Big
Bang recently completed their 1st world tour with 48 shows in 13
different countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom
While some people may not consider music to be a healing power of
nations, we have certainly seen evidence of that very fact within recent
years. Thanks to the internet, our everyday lives have expanded to
include other countries and cultures. Young people have a desire to
travel and experience the world. Ethnic restaurants are on every
corner, international supermarkets are common and a fascination with
foreign languages is at an all-time high. Slowly but surely, the young
people of the world are pulling together by finding common interests in
everything from fashion to movies.
At the forefront of this global movement is music. With the recent
rise of stars like Pitbull, Shinhwa, Shakira and PSY, people have been
exposed to bilingual songs, where a mixture of languages and rhythms
work together to form a more universal music. Whether it includes a
smattering of English, Korean, Japanese or Spanish, there is often
enough of any language to appeal to people from many different
countries, ranging from Brazil, the United States, Turkey or Japan.
Within the last decade, K-pop has proven itself to be the leader of
this movement- a tidal wave of Korean culture slowly washing its way
over the globe. K-pop artists have become experts at appealing to all
cultures- their fashion a charming mix of reality and fantasy, their
music an alluring blend of everything from rap to techno, their natural,
fresh beauty appealing to people all over the globe and their youth and
vitality inspiring the youngest generation of music lovers. It is a
music genre which knows no boundaries and has been happily embraced by
people all over the world.
The overwhelming popularity of K-pop has greatly helped in healing
relations between Japanese and Korean people and conquering former
prejudices from the past. It has brought tourism and considerable income
to the South Korean economy. Thanks to the internet and websites like
youtube, in the past few years, K-pop has branched further out of Asia
to reach all the way to Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. Every
day, netizens are discovering groups like B.A.P., ss501, 2ne1 and Super
Junior, thus thrusting them into the fascinating world of K-pop and
converting them into instant fans.
Whether it is the breaking down of such racial and cultural
boundaries which has allowed K-pop to garner such success or if it’s
that K-pop and other multilingual artists are the ones who have advanced
the breaking down of such barriers, the simple truth remains… K-pop is
in the height of its popularity and shows no signs of slowing down! So,
we simply put on our Big Bang cd, sit back, and watch with pleasure as
the Korean tidal wave continues rushing over the globe, washing away
borders as it goes.
On
March 25th, during the final concert of Kim Hyun Joong’s “Unlimited”
Japan Tour 2013, audience members were treated to an unusual sight… the
“Break Down” singer and popular leader of ss501 broke down into tears as
the concert came to an end.
