Trot Music

Trot () is a genre of Korean popular music, known for its use of repetitive rhythm and vocal inflections. Originating during the Japanese occupation of Korea in the first half of the 20th century, trot was influenced by many genres of Korean, Japanese, American, and European music.

Trot has been around for almost 100 years and its distinct singing style has been continuously evolving. Trot music developed in rhythms during Japanese colonial rule. After the liberation of the Korean peninsula and the Korean War (1950-1953), artists such as Lee Mi-Ja, Choi Sook-ja, Bae Ho, Nam Jin, Na Hun-a, Joo Hyun-mi and many others helped to make trot popular. With the rise of K-pop from the 1990s onwards, trot music lost some popularity and was viewed as more old-fashioned. However, from the 2000s onwards, young trot singers such as Jang Yoon-jeong, Hong Jin-young, K-pop singers such as Super Junior-T, Daesung, MJ and Lizzy, renewed interest in the genre and popularised it among young listeners.

Although the genre originated before the division of the Korean peninsula, it is actually now mainly sung in South Korea; the associated pop culture, together with nursery rhymes, new folk songs in North Korea were categorized as "Enlightenment Period song" (계몽기 가요). It is no longer composed as propaganda music has since displaced other musical forms. Those songs were only orally-recorded. It was intentionally revived during Kim Jung Il administration: in the late 2000s, Korean Central Television aired a TV program that introduced those "Enlightenment songs".

Etymology

The name "trot" is a shortened form of "foxtrot", a style of ballroom dance that influenced the simple two-beat rhythm of trot music. Except two-beat rhythm, trot and foxtrot do not share any other notable characteristics.Oxford Grove Music Online
under keyword 'Korea' edited by Robert C. Provine, Okon Hwang and Keith Howard.

Characteristics

Rhythm

The trot is known for being composed in a two-beat rhythm, also known as the duple metre. In its early days, trot music was often composed using the pentatonic scale and minor keys. This pattern is called an anhemitonic scale or anhemitonic pentatonic scale, which was characteristic in Korean 'Gyeonggi-minyo' and other folk music such as early Japanese enka.
The pentatonic scale consists of five degrees: of the natural major scale, the 4th and 7th degrees are omitted, and to form the pentatonic minor scale, all these 5 degrees will descend 3 degrees. Before 1950, the pentatonic minor scale dominated in popularity, however, the pentatonic major scale had started to become more popular.Lee Jun-hee (2015): "Extension of Trot in 1940-1950 years", ''Journal of the Asian Music'' 38, pp. 75-94
PDF
(in Korean) (이준희: "1940-50년대 트로트의 확장: 장조화의 도입과 변용", ''동양음악'' 제38집). ref b: p. 84-85. After the Japanese occupation, trot music was composed using the heptatonic scale and major keys. In trot music, lower tones are generally sung with vibrato, while higher tones are sung with the flexing or turning technique called 'kkeokk-ki' (literally means flexing, ).

Kkeokk-ki

The 'Kkeokk-ki' technique may be better explained by the gruppetto ornament of classical music theory. A note is figured as if it had been split into two or four subsidiary notes. And the voice is inflected to these imaginary notes: e.g. one quarter note is split into four sixteenth notes: (1) one in original pitch - (2) one in upper pitch - (3) one in lower pitch - (1) one in original pitch again (see below image, the example measure is from Na Hun-a's "물레방아 도는데", ''"Turning Waterwell"''). Kkeokk-ki happens in the transition between two notes in the original pitch. For ordinary listeners, it is not easy to quickly perceive the subtlety of this technique. However, any trot singer can hardly do without the elaborated effect of Kkeokk-ki.

Lyrics

Most of trot's lyrical content is based on two popular themes, although they vary with the times: 1) love and parting, 2) longing for a sweet home. Some see the origin of this sentimentalism in "colonial tragedy". But that may well be related to the ancient tradition of resentment or deep sorrow () in Korean culture. Elegiac song texts with minor scales are the most common. In addition to the elegiac rhythm and the content of the lyrics, the 'new stream' in the theater (), introduced in the 1910s from Japan, has also contributed to the fact that trot is dominated by the moods of compassion and pain. Because the pieces of this 'new stream' frequently dealt with themes such as the family tragedy, love affairs - the best pieces were "Janghanmong" (), "Cheated in Love, Cried of Money" (); the great hit song "Don't Cry Hongdo" (홍도야 울지 마라) sings just the tragic story of the piece "Cheated in love, Cried of money". So it is understandable that many Koreans tend to be sad or compassionate when they hear trot songs. Sentimental words like 'crying' and 'leaving' have been consistently the most popular. But speech levels, which are recognizable at a sentence's final ending in Korean, have changed with the times; since 1990 the sentence in the low-level of politeness () is often used.

Performance

Trot music is mainly performed by one singer or at most duet. It is rare for a trot singer to play any instrument while singing. The playing of the instruments has something of an accompaniment function. The song usually being played by a band orchestra. Band orchestras use mostly backing vocals, usually consisting of 4 female vocalists, but rarely of mixed vocalists. The trot music shows often include a group of dancers. Thus, a typical broadcasting band orchestra for trot consists of instrument players, chorus, and dancers. Of course, it is possible for a singer to perform a song accompanied by one or two instruments; e.g. Joo Hyun-mi sings in her YouTube channel, accompanied only by guitar and accordion. Apart from the talent of a singer, the composer plays an important role in the success of a trot song. Since there are few trot singers and songwriters, a trot singer often gets his own singing style with the composer who always prepares a song for release with the singer.

