User:Mintwriter/sandbox

My Wiki project will be to research the intersection of Korean Ballad with other music styles, such as Trot, Pop, and Rock. I will be adding the section "Ballad" to the article "Music of South Korea". The article will draw from sources such as Made in Korea: Studies in popular Music Chapter 5 and https://www.koreaexpose.com/inside-the-noraebang-power-ballads-and-neoliberal-capitalist-south-korea/. As one of the most dominant forces in Korean music, Ballad is a very under studied part of post-colonial Korean music.

Notes from class:

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Ballad

(To be added into Genres subsection of Music of South Korea Article, to link to this article on Korean Ballad.)

Winter Sonata, a popular Korean Drama beginning in 2002, included many ballads in its official sound track. It's main theme song was a ballad: From the Beginning Until Now, by Ryu.

Influenced by Western melodies and the Sentimental Ballad, ballad-style songs were initially introduced into the mainstream market in the 1960s. Yet, the Korean Ballad style of music only rose into popularity in the 1980s to become a staple genre in modern Korean music. It's slow, mesmerizing song style captures the feelings of love - most importantly the heart-wrenching emotions of unrequited love or heartbreak. Today, official soundtracks (OSTs) for popular Korean Dramas are filled with slow, dramatic ballad songs that are played whenever important plot points occur. Balladeers are behind the main theme songs for many dramas such a Winter Sonata, Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (A.K.A. Goblin) and My Girlfriend Is a Nine-Tailed Fox.

Popular balladeer Lee Sun-hee.

Korean Ballad (Popular Music)

See also: Sentimental ballad

Stemming from the internationally renown Sentimental Ballad, the Korean popular ballad has become a nationally recognized and supremely popular music style in Korea. Power ballads from the West, including songs from Barbara Streisand and Lionel Richie nurtured the growth and popularity of ballads as a genre in Korea. Gaining popularity alongside trot in the 1960s, the ballad is distinguished as "a slow love song built on a Western seven-note scale". However, it was not until the 1980s that the ballad song style became popularized in mainstream Korean culture. From its popularity throughout Korean media, the Korean ballad has influenced and evolved into many different music styles.

According to an analysis of ballad songs in Made in Korea: Studies in Popular Music, ballads tend to have the following music style:

"intro-A (verse)-A-B-chorus-interlude-A (B)-chorus-bridge-chorus-outro.....[where]...The verse, or section A, was usually composed of eight bars, and its repetition was labeled as A. Section A usually began quietly and transitioned into section B, or the chorus. The bridge before the last chorus helped to escalate the emotions by modulating to a different key or through a grander arrangement. Lastly, in the outro, the accompaniment would come to a full stop or fade out."

While still maintaining themes relating to love and loss, songs at the intersections of ballad and other genres can include nontypical instruments or vary in musical style and level of expression.

Popular ballad singers in Korean history include Lee Moon-se, Hye Eun-yi, and Lee Sun-hee.

Early Ballad Songs that Popularized the Genre

Song Title	Singer	Year	Writer
I Don't Know Yet	Lee Moon-se	1985	Lee Young-hoon
Being on My Own	Byun Jin-sub	1988	Ha Kwang-hun
Empty Heart	Lee Seung-hwan	1989	Oh Tae-ho
Invisible Love	Shin Seung Hun	1991	Unknown
You Reflected in a Smile	Shin Seung Hun	1991	Unknown
To Heaven	Jo Sung-mo	1998	Unknown

Intersections with other Music Styles

Ballad and Trot

As the "background music of the Park era", (in reference to the Park Chung-hee dictatorship from 1963-1979) trot music was also an extremely popular music style in Korea. Having gained popularity during the Japanese colonial period of Korea, its foreign influences included Western instruments and the Japanese pentatonic minor scale. Popular trot singers notably include Cho Yong-pil, and utilized a faster paced and fun music style that evolved many times throughout modern Korean history to gain popularity amongst consumers. Due to the skills necessary to sing trot songs, popular singers moved towards ballads for their "easy-listening" style. Unlike trot songs, which derive singing techniques like vibration and pitch changes from older styles like pansori, ballad songs are slow yet simplistic in singing style.

Ballad and Pop

Pop ballad: Debuting in 1976, Hey Eun-yi's pop ballad 당신은 모르실거야 ("You Wouldn't Know"), with its slow, melancholic rhythm, became extremely well-received.

Ballad and Rock

Rock ballad (Also known as Power Ballad): With a stronger emphasis on the rhythm, along with the inclusion of instruments more closely related to the rock genre, such as the drums and guitar, rock ballads can ramp up to a faster pace and higher power than classic sentimental ballads. Singer Yim Jae-beom's song 임재범 너를 위해 ("For You") (2000), begins softly with a keyboard accompanying his singing. However, the song quickly builds with each refrain getting louder than before along with the inclusion of drum accompaniment. As the song continues, the emotion of the song is portrayed by an electric guitar solo. Other popular rock ballad groups include Boohwal.

The initial wave of popularity in response to rock music in Korea ended before the rise of ballads in the 1980s. However, revivals of the genre since that have allowed to new experimentation within the genre.

Other intersections

Folk music in Korea arose from anti-government movements in the 1970s which comprised largely of college students. Because of its simplistic nature (use of few instruments), it was easy to perform, alluding to its popular name t'ong g'ita (Barrel Guitar) named after the barrel which people would sit on while playing instruments.

Ballad & Folk: Popular balladeer Lee Sun-hee has numerous songs that represent a "Korean interpretation of American folk music" through the emphasis of acoustic guitar, such as her song 그대가 나를 사랑하신다면 ("If You Love Me") (1991). This song elaborates on how someone should feel if they were truly in love and how that should manifest into their actions toward their loved one (the singer). Throughout the song, a piano melody accompanies Lee Sun-hee until breaks into slower, more melancholic refrains where the soft twang of an acoustic guitar takes the place of the piano.