What was New about the Content of the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble’s Music By Alek Sigley. In the last instalment of this blog post series we talked about the innovations Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble brought to the North Korean music world in terms of style. In summary, they made heavy use of electric guitars, synthesisers, and infused North Korean music style with elements of popular music from Japan, the West, and other members of the Communist Bloc such as China and the USSR. But it wasn’t only the style of their music that was a breath of fresh air in the North Korean music world, the content of their songs and music videos were also often markedly different to what had come before. Many of their songs, especially those composed when they started out in the mid-80s, and again towards the mid-90s when the Soviet Bloc was collapsing, were very ideological in… [Read More]
Archives for November 2017
A Few Things You may not have Known about the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble: Part 1
By Alek Sigley If you’ve ever been curious about North Korean music, you may have ended up on Youtube listening to the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble’s songs. From its inception in 1985 and well into the 21st century, the band remained the biggest, most well-known, popular and influential group in the North Korean music world. Although since 2012 they have been superseded by the Moranbong Band as North Korea’s premiere pop act, the Ensemble’s songs are still very popular in North Korea and continue to be a karaoke staple North and even South of the DMZ. Not a whole lot is known about the group in general, and even less of that information is available in English. Here I’ve tried to fill in that knowledge gap with some interesting facts and context about the group that I’ve gathered mostly from Korean-language sources. For those of you who’ve never listened to Pochonbo,… [Read More]
