Eric Clapton is a musical diplomat
For the past six decades, North Korean music lovers have had little to sing about. Like everything else in that dark and shuttered country, music is part of the system of communist oppression presided over by Kim Jong Il: “Dear Leader”, tyrant and, inevitably, musical expert.
Mr Kim is said to compose his own music, of a spectacularly dreary and self-idolising sort. Back in 1968 he set down the inviolable principles of North Korean music: there should be no “uproarious Western music”, but only “lively and militant marches” celebrating his father, Kim Il Sung.
The last concert that Kim Jong Il attended included such catchy hits as No Motherland without You, with the lyrics: “Even if the world changes hundreds of times, people believe in you, Comrade Kim Jong Il!… Seguir leyendo »