Bi

It is always encouraging to read about Asian artists trying to hold concerts in the US. The recent coverage of the artist Rain in NYC by the New York Times (and previously by Times Magazine) has definitely offered this budding superstar an unprecedented PR platform within the US. Rain is a protégé of Park Jin Young, who is widely regarded in Korea as an excellent producer, songwriter and dancer. Despite Park’s amazing success as an artist in Korea, he still failed to penetrate the American market (some say his bad looks, some say the markets were not ready – I leave it as it is, unknown). His collaboration with Will Smith, etc. has not been extremely noteworthy (KoreAm covered Park in one of their issues published last year). When I say penetrate the American market, I refer to the mainstream America market. Our discussion on the Korean wave has been based on the ability of Korean popular culture to permeate non-Korean cultures. Likewise, we should apply this criterion to Rain’s performance in Madison Square. His scheduled performance attests to two possibilities

1. there is a large enough Korean audience in NYC and NJ to fill up Madison Square Garden, which speaks about the history of Korean immigration in those places
2. Bi is really that popular that even non-Asians will be flocking to his concert, causing a Shakira like stampede

I am not in charge of manning ticket sales, but I am willing to bet that it is the former is more plausible. When Jacky Cheung and Faye Wong performed to a few hundred thousand audiences during their tours in the US, no one saw it as a Chinese Wave – there were simply enough Chinese people to sell tickets to and make a huge killing. Bi’s concert will not be any different, as much as I would like to see an Asian artist from Asia grip mainstream America. But hey, at least he got covered by the New York Times.

(http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501050919-1103646,00.html)

- Aaron