SoundTreks: An Eye on Asian Pop
"World music" has always been something of an ironic (not to mention ironically limited) descriptor: The "world" in world music doesn't include significant parts of Europe and North America, the music of the whole "world" is given a disproportionate amount of global media and promotional attention, etc., etc. One of the less central (and less often discussed) ironies of the industry, however, is that Asian music, in general, and especially Asian pop music (with the occasional J-pop exception) just doesn't circulate through the world music conduits all that readily. To some degree, the rest of the world's lack of access to Asian pop has to do with differences in local music industries. But it also might be related to a general dismissal of commercial Asian pop as just a bunch of sappy ballads and canned beats.
And okay, yes, there are actually a lot of sappy ballads -- although we shouldn't be too quick to write that material off either. But that's another SoundTrek. Today we're talking about the peppier stuff in the Asian pop oeuvre, particularly in the region's videos. And, oh boy, are there plenty of downright campy, deliciously candy-coated nuggets there -- the stuff that makes pop everywhere good and addictive. Moreover, there's a kind of joie de vivre (and sometimes a wacky plotline) that's often missing from Western pop.
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