As our paper also reported, an exciting thing happened in North Korea a few days ago. The latest “national hit” has been published, in which the leader, Kim Jong-un, the “friendly father” of the nation, has been released. The premiere was combined with a ceremony where ten thousand new homes were handed over.
The interesting thing about the song is that it’s a bit like mixing the dance songs of the last century with the sound world of the nineties – only with slightly better technical equipment. For the first listen – we apologize for it – musically, László Aradszky’s well-known hit, The world isn’t just for twenty-somethings jumped in.
and there are also elements from the music of the eighties and nineties Friendly Father in the song – especially at the beginning of the track – the world that evokes classical dance songs and beginners is undeniable, and it is not worth going into the lyrics this time. However, what is even more interesting is that, looking at the few light music products that can be accessed online, this is true not only for the new “hit”, but also for the local “mainstream” as a whole. Time has stopped in North Korea.
The older songs from the last century that can be found, like the music of many Eastern countries, were still late, but they imitated, adapted, and mixed Western or international trends with their own sound world. In recent years, at least based on the very little light music that can be found on the airwaves,
Although many technological innovations have been introduced in terms of sound and stage technology in North Korea – or at least apparently they have tried to do so – in music they have not gone much beyond the nineties.
The head of state’s girl team
These unusual deviations can be seen in action in one video or another, for example in the case of the Moranbong Band personally assembled by Kim Jong-gun, which, although it started in 2012, the music it plays, at best, did not go beyond the beginning of the 2000s. According to paper form, the band itself partly plays K-pop, just the North Korean equivalent of what is sometimes referred to as DPRK-pop.
It is also exciting to find older songs from the country, works from the last century, which were equally interesting hybrids mixing world music and their own. However, back then they were much closer to what most Asian countries were doing – at least in terms of musical eras.
This has completely changed today.
The long-term traces of the conscious and natural delay and exclusion of adaptation and isolation from the outside world can be felt in the songs. This happens despite the fact that sometimes foreign speakers are allowed into the country.
Message
Such was, for example, the K-pop band Red Velvet or the famous Slovenian avant-garde music group Laibach, which was the first Western performer to enter the country led by Kim Jong-un. You can also find a few recordings of the latter’s performance, which show the resistant audience and the obligatory applause – the delivered message without a culture medium.
Although the North Korean music phenomenon is not surprising, its long-term effects may be interesting. Because, as most of the nations of the world are used to, pop music is an international melting pot that works back and forth between all its (although mainly large) participants, thus causing a kind of constant transformation and formation.
This has grown in recent years with the rapid flow of information and online music platforms. In this world, seeing even a tiny slice of mainstream light music from an isolated country is an interesting “read”. What would it be like if time stopped everywhere?
