This is how soft power works
The days before BTS first concert ever in Madrid – and the first concert in Europe in seven years – are nervous. For several reasons. My daughter Cornelia22, has been a devoted fan of this world’s biggest K-pop group for ten years but has never seen them live until now. Now that she finally got the chance, and I will get to share the happiest day of my daughter’s life, all of humanity is threatened by extreme heat. When we land in Madrid two days before the concert, it is 38 degrees. Imagine if it had to be set! Horror!
“Madrid in June? What were you thinking there?”, someone might wonder. And I curse my hubris when we fought for the insanely expensive tickets in bitterly cold January and chose to bet on the Spanish capital over other European tour stops: “It will be perfect, it’s just before the heat wave…”
The weather apps only: Hold my beer! Even if they don’t have to cancel the concert, it might be a – in tabloid parlance – DEATH TRAP! What kind of mother am I really?
But on Friday, which is the first day of two sold-out concerts in Madrid, the thermometer has retreated to a crisp 32 degrees Celsius. We rehydrate and boldly join the giggling, glittering and colorfully cosplaying crowd braving the heat and making the pilgrimage to the Estadio Metropolitano. During a roughly 2.5 hour concert, the packed, open arena is then transformed into a boiling cauldron of song, music, dance and love.
In their incredibly well-directed, well-choreographed 360 show, BTS fires off hit after hit, from the opening number Hooligan to the finale Into the sun, and when the band asks how we’re doing, it’s not a casual concert question to the audience, but genuine concern. They say they were worried about “the Spanish summer” before tonight’s concert.
However, how “ok” this audience is now must be considered a matter of definition, but from where we are, we don’t notice any fainting in any case.
I have also been to many concerts in my life, and am used to the sometimes strange behavior of rock audiences, but this is something very different. It is a cult of unconditional love, worship, ecstasy and tears of joy that meet this Korean supergroup. The guys on stage in turn give maximum love back and make the audience explode several times over – not least in the surprise number Airplane pt.2 (“El Mariachi”) which, judging by the atmosphere, seems to make many local girls’ hearts beat a little extra with their Latino rhythms.
Then hearing 70,000 girls (and a few guys, but honestly this amazing community is dominated by girls) for full, brittle throats sing along to Body to Body – in the lyrics borrowed from the Korean folk song Gyeonggi Arirang and which gave the latest album its title – while the dance troupe circulates around the singers with flags and snaking fabric ribbons as if in a traditional shaman dance, well then I get an acute standing fur in the heat. This is a show that meets all the criteria for a ritual, and when RM in the same song commands us: “I need the whole stadium to jump” – so we obey blindly.
Even if I is clearly skeptical of the extreme commercialism that surrounds and feeds this K-pop phenomenon – where young girls are more or less pressured by peer pressure to buy official, wifi-synchronized plastic glow sticks for 66 Euro (!) to add to the atmosphere and show that they are the real BTS Army – all my objections are drowned in the concert’s iconic Purple Ocean which is one of many highlights during the evening. When the entire arena is bathed in purple light, a powerful illusion is created that, for the moment, no evil whatsoever can exist in this world. At least not in this gredelina microcosm of love in Madrid, which makes 70,000 saved people forget how hot it really is and what the extreme heat really causes.
If anyone happens to wonder how soft power works, and what music and live culture can achieve that politicians can’t – look at the thoroughbred professionals BTS and the beautiful, permissive community of their army of fans.
