Music of North Korea


The music of North Korea includes a wide array of folk, pop, light instrumental, political, and classical performers. Beyond patriotic and political music, popular groups like Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble and Moranbong Band perform songs about everyday life in the DPRK and modern light pop reinterpretations of classic Korean folk music. Music education is widely taught in schools, with President Kim Il-Sung first implementing a program of study of musical instruments in 1949 at an orphanage in Mangyongdae. Musical diplomacy also continues to be relevant to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, with musical and cultural delegations completing concerts in China and France in recent years, and musicians from Western countries and South Korea collaborating on projects in the DPRK.

''Taejung kayo''

After the division of Korea in 1945 and the establishment of North Korea in 1948, revolutionary song-writing traditions were channeled into support for the state, eventually becoming a style of patriotic song called taejung kayo in the 1980s combining classical Western symphonic music and Korean traditional musical forms. The songs are generally sung by female performers with accompanying bands or choirs accompanied by a large orchestra or concert band, and in recent years, a pop band with guitars and brass section with occasional accordions and traditional instrumentation.
North Korean music follows the principles of Juche ideology. The characteristic march like, upbeat music of North Korea is carefully composed, rarely individually performed, and its lyrics and imagery have a clear optimistic content.
Much music is composed for movies and television dramas and TV movies, and the works of the Korean composer Isang Yun, who spent much of his life in Germany, are popular in North Korea.

Pop music

Under Kim Il-sung's era, only ideologically correct music was allowed. Jazz in particular was considered out of bounds. Many artists however found their way around these limitations by writing ideologically correct lyrics while taking liberties with the score. Under Kim Jong-il, previously forbidden genres, even jazz, became permissible and encouraged. In 2010, a brutal death metal group purporting to be from North Korea, called Red War, released a 3-track demo online. However, as of 2014 the group are believed to be disbanded. The metal music archive Spirit of Metal currently lists 2 bands that claim to originate from North Korea, Red War and the pornogrind band Teagirl.
Many North Korean pop songs are usually performed by a young female singer with an electric ensemble, percussionist, and accompanying singers and dancers. Some North Korean pop songs such as "Hwiparam" —set to the lyrics of North Korean poet Cho Ki-chon—have become popular in South Korea. Common lyrical themes include military might, economic production and thrift, patriotism and glorification of the party and leaders. Songs like "We Are One" and "Reunification Rainbow" sing of the hopes for Korean reunification. There are also songs with more casual themes, such as "Women Are Flowers" and "Ballad of Gold Mountains."
In 2012, North Korea's first major girl band, the Moranbong Band, made its world debut. It is a group of about sixteen North Korean women which was hand-selected by Kim Jong-un.
BBC radio disc jockey Andy Kershaw noted, on a visit to North Korea, that the only recordings available were by the pop singers Jon Hye-yong, Kim Kwang-suk, Jo Kum-hwa and Ri Pun-hui, and the groups Wangjaesan Light Music Band, the Mansudae Art Troupe and the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble, who play in a style Kershaw refers to as "light instrumental with popular vocal". There is also the State Symphony Orchestra, the Sea of Blood Opera Company, two choruses, an orchestra and an ensemble dedicated to Isang Yun's compositions, all in Pyongyang. The Pyongyang Film Studios also produces many instrumental songs for its films, and several programs on Korean Central Television have music made and performed by the Central Radio and Television Orchestra.
North Korean pop music is available for visitors to Pyongyang at the Koryo Hotel or Number One Department Store, as well as gift shops in tourist destinations. International and Western music can be enjoyed by locals and tourists at the Grand People's Study House, Pyongyang's central library.

Folk music

Alongside contemporary pop songs, groups like Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble have recorded arrangements of Korean folk songs. The Korean folk song "Arirang" continues to be widely popular in the DPRK, with UNESCO inscribing the song to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2014, representing the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Like Korean music in general, North Korean music includes kinds of both folk and classical, courtly music, including genres like sanjo, pansori, and nongak. Pansori is long vocal and percussive music played by one singer and one drummer. The lyrics tell one of five different stories, but is individualized by each performer, often with updated jokes and audience participation. Nongak is a rural form of percussion music, typically played by twenty to thirty performers. Sanjo is entirely instrumental that shifts rhythms and melodic modes during the song. Instruments include the changgo drum set against a melodic instrument, such as the gayageum or ajaeng.

Instruments

In North Korea, traditional instruments have been adapted in order to allow them to compete with Western instruments. Many older musical forms remain and are used in both traditional performances that have been attuned to the ideas and the way of life of the modern North Korean communist state and to accompany modern songs in praise of Kim Il-sung, his son and successor, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un from 2012 onward, plus songs that wish for a reunited Korea, thus creating a mix of traditional and Western music that is truly North Korean, a unique variant of Korean music as a whole mixing the old and the new.
The modern Ongnyugeum zithers and the Sohaegeum four stringed fiddle are North Korean modernized versions of traditional Korean musical instruments, both used in traditional and modern musical forms.
Military music, in contrast, often makes extensive use of Western brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments, often omitting the Korean ones entirely. Although usually original compositions, the melodies are not easily distinguishable from Western ones in the absence of their lyrics, which heavily feature the customary ideologically oriented content.

Active musical groups and ensembles

Military