Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)
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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:58:00am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Perspectives on K-Pop and Music in Korean Media Session Chair: Cody Black | |
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Commercial Music as Cultural Archive: Nationalism, Family, and Modernity in South Korean Advertising Music, 1960s–2000s University of Arizona South Korean television commercials from the 1960s through the 2000s contain a rich and largely unexplored musical archive. This paper argues that commercial music in this period functioned not merely as a marketing tool but as a cultural mirror, reflecting and actively shaping shifting Korean social values across four decades of rapid modernization. Although scholars have examined the influence of K-pop idols on contemporary advertising, the role of commercial music in constructing Korean social identity before the 2000s remains underexplored musicological discourse in English scholarship. This study fills that gap by examining a curated corpus of broadcast commercials from the 1960s through the 1990s, analyzing musical style, lyrical content, vocal aesthetic, and visual imagery as interconnected cultural texts. This paper identifies three broad phases of transformation. In the 1960s and 1970s, commercial music prominently featured full-family imagery and nationalist themes emphasizing collective identity, generational unity, and national reconstruction. Jingles frequently incorporated traditional melodic contours alongside Western instrumentation, reflecting Korea's negotiation between cultural heritage and modernization. In the 1980s, a transitional phase emerged in which youth-oriented advertising began to appear alongside enduring family-centered content, with new influences from Western pop styles. By the 1990s and into the 2000s, advertising music shifted decisively toward individualism, romantic coupling, and youth-centered aesthetics, with background instrumental tracks largely replacing singable jingles and with older generations usually disappearing from commercial imagery altogether. Drawing on close musical analysis, advertising studies, and cultural history, this study demonstrates how advertising not only reflects but actively composes South Korea’s transition from developmental nationalism to consumer modernity. In doing so, it positions commercial music as vital source for musicological inquiry into memory, ideology, and the acoustics of social change. | |