It’s a very cold January evening and together with Enzo, a French friend, I’m walking through the streets of Hongdae, a lively area concentrated around Hongik University of Fine Arts (Hongik Daehakgyo in Korean, which shortens becomes Hongdae) west of the center of Seoul. Here many bars and alternative clubs have been born in the past years even if now the trend is moving towards commercial music and the area is becoming a destination for young k-pop scene fans in love with the idol bands. Many young people come here in search of popularity by showing their singing and dancing skills in crowded streets, dreaming of being the next Korean idols getting popular everywhere.
We pass close to one of the many clubs and we hear a music coming from one of them, sounds like a pleasant sound vibrations and since the temperature outside is very low, we decide to get in the most cozy basement.
Here a band of young Koreans is playing a concert in front of a thin but mindful audience: the conventional prepacked and soulless mainstream music has taken over and people prefer to listen to the totally empty songs which are continuously pumped by televisions and radios eventually becoming “the music to listen”, another gift of the mass manipulation of our consumerist societies to the detriment of free and independent forms of expression that could be more interesting and close to the personal sensitivity of the listeners, like the songs of this young Korean group of indie rock.
Timid gentleness that mixes with a boundless sound of rebellion to generate a touching music.
A succession of songs created using a simple structure of a few well-placed chords and perfect arrangements as if they were poetic nuances that reach areas of the soul too often drowsy, waiting for an external urge like these artistic expressions full of passion.
Coming into contact with different cultures and societies and looking at our own from the outside what immediately jumped to my mind is the extreme conformation of all of us to an imposed system to which we believe and which we accept without ever asking questions or rebelling psychologically… An external authority linked to politics, to religions, to our educational system that conforms us, like a music that has been put in our head, that has been played since we were children and that we like now because we are not used to listen to others and above all we have not been pushed to find our personal melody.
The concert is over and we leave after having complimented the group, thanking them for giving us a moment of exciting and rebel emotion linked to the freedom, that is there for everyone.
In the streets we start to hear again the songs coming from the clubs and bars full of people, all the same.
