Singer Cho Yong-pil is at the center of a full orchestra, chorus, and 3,000 other sundry cast and crewmembers, rehearsing "Sun of the Eye," a fiery epic from his yet to be released new album. "It is a song about hope and frustration," says Cho in an interview with The Korea Herald. "There will be visuals of rain and thunder in the background but in the end, there is still hope and dream in life."

Hope and frustration has been the dominant theme for Cho, the undisputed king of Korean pop music and the most prominent cultural icon of this nation's modern era. This Saturday will witness "The History," a fitting, if grand, title for a concert commemorating his 35 years in music, a career that has paralleled Korea's own story of the phoenix rising from the ashes.

Billed as less a music concert than a cultural milestone, four decades of hits will be performed alongside poignant images documenting changes in Korea's recent past. The organizers described this as a massive, one of kind stage event over a year in the making, choreographed by Yun Ho-jin, the director of the stage hit, "The Last Empress."

If all this sounds a bit too breathless, it is nonetheless a fitting tribute to a man who has changed the way Korean people listen to music and to themselves. He was the one largely responsible for shepherding a confused Korean public - musically, politically, culturally - to show them the light to their own private and public struggles. From the late 60s, he gathered all the disparate musical elements - soul, blues, rock, and later, disco - and formed a coherent, thoroughly indigenous voice. And that voice, often full of anger and frustration, found resonance amongst Koreans undergoing the tortured growing pains of the 20th century. His success throughout the 80s heralded a new age when Korea was finally coming onto its own.

And much has been made of the voice itself. Coarse as burlap and a steady high pitch bordering on the shrill, its innate imperfections lent raw emotions and subtle turns to songs he wrote that were mostly about fears and longings, intensely personal, yet easily identifiable to any Korean.

Combining his less then perfect voice and his less than perfect stature, he has come to be known as the "Little Giant," a Korean everyman who has unlikely become this country's biggest star.

Cho began his career after running away from home after graduating high school in 1968. He made a name for himself as the frontman for a series of rock and country western bands like "Atkins," "Kim Trio," and "Shadow."

But he became a superstar in 1975 as a solo artist with the song, "Come Back to the Port of Pusan." The song was a bridge between the old and the new, combining trot - the precursor to modern Korean pop music that blends folksy tunes with middle-age themes - with rock riffs and disco beats. The song is a plea for his older brother's return home, but it is also a larger lament for the generation who were sent abroad and forever lost during the Japanese occupation.

But he was unable to bask in the glow of stardom for long. The following year, he was charged with marijuana possession and was banned by the government from singing for an indeterminate period of time.

During his exile, he studied pansori, the traditional Korean art of musical storytelling. Its gruff, bark-like singing style, which requires rigorous training, lent his voice the roughness that characterized much of his later songs. With blood literally in his throat, he plotted a comeback.

In 1980, he released "Women Outside the Window," a hit single whose album was the first to hit platinum (1 million) in Korea. Then followed a string of hits that displayed his versatility as a musician and songwriter: "The Girl with Short Hair," "The Leopard of Kilamanjaro," "Mona Lisa," "Lingering Footsteps." From 1980 to 1998, he released 17 albums and remained the most dominant musical figure throughout the 80s while gently sidestepping for a younger generation during the 90s. Throughout the period, he was popular for his versatility and uncompromising individuality.

Despite his rock-star status, Cho has always maintained a quiet and steady private personal life, which was shattered earlier this year with the death of his wife, Ahn Jin-hyeon, to cancer. His last public performance was last April where he sang only her favorite songs, but Cho insists that this concert will be for his fans.

He will introduce his latest album, tentatively titled, "Over the Rainbow," his 18th. He has been innovating and revolutionizing Korean pop-music four decades, but he thinks that he has at least one more trick up his sleeve. "I felt it was a sort of duty to change Korean pop. But I have been listening to and studying classical music for the past ten years, and I think that this album is more operatic and closer to classical music. I want to produce a musical in five years and I think this is a transition towards that direction."

Though many of his past songs have had orchestral accompaniments, Cho is now bringing the formerly background sounds to the fore and integrating them with the lyrics. In his later years, he is trying to make music that is no less personal but more outwardly dramatic and formal.

During rehearsal, Cho insists on repeating a section of "Sun of the Eye," a swirling passage in which the orchestra, chorus, and singers, all plunge together in a descending motif that is more than faintly reminiscent of the Dies irae in Verdi's Requiem.

Well into middle age at 53, Cho hopes that his maturing of style will appeal to his equally maturing fans and longtime listeners. "I think those in their 30s and 40s are excluded from Korean pop music," says Cho, momentarily pausing to reflect the present state of Korean music. "But releasing a new album and having a concert at Olympic Stadium over the age of 50, it means something in itself."  

Warren Lee