Busan Shazam
I don’t know when or where I picked up this habit, but I’m happy I did.
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Our taxi speeds onto a bridge built over water. Skyscrapers shatter past the window as I look towards the glittering sea. There’s a song playing on the radio. A woman with a raspy voice, as if she chain smoked twenty cigarettes and then started to sing. Perfect. Sometimes, all you need is the right song in the background for life to feel like a movie.
I slip my phone out of my pocket and unlock it, dragging my thumb downwards to access the search bar. I type the letters s-h-a and launch Shazam as soon as it appears. Time is of the essence, so I hold my phone closer to the speaker. I am doubtful it will pick up anything over the revving of the engine; it’s as if our taxi driver learned how to drive from car chases and video games exclusively. A friend in Seoul warned us about this.
“They drive so fast in Busan,” she declared between sips of iced coffee on a sunny rooftop in Seongsu-dong. “We always say that if you can drive in Busan, you can drive anywhere in Korea!”
Shazam does its thing and despite the droning of the car’s engine as we turn with the curve of the bridge, my phone vibrates successfully in my hand. Got it, I think to myself — as if the song is a Pokémon.
Busan looks like a more industrial, unpolished version of Miami. White sand and gigantic buildings twist along the coast for miles. Tourist traps line the water’s edge; bars awash in neon light that sell frozen cocktails by the bucket rub elbows with grubby fried chicken shops. In the enormous seafood markets, clams the size of shoes crawl from their tanks and across the floor towards freedom as the women manning the stands cackle at each other’s jokes.
The taxi is bringing us to Ami-dong, a mountainous village far from the beach. During the Korean war, waves of refugees from the north landed in Busan. Very poor and with nothing to their names, they headed into the mountains and used the gravestones from long-abandoned Japanese cemeteries as building blocks for their new homes. Now colourful and filled with murals, the hues of the so-called tombstone village sing against the mountainside.
I look at the driver through his rearview mirror. We haven’t spoken apart from the routine nod and annyeonghaseyo as we sat in the car. The song is still playing, and he’s tapping his fingers against the steering wheel in time with the music. Only he understands the words. The song, which is from 1988, helps me picture him as a younger man in a Busan before the American culture injections, laughing in a smoke-filled bar with his friends. My eyes leave him and lock with those of my wife.
“Can you shazam this song?” she asks.
“I literally just did that!”
We grin at one another. The driver continues tapping his fingers to the beat. The three of us sit in silence, enjoying the music. I don’t know when or where I picked up this habit, but I’m happy I did. Capturing songs to store them in playlists, just so I can relisten years later, the sonic memory teleporting me back to this taxi in Busan.
Hello Caoilainn Again. Long liking of travelogues and your K taxi story is so great.
One writer I have always liked is Redmond O"Hanlon in this regard. DYK?
I am listening to Han Young Ae as I type. She is one year my senior and so so cool.She has a new fan.Almost might take me back to smoking a Sobrajne (close but not quite), or a Camel or a clove cigarette (my days of travel in Indonesia in early 80's).
I also see, known as the Witch due her voice.
And your journey to Busan; such a special but complex place. And accent. And a history. That part of SK, like Incheon, and Daegu and thereabouts, the small area never invaded by North Korean troops.
Which led to your story of Tombstone City. Ami-dong
My wonderful dad almost had a government sponsored trip there in the 50's as part of our Queensland University Regiment, as a combat engineer, but knocked off the trip list when he was severely injured in a night driving exercise (sort of like driving fast at night with almost no lights). He was catapulted out of back of a jeep a long distance. A bit Montypythonesque, he called as they said Jack must be dead, No I'm not. Spent 6 months in rehab after multiple spinal fractures.And so did not go and not able to ride a horse again.
Thanks for the intro to Shazam via your story
The plus side is he married my mum, became an academic and had a family.
For other reasons know a bit about SK.
Nighttime curfew which was strongly policed only ceased in 1982, after 36 yrs
Look forward to reading and listening more.
Ok now I need a playlist of Korean music from the 80s 😂 love the comparison of Shazaming songs to capturing Pokémon, haha! Have you read “Crying in H Mart” by the way? If not, I think you would really enjoy!