(이인권편) / 이인권 - Lee In-Kweon / Lee In-Gwon
유성기로듣던 불멸의 명가수 Vol.14 이인권편 /
Immortal Master Singer Vol.14 Lee In-kwon SYNCD-134
1 향수(鄕愁)의 휘파람 / Whistle of Perfume (OKEH 12202)
2 쪼각달 항로 / Sculpture Route (OKEH 12225)
3 황혼(黃昏)의 파지장(波止場) / The tide of twilight (OKEH 12232)
4 비련(悲憐)의 출발(出發) / Departure (OKEH 12247)
5 애수(哀愁)의 키타 / Sorrow (OKEH 12247)
6 가등(街燈)의 소야곡(小夜曲) / City Light (?) (OKEH 20008)
7 향수열차(鄕愁列車) / Perfume (?) Train (OKEH 20020)
8 청춘(靑春)의 하이킹 / Youth (OKEH 20025)
9 눈물의 연가(戀歌) / Sad Love Song (OKEH 20037)
10 꿈꾸는 백마강(白馬江) / Dreaming White Horse River (OKEH 20058)
11 국경(國境)의 다방(茶房) / Teahouses at the Border (OKEH 31001)
12 애송이 사랑 / Love for the grasshopper (OKEH 31109)
13 부녀계도(婦女系圖) / Her Niece (OKEH K5007)
14 가여운 하로밤 / Poor night (OKEH K 5054)
15 청춘시대(靑春蒔代) / Period of Youth
and as 이인권편 / In-Kweon Lee:
19 꽃피는 북만선(北滿線) / Flowering North Bay Line
Early radio show related review: "Although the large sum of the repertoire of Lee In-Kweon compared to other Korean song related music still does not bring on surprises, the definition in which the inspirations of the songs and accompaniment lies is already opening up and reaching more influences from jazz / boogie / waltz etc. which pretty much broadens the expressions and range of mood and rhythms.
Highlights are track 4, 5 and 9 for sure or the songs and also for the surprise effects it provides in listen to the musicians.
Track four is first accordion and voice mostly in a rather Japanese-styled singing. Somewhere it seems that a cymbal is falling and some remarks are made, returning later, we hear accordion solos, a piano rhythm. It is interesting to hear what happens wile the sensitive male voice continues to sing undisturbed and with full attention.
The track after that is different for its jazz combo influence, with a differently styled original song.
The ninth song I want to pick out too. One of it’s interesting elements is a real jazz piano solo, something I hardly heard anywhere else in Korean 30s music. Also the 7th track shows interesting jazz influences, better arrangements and a bit more brass. The 8th track shows boogie jazz.
Track 11 is just acoustic pickings and voice only. It is a minimal approach, but the record(ing) has lots of cracks. There are other tracks with interesting pickings, like the first track which also shows nice emotionality in the singing (in combination with a baritone clarinet, picking guitar and some violin)."
The four extra tracks on the compilation are by Choi Nam Yong
They are reviewed separately at his own review page here.
유성기로 듣던 가요사 두번째 (1945~1960)
CD6-18 선죽교(善竹橋) / Seonjukgyo Bridge (1947)
This is a somewhat filmic and dramatic song, a song between old trot and a slow waltz, sung with stretched intonation. It has a more pronounced orchestration. This was released as 이인권.
유성기로 듣던 가요사 (1925~1945) [Disc 9]
1 향수 열차 / Nostalgic train (1940)
This is an up tempo trot happy making track with fine arrangements. Of course some of the instrumental part evoke the fast steam train rhythm.
I will spend a bit less attention to this release which I guess are already later works or remakes of both artists, or are songs that give most attention to the grey area recognisability of songs, Trot style, in a still effective way of a contemporarily commercial entertainment.
Lee In-Kweon’s voice is vibrating like also old men could sing. His voice is on the foreground, with an added rather natural reverberation. He is accompanied at first by lead accordion and strings in the background. Other tracks have also organ/keyboards electric guitar and an electric bass guitar lead rhythm, still as light entertainment. On the third track is some spoken word intro by a female voice, making me think this might come from a movie.
The tracks by Shin Canaria sound definitely early or later remakes to me. They are accompanied by organ/keyboards, electric bass and orchestra, are also light, arranged Trot music.
이인권, 신카나리아: 오리지날 힛송 총결산집 [compilation] 1990-02-12 / 대한민국 (split album)
Lee In-kwon and Shin Canaria: The Original 힛 Song Collection 1990-07-00 (ORC-1127)
1. 귀국선 / Return
2. 꿈꾸는 백마강 / Dreaming White Horse River
3. 은혜냐 사랑이냐 / Grace or love
11 인생나루 / Life Cycle
12. 선죽교 / Sunjuk Bridge
13. 미사의 노래 / Song of Mass
14. 무영탑 사랑 / Loveless Tower
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BIOGRAPHIES:
°1919-1973 Professional singer, composer in trot style. Active from 1938-1973.
