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trot

Trot

South Korea · 1930s

Sentimental Romantic Dancing Happy Sad

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Description

Trot (teuroteu) is one of the oldest forms of Korean popular music, built around a steady two-beat groove, simple diatonic harmonies, and highly ornamented, vibrato-rich vocals. Its melodies often use pentatonic contours and a characteristic catch in the voice (kkeokk-gi), conveying both festive spirit and deep pathos.

Emerging during the early 20th century, trot absorbed influences from Japanese popular song (enka/ryūkōka), Western ballroom dance rhythms (such as waltz and tango), and Korean folk vocal aesthetics. The genre centers lyrical themes of love, longing, nostalgia for hometown, and everyday resilience, and it continues to evolve through modern “semi-trot” and television-driven revivals.

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Enka is a Japanese popular song style known for its sentimental ballads, expressive vocals with wide vibrato, and dramatic, narrative delivery. It evokes nostalgia for hometowns, bygone eras, and lost love, often painting scenes of coastal ports, country roads, and seasonal landscapes. Musically, enka blends Western harmonic frameworks with Japanese melodic sensibilities. Melodies often use yonanuki (four-note-omission) major or minor pentatonic variants, creating a “traditional” Japanese color over simple, diatonic progressions. Arrangements favor lush strings, reverb-laden guitars, saxophone obbligatos, and occasional traditional timbres (shamisen or shakuhachi) for color. Culturally, enka rose to mass popularity during the postwar Shōwa era and remains tied to television variety shows, karaoke bars, and live theater venues. Its performance practice foregrounds pathos, rubato phrasing, and ornamental turns called kobushi.

Ryūkōka is an early form of Japanese popular song that blossomed from the late Taishō into the early Shōwa era. It blends Western popular idioms—such as waltz, tango, foxtrot, and jazz—with Japanese pentatonic melodies and vocal ornamentation. Characterized by crooning vocals, sentimental themes, and orchestrations that could include strings, guitar, accordion, clarinet, and sometimes shamisen, ryūkōka provided the blueprint for later Japanese popular styles. Its melodies often use the yo and in pentatonic scales, while harmonies draw from Western tonality, resulting in a distinctive fusion of local melody and imported harmony. The genre documented urban modernity, romance, wartime experience, and nostalgia, becoming the sound of a rapidly changing Japan between the 1920s and 1950s.

Pansori is a Korean epic narrative singing tradition performed by a single vocalist (sorikkun) and a barrel drummer (gosu) who accompanies on the buk and shouts improvised interjections (chuimsae). The singer narrates, acts, and sings a long story—combining lyrical arias (sori), spoken narration (aniri), and expressive gestures and mime (ballim)—to portray multiple characters alone on stage. Musically, pansori employs modal systems (jo) such as pyeongjo, ujo, and gyemyeonjo, and cycles of rhythm (jangdan) like jinyangjo (very slow), jungmori, jungjungmori, jajinmori (fast), hwimori (very fast), and eotmori (asymmetrical/5-beat). The vocal style favors powerful projection, intricate ornamentation, flexible timing, and dramatic timbral color, often cultivated through rigorous traditional training. Canonized works (madang) such as Chunhyangga, Simcheongga, Heungbuga, Sugungga, and Jeokbyeokga represent the core repertoire. Pansori is widely recognized as a hallmark of Korean performing arts and has been inscribed by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Tango is a music and dance genre that emerged in the Río de la Plata region at the turn of the 20th century, characterized by its dramatic phrasing, bittersweet harmonies, and close-embrace dance. The music typically features an orquesta típica with bandoneóns, violins, piano, and double bass, playing in 2/4 or 4/4 time with a distinctive syncopated pulse derived from the habanera and Afro-Rioplatense rhythms. Its sound blends European salon dances (waltz, polka, mazurka), rural gaucho song (payada, milonga), and Afro-Uruguayan/Argentine candombe. Melodies often lean minor, with chromatic inner lines, lush diminished chords, and expressive rubato. Vocal tangos frequently use lunfardo (Buenos Aires slang) to tell stories of love, loss, and urban life.

Waltz is a dance-music genre in triple meter, most commonly in 3/4 time, marked by a strong accent on the first beat and the characteristic “oom–pah–pah” accompaniment (bass note followed by two chords). Emerging from Central European folk dances and adopted by urban salons, the waltz spans both functional dance repertoire and concert pieces for piano or orchestra. Tempos vary by style: the Viennese waltz is fast and flowing, while the slow/English waltz is measured and lyrical. Melodies are typically long-breathed and cantabile, with 8- or 16-bar phrases and frequent modulations to closely related keys. The genre is culturally tied to Vienna and the Habsburg lands, where composers such as the Strausses and Lanner helped codify its form, but it has since permeated ballroom traditions, art music, folk repertoires, film, and popular music worldwide.

Jazz is an improvisation-centered music tradition that emerged from African American communities in the early 20th century. It blends blues feeling, ragtime syncopation, European harmonic practice, and brass band instrumentation into a flexible, conversational art. Defining features include swing rhythm (a triplet-based pulse), call-and-response phrasing, blue notes, and extended harmonies built on 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths. Jazz is as much a way of making music—spontaneous interaction, variation, and personal sound—as it is a set of forms and tunes. Across its history, jazz has continually hybridized, from New Orleans ensembles and big-band swing to bebop, cool and hard bop, modal and free jazz, fusion, and contemporary cross-genre experiments. Its influence permeates global popular and art music.

Blues is an African American musical tradition defined by expressive "blue notes," call-and-response phrasing, and a characteristic use of dominant-seventh harmony in cyclical song forms (most famously the 12‑bar blues). It is as much a feeling as a form, conveying sorrow, resilience, humor, and hard-won joy. Musically, blues commonly employs the I–IV–V progression, swung or shuffled rhythms, and the AAB lyric stanza. Melodies lean on the minor/major third ambiguity and the flattened fifth and seventh degrees. Core instruments include voice, guitar (acoustic or electric), harmonica, piano, bass, and drums, with slide guitar, bends, and vocal melismas as signature techniques. Over time the blues has diversified into regional and stylistic currents—Delta and Piedmont country blues, urban Chicago and Texas blues, West Coast jump and boogie-woogie—while profoundly shaping jazz, rhythm & blues, rock and roll, soul, funk, and much of modern popular music.

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