The history of the Korean popular music industry dates back a century before the beginnings of K-Pop, to when the Korean peninsula was still under Japanese rule. Though Koreans didn’t have an independent country, they were still able to use recorded music to assert a distinct cultural identity.
Brother Is a Street Musician chronicles the development of Korean popular music over the first half of the twentieth century, examining both industry trends and talented composers and performers like Nam Insu and Yi Nanyǒng. Drawing from rare archives of gramophone records and lyric books, musicologist Zhang Eujeong shows how Korean musicians drew from folk traditions to create totally new genres, ranging from comic songs to Western-influenced jazz records. She also includes English translations and detailed analyses of lyrics from some of the era’s most popular songs.
A landmark study of Korean music, now available in English for the first time, Brother Is a Street Musician tells the inspiring story of how a colonized people developed their own form of popular music, planting the seeds for an industry that would grow to export Korean culture around the world.
"Zhang’s forensic account of the Korean popular music industry during the first half of the twentieth century has long been a standard go-to text for Korean writers. Now made accessible for all in translation, it brilliantly dissects issues surrounding genre, origin, and influence, usefully provides lyrics of important songs, and convincingly argues for a continuum running from the past to today’s all-conquering K-Pop."
"An instant classic when originally published two decades ago, Brother is a Street Musician stands as a highly important and indeed pivotal record of Korean musicology. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in Korean modernity, the rise of celebrity culture and fandom, and the transnational nature of the music industry in its formative years."
"In a touchstone study that charts the birth of modern Korean popular music, Zhang provides a virtuoso performance that analyzes a range of colonial-era musical genres, revealing through an eclectic range of sources how trot, jazz, and sinminyo songs transcended entertainment to become vital, resonant comforts for a people navigating the complexities and contradictions of colonial modernity."
Foreword: O Brother, There Thou Art: An Odyssey to Colonial (Pre)Modernity in Korean Popular Music vii PIL HO KIM Translator’s Note xi Preface to the 2006 Korean Edition xiii Preface to the 2026 English Edition xix 1 Introduction 1 Why Popular Songs from the First Half of the Twentieth Century? 1 The Birth of the Consumer Public and Popular Songs 4 Beyond the Limits of Autogenous Generation and Transplantation 8 Recorded Album History by Era 11 Close Examination: The Faceless Singer 13 2 The Gramophone Record and the Creation of Popular Songs 21 Why the Focus on Gramophone Records? 22 The Emergence and Distribution of the Gramophone Record 23 The Characteristics of Domestic Record Labels and Their Transformation in Each Era 33 The Creators of Popular Songs 40 Types of Popular Songs and Their Characteristics 45 The Creation and Development of Popular Songs 54 Close Examination: Kisaengs Became Popular Singers? 86 3 The Consumption of Popular Songs 91 The Attitude of the Consumer Public 93 The Perspectives of Critics 114 Close Examination: Who Was Korea’s First Singer-Songwriter? 131
4 Literary Expressions of Popular Sentiment 133 The Search for Pleasure in Jazz Songs 136 The Comedic Traits of Manyo 144 Fulfillment and Deficiency Expressed in Sinminyo 166 Loss and the Will to Overcome One’s Struggles as Reflected in Trot 187 Military Songs in an Era of Darkness 228 Close Examination: A Look at Korea’s Very First Popular Song 236 5 The Historical Status and Significance of Korean Popular Songs from the First Half of the Twentieth Century 239 Traditional Songs and Their Tendency to Inherit the Past 240 Characteristics for Future Survival 248 The Future Path of Popular Songs 253 Acknowledgments 257 Notes 259 Bibliography 291 Notes on Contributors 303 Index 000
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 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 US-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.
PIL HO KIM is an associate professor of Korean at The Ohio State University. He is the author of Polarizing Dreams: Gangnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea.
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