2023, Vol.31, No.1

Journal of the Korean Society for Musicology 2024 KCI Impact Factor : 0.64

eISSN : 3092-2410
https://journal.kci.go.kr/musicology

This paper is a music critique of singer BoA (권보아, 1986~ )’s Girls On Top (2005) based on body discourse and feminism. This paper aims to analyze sound, music videos, and performance on the live stage from a feminist point of view and reveal the value and significance of Girls On Top, which presents an independent and resistant female image in the K-pop music industry. For a long time, popular music, especially dance music, has not been considered the subject of serious music research, one of the reasons is that dance music is based on the movement of the human ‘body’. Western philosophical thinking, which distinguishes the body from the mind and considers the body inferior, is repeated in music discourse, especially in Eduard Hanslick’s musical aesthetics, and the transformation of be-bop and Rock. On the other hand, according to the dichotomous thinking system of Western philosophy, women have been reduced to men’s others and the body itself. In particular, in the structure of the music industry, women’s bodies are easily fragmented and commercialized and reproduced as sexual objects in accordance with “Male Gaze”. In addition, in a reality where the standard of beauty is strictly required compared to male singers, female singers are often illuminated by their appearance and body rather than their creative and musical abilities and consumed as images. As such, female singers in the music industry structure stand in a vulnerable place under the double oppression of ‘body’ and ‘women’. Despite the double oppression of being a ‘body’ that is inferior to the spirit, and a ‘female’ singer who is required and consumed by beautiful appearance, BoA’s Girls On Top presented an independent and confident woman image that is not easily included. This paper attempts to analyze based on intellectual foundations through body discourse and feminism while examining sound, music videos, and performance on the live stage. In particular, I will pay attention to BoA’s creative activities and utterances that actively presented and participated in the production process of Girls On Top. Through this, the meaning of BoA’s Girls On Top, which completed resistant and subjective music and performance, is dealt with from a feminist point of view.

This paper aims to shed light on the early Korean female musicians who studied abroad, focusing on the 1920s and 1930s when studying abroad increased, and to examine how their experiences of studying abroad, which involved conflicts between personal aspirations and societal demands, manifested in modernity. Studying music abroad played a crucial role in shaping the music culture during the early modern period in Korea. Music had been used as the most useful educational tool to encourage women to participate in the national movement to liberate Korea from Japanese rule. For women who received modern education, therefore, music was not just an object of enjoyment but also a mission and duty to learn, master, and pass their knowledge to future generations as well as to enlighten society. Overseas education provided opportunities for these early female musicians to open their eyes to the modern world in complex and diverse ways, where societal demands for giving back and personal aspirations for self-realization were intertwined. All of them experienced and embodied modernity through different processes, and their experience of studying abroad and continuous reflection amid internal conflicts guided them to determine their own life paths. It can be said that the early women musicians, who acquired ‘autonomy’ through their pursuit of self-realization and reflection on reality through study abroad and education, expressed ‘modernity’ in their own lives as a response to the ‘modernity’ they experienced.

Music has always been in the space of human life. Considering space as a basin of music, this study investigates the role of space of daily life in music culture in Gyeongseong, the capital of Colonial Joseon. The city had many spaces that manifest modernist characteristics. Based on a motif of ‘the west’, these spaces was filled with the so-called western music, food, costumes, etiquette, language, etc., which allowed people exotic experience and made them temporarily free from tough life. By using western sounds, hotels and department stores were considered as the zenith of westernization and an exemplar of modernity. It is because acoustic features of the western music signify elegance. In this context, the current study focuses on hotels and department stores to understand how western music settled down in daily life and was familiarized to ears of people in Gyeongseong. Music flowing out from modern buildings provided new auditory experience to the public in Gyeongseong. For people who had been accustomed to sound of Joseon, western music was not annoying any longer and even became familiar with the western sound. Western music that governs our auditory experience is powerful. The fact that, for most of us, western music is regarded as a mother tongue reflects familiarization processes of western music since colonial Joseon