Over the course of this year you've probably seen a lot of new K-Pop groups being featured in the radio, tv, and the mainstream media in general but what is K-Pop and when did it started?
Korean Pop originated in South Korea and is a genre influenced by several styles of music such as experimental, jazz, gospel, hip hop, R&B, country, classical and more. K-Pop actually started back in the 90's gaining more recognition around 2003, modern K-Pop is recognizable for the use of english words in its music and this is what captured the attention of a younger and more international audience.
Some of the most familiar names out are BTS, Blackpink, Twice, EXO and Got7 which have collaborated with a lot with international artists such as Steve Aoki, Nicki Minaj, Dua Lipa amongst much more.
This last year was actually pretty big for K-Pop getting a new category just for them at the MTV Video Music Awards and becoming a main genre of importance as we can see in the Billboard category.
Coincidentally this year has been a bit lower for Latin Music, after 3 years of rise is the first time that this genre was down on overall revenue from last year according to the RIAA report for 2019, after "Despasito" proved that pop wasn't particular only to the English language it may have helped open the door for other international genres to triumph in the music world.
Although Latin Music seemed to be reigning a big chunk of mainstream music for the last couple of years it seems that K-Pop is coming to make a little competition in the industry, one exciting thing that we can see is the music collaborations are becoming more and more diverse not only mixing K-Pop artists and American artists but also Latin musicians!
One of the newest one being J-Hope & Becky G with their song 'Chicken Noodle Soup" and Super Junior & Reik with "Lo siento", in this collaborations we can hear an amazing mix of English, Korean and Spanish not only in the languages but also in the music styles, in the fashion choices and in the visuals which is a very refreshing combination to see.
Hopefully we get to see more fusions in the time to come because by mixing different musical cultures is how we will keep evolving artistically over time.