Twerk your way to centre stage

Raveena Joseph attends the first K-pop festival in South India, discovering interesting facets to this sub-culture

July 31, 2014 05:59 pm | Updated May 23, 2016 07:34 pm IST - chennai

The K-pop phenomenon appeals to a younger audience who are active in the online medium. Photo: R. Ravindran

The K-pop phenomenon appeals to a younger audience who are active in the online medium. Photo: R. Ravindran

The backdrop turns bright pink. Four young girls dressed in pink play suits embellished with silver trickle onto the stage. They take their place, waiting for a Korean pop song to fill the auditorium, before grooving uninhibitedly to the music. They bound energetically across the stage, pony-tails wildly swaying, wide smiles on their face as they get down on the floor.

The audience breaks into applause as they finish and a band of six boys dressed in yellow trousers and shiny black jackets, take over.

The first K-pop festival in South India saw numerous such performances, “For a k-pop performance, you need a unique dress sense with flashy clothes, distinctive hairstyles and stylish dance moves,” says Phani Kumar, who has choreographed a bboying performance for the event.

Drawing a niche crowd of k-pop fans, along with many other Korean expats, the recent event was a testimony to the k-pop culture finding its way to the city.

“Psy’s Ganganam Style was the trigger that brought K-pop to centre stage,” says Rathi Jafer, director of the Inko Center that organised the event. “K-pop is getting attention, but not a lot of people like it yet. They will in time, though,” says 19-year-old Anita Rajan, a fan of the genre, who has been learning Korean to understand K-reality shows. Korean Pop or K-pop is popular music originating from South Korea that has found popularity in different parts of the world.

In India, the wave has not come through in a homogenous fashion.

It has, however, taken root in the North-East where the distinctive audiovisual elements--synthesized music, stylish dance routines, flashy outfits, bubblegum pop combined with popular music elements--have found a huge fan base.

The genre has a small but dedicated fan following in Chennai, and it is constantly growing.

Fans, usually in school and college, are taking to not only the music, but also the reality shows, soap operas and movies.

“When I started listening to it two years ago, not too many people were interested in K-pop.

Now I find Korean dramas dubbed in Tamil and articles in Tamil magazines about the genre,” says Anita.

“The K-pop phenomenon appeals to a younger audience who are active in the online medium,” says Rathi Jafer.

There are many online communities for fans to share and discuss their music, but there are very few avenues to actually meet off-line as the community is still loosely scattered.

“Since I’m a k-popper, I do everything to get noticed,” says 24-year-old Ranjanai Ranganathan who further explains that k-popping includes “fangirling, admiring the stars and indirectly promoting their work”. A serious k-popper, Ranjani created Chennai’s Ever Lasting Friends (E.L.F) Fan club in 2013, which now has over 40 members. When the niche fan base in Chennai gets together, they sing and dance, exchange posters, and send photos and hand-written letters to their idols in South Korea.

“Boys don’t seem to like it at all. They have set ideas about clothes and hairstyles, and feel that the k-pop artists are too effeminate,” explains 21-year-old Amrutha Varshini on why boys predominantly don’t take k-pop artists or their music too seriously. “Girls are more open to checking out the clothes, hair and choreography. They go for the details-- in K-pop, there’s a lot of focus on the details.”

“K-pop artists have very little autonomy and the industry in South Korea is like a slave market, which is why they seem very plastic and manufactured,” says Amrutha. In South Korea, musicians can’t perform independently and must go through entertainment companies that offer binding contracts to children right from age 10. “Companies look for really young kids to groom, so the younger, the better. They don’t get paid and they can’t leave. When the company thinks they are ready, they’re placed in a band,” explains Anita about the restrictions that control talent in the entertainment industry in South Korea.

Despite what goes on behind the scenes, the popularity of the genre and its artists keep growing. “K-pop artists do a lot of fan service, which helps you relate to them,” says Amrutha. K-pop stars often mention fans when they appear on reality shows, wear the T-shirts they receive and send messages to sick fans through their lyrics, which gets the fans excited and keeps them involved.

Chennai, still new to this phenomenon, has not acquired the mass support required for the genre to explode.

However, the enthusiasm of the audience, who were singing along in Korean and actively encouraging the performances at the K-pop festival shows that this phenomenon is only going to grow.

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