Korea In Rhythm With The Dance, 1987

[koganbot]

Kim Wan Sun, from 1987. It's not quite freestyle, but it's pretty close (closer than Madonna ever got, for instance). And it's pretty great. The same piercing passion.

Watch on YouTube

"리듬속의 그 춤을" is translated most often as "The Dance In The Rhythm." Google Translate gives us "In Rhythm With The Dance," which I like more, whether or not it's accurate.

If YouTube commenters are right, the track was written and produced by Shin Joong Hyun, who also provides the guitar solo; this is interesting in itself, since from last year's compilation I gather he was more a psychedelic and metal guy than a dance guy. Think of Jimmy Page producing the Cover Girls. [EDIT: The guitar solo on "The Dance In The Rhythm" is not by Shin Joong Hyun but by his son, Shin Daechul, of the band Sinawe. Did I just assume the solo was by producer Shin Joong Hyun, without checking, or did one of the YouTube commenters assume it, and I copied the assumption? (The original embed was killed by YouTube, the embed above is a replacement, so the YT comment thread I was reading is gone.]

Don't know where this music would have found itself in the sounds of South Korea circa 1987, since I barely know what those sounds were. If Wikipedia is right, K-pop didn't coalesce as a genre until the early '90s. But if "Roly-Poly" is right, South Korea was glomming off American disco and club sounds since the '70s. Could Shinsadong Tiger and SweeTune been listening to this song as tykes? (Tiger'd have been four when it came out.)

h/t G'old Korea Vinyl, who stream this and many other vintage tracks, and where I will be spending many hours.

Comments

Romanization follies

[koganbot]

I'm using two different systems of transliteration for the two names, Kim Wan Sun and Shin Joong Hyun. I just go with what whoever is writing the name gives us.

[koganbot]

Not that psychedelic and metal are never dance musics...

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Not really relevant to this particular post, Frank, but I thought you'd be interested to know that the big HMV store in Oxford Street in London is this month investing heavily in current K-Pop. They now have a one whole display case and a CD rack dedicated to the stuff.

Not that this necessarily amounts to a lot of material. Given that most of the CDs and DVDs come in deluxe packaging, there's only room for about 14 different artists and, say 20 different releases! And of course each CD only has about 5 songs on it. Which is the interesting thing: whereas HMV is otherwise rapidly contracting its music departments, stocking fewer and fewer CDs and music DVDs in all other genres (as they're not selling), K-Pop seems to be bucking the trend, producing these OTT artefacts for fans to collect. It will be interesting to see whether the newly bought-in stock sells and the trend continues.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Great song.

Kim Wan Sun's still young

[arbitrary-greay.livejournal.com]

Kpop as we know it did not coalesce until Seo Taiji, and even then there was still a lot of Jpop influence, but the Korean music scene still had its music shows girlgroups. I found some of them last year, and as you can see, the Kim Sisters even had an appearance on American television.

[christophe andersen (from livejournal.com)]

I'm not really feeling this song but thanks for turning me onto G'old Korea Vinyl! I downloaded a bunch of the songs on Monday and it's completely changed my week. I can't stop playing the Han Yeong Ae song "Tuning". I also love the track with the laser beam tom toms. Wow.