Lee In-Kweon was a singer-songwriter during the Japanese occupation years. He worked in several areas, provided also pop lyrics and played guitar too.
He was born in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province. At first he played covers with the band Naminsu. He is also known to be the composer of “chunjeong of tears" (1938) his official debut song. With this debute he started to use this stage name. He recorded many more cover songs.
During the Pacific War he was being called a militarist, while he was active in various areas like drama and film music. In this period, in 1945, he recorded a song called “Liberation” which scored a hit after the war.
Since 1950 he concentrated more on composing songs.
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Fragment from
Yongwoo Lee: Embedded Voices In Between Empires:
"All sorts of narratives of postwar Korea, of colonial memory and post-colonial cultural activity, collided in popular songs, where they recalled historical events full of exotic melancholy by sanitizing the political histories of pain. The existence of certain colonial continuities or, rather, structural repetitions of postwar trauma, resurfaced in popular song lyrics as both an ambivalent dissociation from the colonial past and an absence from this past, in which the colonial subjects unconsciously repeated their colonial history by identifying with the new ruler, the U.S. military government. Butler argues that, ―the act of internalization transforms the object; the other is taken in and transformed into an ego, but an ego to be reviled, thereby both producing and strengthening the critical agency commonly called conscience,‖ (Butler 1997:180-181). The post-traumatic experiences of this post-liberation condition can thus be linked to a state of hypnotic abjection and colonial discontinuity, where the loss of the colonial master is split off from the ego as an expression of postcolonial melancholy. Korean popular songs represent a posthumous melancholia through the voices of diasporic singers recollecting ghostly memories from the imagined Nambang territory. Meanwhile, manifestations of patriotic narratives in the song lyrics were also associated with the complex ―form of code-switching,‖ as Silverberg calls it.
People come back / they all come back / to the dreamy home country
How long have we been yearning for the rose of Sharon (Korean National flower)? / How long have we been miss the Taegukgi flag (Korean National flag)? / Let the seagulls chant / Let the waves dance / As I standing in the prow, my hope is growing further
Homecoming Cruise (Gwigukseon) performed by Lee In-Gwon, 1
Lee In-Gwon, who came back from Shanghai after liberation charged with the euphoria of emancipation and national reunion, expressed this in his song lyrics by building a patriotic ideology to share with other scattered Koreans, including his repatriated compatriots. However, he narrated this compulsory pure happiness by over-exaggerating national symbols. The efficacy of veiling ideology in patriotic popular songs consists in the formation of an unconditional patriotic conscience, where the concept of a ―conscience‖ that popular songs transmit is defined by what was utterable or representable during the post-liberation era. The ―structure of feeling (Raymond Williams used the term ―structure of feeling‖ to designate the emotional bonding generated by values and practices shared by a specific group, class, or culture. The concept includes ideology, in the sense of an articulated structure of beliefs, but also ranges beyond it to encompass collective desires and concerns below the conscious level.) in popular songs designated the limitations of rhetorical reflexivity to this post-liberation subjectivity, which convoluted internal and external identifications that constantly feeding back into self-identification with the colonial period. By building a structure of performative consciousness confined to excessive national patriotism reminiscent of the Total War ethos of patriotic mobilization through popular songs, the overstatement of nationalist jargons as popular narrative in songs in this era often hindered the rhetorical reproductivity of Korean subjects who experienced strict colonial control and surveillance. The ecstasy of liberation day and repatriation to the home country were depicted through various national signifiers, such as the home country (Gohyang), rose of Sharon (Mugunghwa), and Taegukgi flag. These rhetorical symbols paradoxically constituted the ambivalence of continuous submission, for the post-liberated Korean subjects held under foreign control by USAMGIK grew oblivious to colonial experiences by repressing past memories and by encouraging patriotism. This continuous submission of Koreans between USAMGIK control and the Korean War era bred the conscientious reproduction of anti-Communist and pro-American sentiment in the Korean consciousness. The Korean popular music scene of the post-liberation era was characterized by a multitude of twists, where the narratives of each of the two consecutive foreign controllers and a disjointed modernity collided. The narratives of popular songs revealed both a nostalgia for a surplus Southern fantasy and totalitarian symptoms in the guise of patriotism. Thus, the bilateral relations with a Japanese colonial past and USAMGIK control had a profound impact on Korean national identity, enabling a self-transformation through the ideological self-reproduction of Cold War logics and a capitalist desire for westernized modernization.
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CONCLIUSION:
Lee In Kwon is a trot singer of the 40s mainly who has nothing in particular that makes him very distinctive in any way. It more gives the feeling to be for completists mostly.
