K-Pop and Compassion

Belonging through shared experience

Last night I saw Stray Kids in concert at the Nationals Park Stadium in Washington, D.C. In case you don’t have a teenager into Korean Pop bands, click here for a “Chk, Chk, Boom” taste of their music and more importantly, their synchronized dance moves. I bought these tickets for my daughter to attend the Stray Kids world tour almost a year ago. I have been watching the dance moves she practices in my living room and listening to the highly polished and punchy music over my car stereo when she DJ’s our car rides around town. I anticipated a crush of K-Pop fandom as 42,000 people gathered at the stadium for music, merch, and showing off their dance moves. I was blown away by the synchrony of the experience.

I should also mention that we are having an excessive heat wave. It was over 100 degrees during the day, and after sunset, the air only cooled to 90. So, 42,000 people gathered in a stadium for concert in temperatures usually reserved for Hot Yoga. It was intense.

The whole K-Pop brand (as far as this 50 year old woman can tell) is about connecting with the catchy music, the fun dances, and a safe intimate fantasy about a sexy but not too manly boy. He has some muscles, but he also wears make up. He is hot, but also disarmingly ‘boy next door’. He can sing, rap, command the stage, but he does it with a group with other boys who are his dear friends. So wholesome and delicious. For other Gen-Xers, remember Teen Beat tear out posters, New Kids on the Block and Micheal Jackson dancing in videos in the beginning of MTV.

My daughter and I dressed in deep red and black for the world tour colors, got to the stadium a little after the show started, and climbed our way to the nosebleed section I could afford. (Parking was ridiculous.)

The 8 members of Stray Kids and their entourage of back up dancers proceeded to entertain and weave together 42,000 people for 2 1/2 hours. It would have lasted 3 hours, but because of the heat the show ended early. (More about that later.) The stage, jumbo screens, lights, various platforms, and pyrotechnics were mesmerizing. Even from the furthest seats away we were engaged in their performance.

Most of the 42,000 people knew the music and the dance moves… (well, except for me and a few other parents.) This is the K-Pop marketing brilliance. When you become a fan, you become part of the performance. You are in the entourage dancing with them. You are singing with them. You are a “Stay,” the name for fans of Stray Kids.

Any time I have been to a concert, there is a beautiful bonding and coherence develops as the audience becomes one body, pulsing and responding to the performance. The musicians and the audience dance together in body, breath, and heartbeat. The whole group of individuals become one people as they share this experience and help co-create it in the moment.

To add to this collective experience, the Stray Kids took many opportunities invite the stadium of Stays to sing along. Sometimes, it was just dropping out during a song so we could hear ourselves sing the chorus. And most impressively, at one point they invited the community to echo back what the band member just sang and I was enveloped into a choir of 42,000 voices. They had a “dance game” where a song and dance sequence was shown on the screen and then a camera in the stadium zeroed in on a random fan who, in real time on the Jumbotron, danced the sequence alongside the Stray Kids. The band was paying tribute to their fans and inviting them into the work of making the concert.

With impressive technology the light show didn’t stop at the edge of the stage. Fans who had purchased ($50) a hand held light globe, were bluetooth linked with each other and the stadium. As the sun set, the stadium lit up with all the globes synchronized like fireflies to the music. And the light globes changed colors. Waves of color swept around the stadium with the music like a murmuration of starlings. It was at times very emotionally moving.

And then, after 2 hours of constant performance in 90 degree heat, the music stopped as the lead boy of Stray Kids asked for the lights to be turned on and help to come to a person who had passed out and needed medical attention. His face on the Jumbotron, he looked into the illuminated crowd and asked, “Please, make room so that she can get help.” The crowd opened up, security personnel in neon lime shirts entered the area and came out carrying someone in their arms. Then, the young man looked deeper into the crowd and asked, “Are you all okay?” The crowd responded with an affirmative shout. Then he proceeded to look around the stadium at 42,000 people asking each section of the audience, “Are you okay?” It was an astonishing act of compassion to pause the enormous money making machine of the Stray Kids World Tour to ask each of us, “Are you okay?”

With that one question, he transformed us from fans to family. Now, I’m under no illusion that he has the super human ability to see all the way to where we were sitting, section 226, row W… almost in the clouds. But his pause, his attention, his question reminded us that we ALL are important and need to be okay, to be cared for, to get our needs met and not pass out from dehydration or neglect. He modeled a value of care, compassion, and loving his neighbors that transformed us into a compassionate body. No one felt angry that the music was paused. Instead, we were singing into the silence of offering compassion for someone who needs help. The silence of waiting and watching while another’s life takes precedence over my own. It was an intense feeling of belonging that dug way deeper than fandom.

The concert ended early because of the heat. Too many people were falling ill and an announcement was made, with great apology, that they needed to stop the concert and ask everyone to go home. Then 42,000 people all tried to exit the stadium at once… and as we dispersed the body was both together and we began to fall apart. Stay tuned for part two of this essay.