Asian pop makes a joyful change

Not too fussed with Britney’s latest offering? Feeling a bit Gaga’d out? It may be time to look across continents for your latest shot of pop music madness — and it seems Asian pop is shaping up to be the next frontier for chart-toppers.

Last week SBS Radio launched its new Asian pop hits show. Well ahead of the game, two presenters on Melbourne GLBTI radio station JOY94.9 FM have started a show dedicated to playing the best pop from the Asian region.

Jason ‘Jase’ Gipps, a presenter with JOY for six years, and fellow Asian pop fanatic Kayne, now host the show of their dreams — Joy Pop — every Wednesday.

Gipps describes the pair as “two Caucasian lads who’ve come down with Asian pop fever”.

“Sometime I think I’m taking my Asian pop obsession too far,” Gipps told the Star Observer.

“But once I found Kayne it made me feel human again because he is, to the max, crazy about it, to the point he’s learnt Korean because he thinks the music is just amazing.”

Gipps said it was during a trip to South-East Asia in 2007 that he first stepped into a whole new dimension of pop music.

“I tuned into MTV Asia and Channel V China while I was there and thought, this is interesting, this is pretty upbeat and colourful and fun.

“It’s one of those moments — you find something underground and nobody knows about it and you do get into it for that reason and then you want to share it with people.”

Gipps said he and Kayne want to show the JOY audience there’s much more to pop than just the UK and American markets.

“We’re trying to showcase music from everywhere… we really try to get a mix from Japanese to Korean, Filipino, we’ve played Malaysian music, a bit of Indonesian, so really focusing on South-East Asia.”

But Gipps said it’s now Korean pop (or K-Pop) sending young fans screaming.

“Japan really had the market … the rest of Asia was focusing on, so they had a big industry.

“But if you look at Google Trends, about a year ago it changed from J-Pop to K-Pop, and Korea’s really taken over.”

Gipps said he thinks Asian pop will appeal to gay and lesbian listeners.

“I think it will, let’s not pigeonhole people, but there’s obviously a fair chunk of the gay community that like to have their dance music and they like a pumpy beat. Feedback so far from people has said, ‘I would not go out of my way to listen to this music but I’ve found myself listening tonight because it’s so upbeat and fun’.”

Gipps said some K-Pop clips can also feature some surprising boy-on-boy action.

“One of my old workmates sent me a clip of Super Junior,” he said. “They are basically a group of 13 guys, and the clip has a lot of colour and is a lot of fun and there’s a bit of kissing each other.

“Watching them, you may be led to believe that Korea is gay-friendly and then you travel to Korea. It’s actually quite depressing — they’re not accepted there, so it was quite a lot of shell shock when I got there.”

info: Tune into Joy Pop on Wednesdays from 9pm.
Visit www.joy.org.au