In the chapter of Transnationalizing Viet Nam, “Popular Music: Sounds of Home Resistance and Change” Kieu-Linh Valverde highlights the transnational characteristics of Vietnamese popular music that helped connect the Vietnamese American diaspora to their counterparts in Vietnam. Vietnamese American popular music expanded to those that lived in Viet Nam. Although there were heavy restrictions and policies that forbid western influence, producers and those in the industry managed to find methods to promote Vietnamese American music to those that lived in Vietnam. Furthermore, Vietnamese music was used as a way of making a political statement, tying together culture and politics. This chapter places an emphasis on, “the psychological motivations and sociological processes of those who produce and consume the music and how the music affects the lives of people in Viet Nam and in the diaspora (Valverde 31). This reiterates the context of what we have been learning in class regarding the tensions between the anti-communist Vietnamese American diaspora and the communist Vietnamese government. Moreover, a more recent example would be the transnational characteristics of Kpop and how Korean popular music and culture connect the Korean diaspora to those in Korea, especially since there are underlying political connotations as well. Specifically, how South Korea has been using Kpop as a method to promote nationalism and Korean identity.
While popular music, such as Vietnamese and Korean, can work to create cultural ties between the diaspora and those within the home country does American culture play a role in disrupting those ties? Specifically, if American culture is viewed as negative by other countries?
SM Entertainment plans to form different subunits of the group NCT in other Asian countries, such as WayV in China) they have announced in the past a plan to create a subunit for Vpop in Vietnam, thus demonstrating the transnational characteristics of both the Kpop style and Vpop influence.
Works Cited:
Kieu-Linh Valverde. "Popular Music: Sounds of Home Resistance and Change." Transnationalizing Viet Nam.
https://www.sbs.com.au/popasia/blog/2017/12/06/look-out-v-pop-fans-coz-nct-vietnam-coming
No comments:
Post a Comment