My K-Pop Community
Before moving to where I live now(Chile), I was only a newbie when it came to Asian music. That was respectively portrayed in the amount of friends that I had with the same music taste(about zero). Now a days, the large part of my friends are K-Pop addicts, which makes for some interesting situations at times.
Here in Chile the K-Pop community is HUGE. And by huge I’m talking Hagiwara Mai’s head size huge. The K-Pop fans here are divided up into communities. Inside those communities are various “tribute groups” aka people who mimic a certain K-Pop group. There exists a lot of variations with this. I don’t know any K-Pop group which I haven’t seen a tribute too and usually size isn’t a problem since I’ve seen groups with up to 13+ members.
I am also a part of this following. What do I do? Well I’m part of a group called Sone♡Generation, an SNSD tribute group but instead of having girls, we are an all male group(though it’s very common to see girls playing the part of a guy[guys are slightly more hard to find and recruit]). So far the experience has been really fun, although a lot of patience was required. It took us many months to finally recruit all nine members(although we’re short a Soo Young, again) that matched almost PERFECTLY with their respective Soshi.
Our Jessica(or Jessico ;D) has the same blond hair as Soshi’s, our Tiffany shares a striking resemblance to the original and every other member bears something that matches them up with their SNSD member (I play the part of Taeyeon btw).
These groups are serious business. While they could be a fun hobby, they’ve become a sort of competition now. Some groups are laughable, with messy coordination and lulzy members while others may just leave you shocked at how perfectly they mimic the original group. Almost every aspect of the K-Pop world is taken into account including the clothes(which is usually tailored to be exactly the same as the original, or mimicked with something similar), the hair(I’ve even seen wigs!) and the personality. You are expected to look and act like the member you mimic.
Now what do these groups do once they’re ready for performing? Compete of course! Usually twice a month or so a K-Pop event is held where other than enjoying from K-Pop music, eating Korean food and being around people with all the same taste as yourself(which is always a relief), you see the groups perform and compete for the top three places which grants them some kind of award.
The more casual events are nice for groups that are “debuting”(yea, they label it that) and trying to build a fan base, but the real deal is at the annual event held every December, where only the best groups are chosen to compete for first place. This is no joke either bbz, last year the first place winners took home Korean cellphones, along with a Samsung LCD TV and some bling bling bling(by that I mean money).
Now let’s look at some examples. Here we have the group called “Blue Boys”(yea, I know). They are undoubtedly the most popular and successful tribute group down here. They are a tribute to Super Junior and have become sort of celebrities down here(in the K-Pop community anyway). They’ve even appeared on TV! Now as a fellow K-Popper, I’m not a big fan of them, mostly due to conflicts with some individual members(there is a lot of drama in this K-Pop world, surprisingly), but I won’t deny that they are insanely talented and definitely know how to throw a performance.
Here is their first place performance for the Singing & Dancing K-Pop contest from December.
Now here is a performance by Myu Jeu 9, an SNSD tribute group, in that same contest. Unfortunately, they only managed to get a special reward for their coordination, but didn’t even place in the top three, which angered a lot of the fans their.
As you can see, these groups dedicate a lot of time into doing this, which definitely get my respect.
And it doesn’t end there. The K-Pop world is only getting stronger here. K-Pop in Chile has even been featured in Korean television, with plans for another 30 minute feature coming up soon(which my group is present in!). I’m glad I’ve been able to expand my group of friends with people who have the same taste as me.
Unfortunately, the J-Pop crowd isn’t as relevant here.
How is the Asian music community where you live? Are you an active part of it? Or do you have no J/K-Pop friends? :(
Which one are you in the pic?? I don’t know the group like that.
I don’t appear in any of these pics. :P My group has yet to take any pics together. -_-’
Sorry i lol’ed reading this and not in a bad way. Just so different and nobody I know cares for kpop since most of the people in my school are musical snobs who listen to old rock and some irrelevant band no one heard of. Though I suspect Jrock is popular among the gothic type since their dress is getting closer to visual kei.
Oh and I think that Jpop could be bigger if those companies were not so strict when it comes to their videos on youtube
very interesting.
I’m not really into K-pop really.
I have 2 friends that are into Anime but thats it. where i live, i’m a right outsider because i don’t hang around on the street corner, i’m 25 and i don’t have 5 kids, i don’t even have 1 (thank god), most of my friends live over 100 miles aways, my fashion sense is 100 times better than the people in my area (i actually wear clothes that isn’t 3 sizes too amall) and i don’t really like r ‘n’ b, Hip hop and underground ganster rap (cos it’s a load of crap).
I really want to find people near me that like J-pop but it seems that they don’t like anywhere near my area (which is a good thing really).
Wow I’m impressed… Where I live there is a huge korean community but I haven’t really met what I would call real kpop lover (korean tends to stay within koreans anyway) and I just arrived here so I don’t really know about all this tbh.
Not gonna lie.
If that happened in the UK, it would be more girls and the air would be filled with jealousy at the ones who dance well. In London, I’ve met 4 fanboys (1 more on Tuesday ^_^ if you look at my blog) Actually that happened at the Big Bang fanmeet last August, there was a group of Koreans from New Malden who performed VERY WELL especially BEAST Shock and omg, after they had done, I did not want to dance at all.
And I think like in Chile, it will become competitive in London and I won’t like it because new fans will come and bring 2010 groups and I will kill. Literally explode!!!
I doubt J-Pop will be like this because J-Pop would be spilt into two parts; the cutesy anime songs & dances and then the actual cooler and urban side. And then there’s J-Rock.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Nyasha ♥, .. . said: @porfirion http://www.soratokujira.tk/my-k-pop-community/ jakis kult ;x [...]
hmm… ANIMELO concert much better than that !
Quién eres y por qué no hemos cruzado caminos en nuestras vidas, aunque sea cybertéticamente o_O
Wow, you’re so lucky!
I’m not a huge K-Pop fan except for BoA, and I have a few SNSD songs. I’m more of a J-Popper.
However, NO ONE I know around here likes J-Pop OR K-Pop. The ONLY person that likes it is my friend who I introduced to H!P in November. Now she is, like, obsessed with Berryz Koubou. Other than that, I know no one. D:
That looks like a lot of fun though. And the SNSD tribute group was good <33
I really love K-Pop but I really don’t know why some people don’t like it
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