AnthroScope Korea

Musical tastes have always differed among Korean boarding and international school students. Being at an international school for around 9 years and at boarding school for 4 years now, I’ve definitely noticed the gradual change in my music taste. 

A few years back, when I was living in Korea and attending an international school, I tended to listen to genres like K-Pop. I would keep up with new releases on Spotify and discover new K-Pop bands by communicating with my friends. In Korea, I did not have many foreign friends but rather, most of them were fully Koreans. Although we did not talk in Korean, we did share our love for Korean artists, like the K-Pop bands, and helped each other learn about new artists who could spice up our music tastes. 

But things changed dramatically when I started at boarding school. During my first year at boarding school, I met many more friends coming from different parts of the U.S. Living in a dorm with them allowed us to share our contrasting tastes in music, and that’s when I learned about American artists who make rap music. For me, K-Pop songs and U.S. rap songs felt like diametrically opposed genres, because they were so different in terms of the beats, lyrics, and melodies. I was constantly looking up new rappers on Spotify; my search list underwent a tremendous metamorphosis. All of a sudden, the K-Pop videos and songs that I was used to watching and listening to, respectively, were nowhere to be found on that list. Instead, it was populated by a variety of famous rappers and American artists. 

As I started to branch out by meeting more friends coming from countries other than Korea, there was a noticeable shift in the music genres I looked for and in the new releases that I kept up with. I no longer recognized new K-Pop songs when I went to Korea during breaks. 

 A way to make a connection with a new distinct group of people, away from my motherland, was to embrace the music tastes of my new companions. I have to admit that I felt quite vulnerable while altering my musical preferences, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Although my new musical choices might not relate to Korean culture as much, I began discovering artists outside of Korea. I expanded my cultural perspective by taking into consideration of foreign cultures and languages. The people you surround yourself with will certainly have a significant effect on your musical preferences. And since music is a huge component of culture, your musical preferences will permeate your being and impact your cultural perspectives as well.