Described as a “fascinating journey upstream into the past to understand where the current will bring the future of Korean pop music,” (Busan Ilbo Review, 2009) Brother Is a Street Musician does not deal with contemporary K-Pop; rather, it visits the first chapter of Korea’s popular music history, which coincided with Japanese colonization in the first half of the 20th century. Combining archival research with a critical analysis of the earliest popular songs, the early recording industry, the first modern era musicians and composers, and the first formation of the consumer masses, Korean popular music scholar and musician Zhang Eujeong seeks to address the essential question: how did a colonized people construct their own, unique form of popular culture? 

Today, popular music from Korea has established itself as a formidable, global cultural phenomenon, garnering the interest of not only the power players in the global music industry, but also scholars across many disciplines. As an academic inquiry into the first moment of Korean popular music history, this English translation by Seulbin Han will be an essential resource in today’s lively conversations around the emerging field of Korean popular music.

ZHANG EUJEONG is a professor of liberal arts at Dankook University, South Korea. She has published thirty books and over ninety essays on Korean popular music, popular culture, and oral tradition, including Brother Is a Street Musician (originally published in South Korea in 2006), Tearooms and Cafés, the Sanctuaries of the Modern Boys, and Introduction to K-Pop History.

SEULBIN HAN is a journalist, editor, and translator for the U.S.-based K-Pop media outlet allkpop by 6Theory Media. Brother Is a Street Musician is her first full length translation. She is based in Durham, North Carolina, USA.

PIL HO KIM is an associate professor of Korean at Ohio State University. A sociologist by training, he has been studying and teaching a wide range of topics related to modern Korea, including popular music, cinema, literature, and urban regeneration/gentrification.

Contents
Foreword: O Brother, There Thou Art: An Odyssey to Colonial (Pre)Modernity in Korean Popular Music, by Pil Ho Kim
Preface
Translator’s Note
 

1. Introduction
2. The Gramophone Record and the Creation of Popular Songs           
3. The Consumption of Popular Songs       
4. Literary Expressions of Popular Sentiment
5. The Historical Status and Significance of Korean Popular Songs from the First Half of the 20th Century

       
Acknowledgements
Bibliography                                             
Notes on Contributors