KJ
Reviews
Sublime
Agit-Prop Meets Equally Sublime Agit Pop
Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk and Agit Pop from the
Hermit Kingdom
and
Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar;
audio CDs; Sublime Frequencies (Seattle, WA,
USA)
Reviewed by Lauren Deutsch (KJ #66)
Sublime Frequencies,
the USA-based collective of audiophile indie producers, have gone out
of the way (literally) to provide soundtracks from 21st Century peasant
cultures and in-your-face metroscapes of Africa, the Middle East, Southeast
Asia (e.g., Burma, Laos, Cambodia) and that little darling of a playground
bully, North Korea.
The Sublime label self-proclaims to be “dedicated to acquiring
and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban
and rural frontiers via film and video, field recordings, radio and
short wave transmissions, international folk and pop music, sound anomalies,
and other forms of human and natural expression.” (No kidding!)
These comrades-in-sound collect and edit fleeting sound bite delights,
think audible hors d’oeuvres, ranging from the obscure to the
more obscure, using modern digital/satellite technology and, it would
seem, a couple of guys with big ears and a whole lot of time on their
hands. No trendoid Buddha Bar here, Sublime’s titles are a mix
for the modern, multi-tasking, inquiring mind, or for apartment-dwellers
who just want to annoy their upstairs neighbors with radical grooves.
To wit: Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar
(Burma) and Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk and Agit Pop from
the Hermit Kingdom.
Radio Pyongyang offers eight tracks of sound collected and
recorded by Christiaan Virant from his Beijing outpost, 1995 –
2005. Here are swatches of narration in English as well as Korean, dramatic
vocals and bolts of instrumental music. Explosions and dramatic, albeit
creepy tunes flow seamlessly into foxtrots, segueing and overlaying
male and female vocal solos and rousing choruses, including groups of
children.
While an unshuffled run would make an oh-so-smart ambient groove at
the opening of any loft soiree, a more critical listening is due. Yes,
that is indeed North Korean spy code numbers mixed into norebang
(karaoke-type club) pop tunes, People’s Army TV dramas,
news reports and that annual populist love-in for Dear Leader, the Mass
Games. And who can resist the beloved Arirang folk anthem Northern
Style.
The Korea Times notes that, “North Korean radio broadcast music
alternates with short information blocks. Every hour begins with the
news, largely identical to that published by Rodong sinmun.
Then there are several minutes of marches or songs about Kim Il-sung,
Kim Jong-il, or other lofty political subjects. Those songs are followed
by a short 5-10 minute talk — either a commentary on the internal
situation, or on South Korea, or on the philosophy of juche
[‘The owner of the revolution and construction are the masses.’
]. The intonation of the announcers is always peculiarly exaggerated,
not to say hysterical.” The paper estimated that in 2000, Korean
Central Broadcasting System (KCBS), successor to the 1945-founded Radio
Pyongyang and one of several DPRK broadcasting outlets, spent “34.2
percent of its time praising Kim Jong-il or Kim Il-sung, 28.8 percent
encouraging the workers to toil even harder, 17.4 percent explaining
and promoting the juche ideology, and 12.0 percent telling stories about
the suffering of the South Korean ‘masses’ and schemes of
the ‘Seoul puppets’.”
According to asiaweek.com,
“Radio Pyongyang had some helpful advice for its beleaguered people.
‘Today, I will introduce you to tasty and healthy ways to eat
wild grass,’ a woman on KCBS told listeners. She went on to provide
recipes for preparing wild edible plants, including how to make that
staple of the Korean diet, kimch’i, out of parsley. The report
surmised that, “North Koreans are turning to wild plants because
they are running out of rice and other staples.”
From the sentiment of the material on the Sublime CD, it’s not
the same agit-prop (from the Russian agitatsiya agitation +
propaganda) that one was warned about during the colder days of the
Cold War. KCBS and other official DPRK broadcasters are most likely
aiming to turn heads primarily in South Korea, China and Hong Kong.
They’re less interested in converting those of us outside the
fold.
And despite its relegation to the Team Evil by the George W. Bush, we’re
not overtly cautioned to duck and cover our ears at the chance of our
brains being fluffed and folded towards Dear Leader or his Dad. To get
a literal sense of what’s really being said, Korean language skills
are requisite. It also helps to be fond of accordion-accompanied marches.
It also struck me that you, Dear Reader, who may fancy yourself to be
a connoisseur collector of exotic tunes, also might dig Guitars
of the Golden Triangle. The disc is a compilation (yes, compilations’re
cool again!) 21 tracks — 21 tracks! — of garage and psychedelic
rock, raw folk blues, ballads and American country-westernish music
from the Shan State in northeast Burma’s legendary “Golden
Triangle” recorded in the early 1970s. Seems this area’s
still closed to tourists due to its reputation for bandits, opium warlords
and guerilla fighters seeking independent statehood from the central
government. Featured artists are composer/performer Saing Saing Maaw,
beloved by his fellow truck drivers in upper Burma. Other legends include
Lashio Thein Aung, AKA “Jimmy Jack the ’Burmese Texan’”
and Khun Hia Maung Law/Khun Paw Yann and Khun Kan Chwain. Little to
no reliable information is available on any of these folks, and the
reel-to-reel masters from which bootleg (at best) cassettes were made
no longer exist. You’ve heard it here first, and perhaps, last.
More Sublime CDs
Other Sublime Frequencies titles include: “Night Recordings
from BALI,” “Radio Thailand: Transmissions from
the Tropical Kingdom”, “Ethnic Minority Music of
Northeast Cambodia,” “Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts from
Isan” (a psychedelic ghost festival), “Folk and
Pop Radio Sumatra: The Indonesian FM Experience,” “Radio
Phnom Penh,” “MOLAM: Thai Country Groove From ISAN,”
“Harmika Yab Yum: Folk Sounds From Nepal,” “Streets
of Lhasa,” “Leaf Music, Drunks, Distant Drums”
(Burma, Cambodia, Laos), “Brokenhearted Dragonflies: Insect
Electronica from Southeast Asia, “Princess Nicotine:
Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma)” and many more from
Asia, Africa and the Middle East. URL: http://www.sublimefrequencies.com/
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