Naming

The name ''trot'' has been widely used since the 1980s, even though the designation itself dates back to the 1950s. In the 1920s the name ''yuhaeng-changga'' () was in use; this name comes from the fact that ''yuhaeng'' means "trend, fashion, popular", and all sorts of western music, e.g. hymn, nursery rhyme, folksong, etc., as well as Japanese ''enka'', which were introduced to the Korean people at the end of the 19th century, were called ''changga''; ref a: p. 53, ref d: p. 62. popular music in the western style was called ''yuhaeng-changga'', later abbreviated ''yuhaengga'' ().

The trot is sometimes referred to as ''seongin-gayo'' (), which means "music for
adults". Trot also has a newer name, ''jeontong-gayo'' (), literally "traditional popular song". Calling trot ''jeontong-gayo'' may implicitly refer to national self-confidence and give people a sense of self-esteem, so that the uncomfortable suspicion of foreign origin would be eased. The name ''daejung-gayo'' (), or "music for the public", has been used historically for trot, but it is a wider term for all sorts of popular music, so K-pop for example, also falls under the label of ''daejung-gayo''. Additionally, instead of ''teuroteu'' (), the term ''teurot'' () is occasionally seen in written Korean.

History

Origin

Trot music originated in Korea during the Japanese occupation of Korea. It is believed that trot's closest ancestors were Japanese enka. After the liberation of the Korean peninsula, however, trot has continued on its own path.Lee Ju-won (June 2015): "A Comparative Study of Korean and Japanese Popular Music - With a Focus on 1945-1950", ''Japanese Studies'' Vol. 64, pp. 75－98
KISS
(in Korean) (이주원: "한・일 양국의 대중가요 비교고찰: 1945-1950년을 중심으로", ''일본연구'' 제64호). ref a: p. 75, ref b: p. 88. There is an investigation showing that the songs that were published in Korea and Japan between 1945 and 1950 used in both countries pretty much the same amount of duple metre rhythm in a minor scale.
It is sometimes asserted that trot's origins can be traced to ''siga'' (), a traditional form of Korean poetry, although this only partially explains origins since it is relevant to poetic and lyrical aspects only. Some suggest that trot could have been influenced by Korean folk music, which does have some resemblance to trot's vocal inflections, even if Korean traditional music's rhythmic structure differs from trot's fixed duple metre. It was true that a genre of ''Sin-minyo'' (new folk song, ) was in circulation in the 1930s;Lee Yeong-mi (October 2006): "Inherit of traditional music", a paper presented at 'The 3rd World Congress of Korean Studies
PDF
available. (in Korean) (이영미: "전통가요 계승 대중가요의 흐름과 양상들"). but this music was simply modified versions of traditional folk songs e.g. Arirang or 'Taryeong' songs accompanied by Western instruments.

It is an old controversial issue whether trot originated during Japanese colonial rule and thus is not a genuine Korean popular music. This problem has caused quite a stir twice. Once the government took a position in the 1960s that the supposedly 'Japanese-tinged' songs suffered at the hands of the censor. The second discussion took place by the musicians and cultural critics in the 80s, called the 'Ppongjjak debate'.

'Japanese-tinged' censorship

The particular hostile emotional response to the former Japanese colonial rule has led the government to banish the Japanese legacy. This also happened in the cultural area. There were listed songs that seemed to have been influenced by enka. At the time, such songs were disparagingly called 'Japanese-tinged' () and the songs that violated conventional morality were called 'degenerate songs' (). First, in 1965 the broadcasters decided not to send out any more 'Japanese-tinged' songs. To it responded the singer association with the vehement protest. After that, in 1968 'Art and Cultural Ethics Commission' (the earliest commission of today's 'Korea Communications Standards Commission') decided to banish 108 songs and later more; the reasons were mainly 'obscene, vulgar, degenerated and Japanese-tinged". Lee Mi-ja's "Camellia Lady" was on the list in 1965 as well as in 1968. She once recalled, "The then-President Park Chung Hee, who was blamed for the censorship, did not know that the song had been banned, so he asked her to sing it at a banquet." The censorship culminated in the 1970s, most affected were the songs of the so-called 'acoustic guitar singers'. The ban on "Camellia Lady" and others was lifted in 1987. However, this kind of censorship, which finds much of its breeding ground from history, is still ongoing. Just as "Japanese-tinged" trot songs were banished, so the anti-Japanese leftists in the 2010s insisted on having to replace the school songs composed by pro-Japan musicians.

Ppongjjak debate

In 1984 this dispute entered the national discourse in South Korea. The debate, initiated in a provocative article "Who does claim Ppongjjak as ours?" in 1984, centered on whether or not trot music originated from either Japanese or Korean music. Because the genre was borrowed from Japan during the colonial period of Korea, as well as incorporated Japanese song influences in Changga, the genre has been subject to questioning its Korean identity. This Korean identity question is subtly rooted in the argument that the Japanese cultural suppression policy led to Koreans uncritically accepting the popular music trot influenced by enka. Anti-Japanese critics went so far as to tag trot as artifacts from the Japanese colonial period. This probably one-sided statement was answered by musicians and critics who saw things differently and responded; the claim on the part of Korean classical music that trot is Japanese-tinged and thus such songs should be forbidden, is a useless judgment of the colonial victim mentality. The debate back and forth was held in the newspaper ''Hanguk Daily News'' from November to December 1984. Since no concrete evidence has arisen to validate either side, this debate continues to exist when discussing the origins of trot music.

1920s–1950: Formation

Before the 1920s, there was little information about popular Western music. In the 1920s, some recordings with a vague resemblance to trot were heard around Korea, but these were likely forms of Western popular music. To detail trot music's beginnings, the following songs are presented as 'forerunners':

Singer Yun Sim-deok () recorded "In Praise of Death" () 1926 by Japanese Nitto Records

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