This paper examines the ways in which hip-hop has taken root in Korean popular culture. The processes that began in the early 1990s include appropriation, adaptation and ‘cultural reterritorialisation’. By looking at recent Korean hip-hop outputs and their associated contexts, this paper explores the ways in which Korean hip-hop has gained its local specificities. This was achieved by combining and recontextualising Afro-American and Korean popular musical elements and aesthetics in its performance and identification in the context of the consumption and commodification of Korean hip-hop as a ‘national(ised) cultural product’.

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This article explores how Chineseness and Taiwaneseness are constructed in Taiwan's popular music and the ways in which young audiences in Taiwan make sense of the music to which they listen in their everyday lives. Focusing on two songs, Jay Chou's 'Blue and White Porcelain' (a China Wind pop song in Mandarin Chinese) and Fire Ex's 'Island's Sunrise' (an indie rock song sung in Taiwanese Hokkien), an analysis of the lyrics, styles and settings identifies the textual and contextual characteristics that shape and signify their Chineseness and Taiwaneseness. In-depth interviews with their 18-25-year-old audience and several music industry workers were conducted in Taipei to understand how these young audiences reflect on their experiences and identities in relation to these songs. Arguably, popular music can be implicated in the politics of identity through performing and listening. Constant negotiations of Chineseness and Taiwaneseness are taking place in both the creation and the consumption of music, thereby Taiwaineseness and Chineseness can be seen as a continuum rather than a dichotomy as they are not mutually exclusive in their historical contexts, but rather are two sets of ever-changing narratives. The usefulness of ethnographic methods in this study should be noted as the diverse personal experiences and views voiced in the interviews illustrate clearly how the dichotomy between the two is an oversimplification.

This article explores the dynamics of transnational business collaboration between UK and Asian music companies, focusing on Liverpool Sound City in the United Kingdom, Modern Sky in China and Zandari Festa in South Korea. The specificities of their music business, the nature and motivation for partnership, the respective industry infrastructure and state cultural policies give shape to the outcome of their collaborations, which in turn influence their music products, events, artists and audiences. The complexity of their business transactions and interactions also tell us how the live music sector and its ecologies continue to evolve and reposition themselves in the fast-changing environments of the global music industry. In reflection of an increased transnationalisation and diversification of the global music industries, it is argued that more attention should be given to the transnational and translocal ecologies of live music studies.