1930년대 한국 도시문화와 대중음악

Korean Urban Culture and Popular Music in the 1930s

  This study has examined the relationship between urban culture and popular music in the 1930s. The second section explored how popular music formed centering on the phonograph within the popular media and the significance of the arrival of the phonograph. Without question, the phonograph contributed to the popularization of music. The public not only encountered a diverse range of popular music through the phonograph, but they were also able to enjoy popular songs. This study then examined what kind of music was played mostly in the tea rooms and cafes through the sources available from the period. From the sources, one can tell that the cafes that operated like bars mostly played jazz, and the tea rooms that operated like tea houses played an extremely diverse range of music, because the music differed according to the location of the establishment and the tastes of their customers.   In the third section, this study showed how the popular songs described the urban culture at the time through an examination of some actual works. The popular songs that described the urban culture can be generally divided into two categories of songs of laughter and songs of tears. Usually within the songs of laughter, the poetic ego satirized the urban space that newly appeared within the urban culture and the behavior of city residents who wandered within. In contrast, within the songs of tears the poetic ego often expressed the depression and sadness of that he or she encountered while experiencing the urban culture.   In this way, this study has examined the mutual relationship between urban culture and popular music in the 1930s and revealed how the people of the period felt about the city. The people at the time did not simply welcome or adopt a hopeless attitude about the urban culture. At times, they mocked urban culture and at times they expressed the despair they felt while experiencing the urban culture. Due to the limitations of space, this study cannot include the diverse images of the people who lived everyday lives at the time. Yet this study should have significance, for during the process of investigating the relationship between urban culture and popular music, it provided a brief glimpse of the people of the time wandering through the duality of emotions engendered by colonialism and modernity.