Zhang Eu-jeong
Rutgers University Press
11 August 2026
326
eBook - PDF
Non-Fiction/Music
ARC via Edelweiss
Chronicling the development of Korean popular song over the first half of the twentieth century, Brother Is a Street Musician tells the inspiring story of how a colonized people used music to express their language and culture, planting the seeds for the K-Pop industry we know today.
The history of the Korean popular music industry dates back a century before the beginnings of K-Pop, to when the Korean peninsula was still under Japanese rule. Though Koreans didn’t have an independent country, they were still able to use recorded music to assert a distinct cultural identity.
Brother Is a Street Musician chronicles the development of Korean popular music over the first half of the twentieth century, examining both industry trends and talented composers and performers like Nam Insu and Yi Nanyǒng. Drawing from rare archives of gramophone records and lyric books, musicologist Zhang Eujeong shows how Korean musicians drew from folk traditions to create totally new genres, ranging from comic songs to Western-influenced jazz records. She also includes English translations and detailed analyses of lyrics from some of the era’s most popular songs.
A landmark study of Korean music, now available in English for the first time, Brother Is a Street Musician tells the inspiring story of how a colonized people developed their own form of popular music, planting the seeds for an industry that would grow to export Korean culture around the world.
Brother is a Street Musician was an enlightening read. I am interested in music history and in Korean history, so this book was the perfect blend to catch my eye. I knew a little bit about trot, but didn't realise it went back so much earlier than the 60s. It was fascinating to see how new influences from Japan and from the West intermingled with Korean traditional music like pansori and minyo during the 20s and 30s. The author offered a balanced viewpoint on the influences and the development of popular music in Korea during this time, and I am certainly planning to search on YouTube to see if recordings of any of the songs are available to listen to. The only negative comments I have is that the book was a little repetitive at times (giving the same definitions of different styles of song on multiple occasions) and I really hated the use of the McCune–Reischauer romanisation system. As someone learning Korean, I find this system unintelligible at times. While not perfect, the Revised Romanisation system is far closer to approximating how Korean words should be pronounced. I am not sure why MR is still forced on us in modern publications when RR has been the official system in South Korea for over 25 years now. But, that little rant aside, this is a fascinating read for anyone interested in Korean popular music and Korean history. I am giving it 4 stars.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
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