A listening session for a Korean pop album has fans gathering in numbers
K-pop band Lucente with fans in India
When we meet Madhu Gudi and Madhura Rumde at a Bandra bistro, they are both wearing the same black jersey with a Korean motif. "Believe me, we did not plan this," Gudi insists immediately. The two friends recently launched ButterNyan, a project meant to promote a look-east policy when it comes to culture. That intent is reflected in their coincidental choice of clothing, but the duo is feeling the jitters slightly ahead of their first event, in collaboration with The Hive.
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Indian BTS fans
It's a listening session for Her, an album that Korean pop - or K-pop - megastars BTS are launching next week. Their jitters are based on the fact that the expected audience has already reached 60 Facebook members who are 'going'. So, given 'interested' people, RSVPs and walk-ins, the venue (the upstairs section of an Andheri microbrewery) is likely to exceed choc-a-bloc capacity. "We plan to shift the benches to make space," Rumde reveals, making us wonder if the K-pop subculture is gaining strength in the country.
Madhu Gudi (saluting) and Madhura Rumde
Consider this. Rolling Stone India featured K-pop on its cover this month. Vh1 India is launching a separate K-pop segment today. And perhaps most significantly, the Korean Cultural Centre (KCC) in New Delhi recorded 898 participants at the Indian chapter of a global K-pop contest in July this year, whereas - when the event was first brought here in 2012 - only 37 people from across the country had bothered to turn up.
What can we attribute this rise to? All the people we spoke to - including KCC's Chamseul Kim, a source from Vh1 and assorted K-pop fans - agreed on one reason: high-speed Internet. "It's only now that the mainstream media is paying attention to K-pop. But the fans have always had their own community here, fuelled by changing Internet speeds," says the Vh1 source on condition of anonymity. She adds that for most people, Korean dramas are the gateway into K-pop music. "In the early 2000s, Korea started focusing a lot on developing the media as a soft power and the government started pumping money into movies, music, etc. But TV, which was more of a mass medium, started gaining even more popularity. K-dramas often featured these musicians as actors and used their songs. That's how a lot of them got noticed, even in India."
Other factors that led to this cultural pollination include the very nature of K-pop music. When we gave it a listen, we found it to be accessible in an unabashedly formulaic manner, manufactured to suit mainly teen-girl sensibilities.
The musicians embodied the epitome of plastic beauty, dancing to clockwork choreography. The fashion was cutting-edge. The production values would make even someone like Pharrell Williams sit up and take notice. And the music was downright peppy, meant more for a party than a gathering of the family elders. All of which makes K-pop stars sound like far-eastern versions of Justin Bieber, though of course, the BTS listening session will attract only a fraction of the crowd that turned up in Navi Mumbai for the Canadian's gig.
But given the sense we get of how K-pop is taking shape in India, and the increasing audience numbers and compact size of the venue, we still suggest that you get there early.
On: September 24, 4 pm to 6 pm
At: Brewbot, Andheri West
Call: 39698091
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