Known as music for grannies and scorned by fans of K-pop, trot is making a hip comeback – but can this wildly sentimental music ever break out of its home country?
As the latest Covid restrictions lift, music is in the air again in Seoul. But in 2022, it’s not just K-pop and western hits providing the soundtrack to South Korea’s capital. There’s another sound lurking around almost every corner.
It’s blaring from merchants’ portable stereos at fruit and vegetable markets, and it’s sung at noraebang (karaoke) booths in Nagwon-dong. I hear it in the secondhand music stores of Euljiro, where it’s piled from floor to ceiling in bumper-sized CD and cassette packages. When I switch on the TV, it’s there again – performed on variety shows and glitzy talent competitions. The genre’s stars light up backstreets and skyscrapers on torn posters and digital billboards. “It’s like oxygen,” says the dance producer 250 of the pounding rhythms, cheap keyboard sounds and emotive vocal performances I hear wherever I go. “It’s everywhere.”
