the Baroque instrument was the elimination of double courses; these are replaced by single strings, which are not only easier to keep in tune but make the instrument less expensive to equip. Single strings also allow for a higher tension and a more forceful right-hand action, without the strings rattling against each other.