culture

The construction site of a new street in the Sopho area of Pyongyang is seething with young people who are entrusted with the construction project as a whole.

The construction site is always enlivened by performances given by members of artistic motivational teams from across the country.

What the young builders are most eager to see is the performance given by the central youth artistic motivational team.

The builders say that the team’s performance is always entertaining as it is full of optimism and varies in theme.

Especially, their witticisms are always popular as they depict details of life at the construction site in an interesting and meaningful way.

The creators of the team created works, inspired by the way shock brigade members spent even their leisure time finding good things to do. The works are acclaimed by the audience for their individualistic depicting of characters and witty dramaturgy.

Male and female vocal soloists do even three encores as they touch the heartstrings of the builders with unique voices and fresh representation.

Pak Min Hye, a talented female vocal soloist of the team, said, “Whenever the builders cheer and call for my encore as if they want to encourage me, I feel joy and pride as a soloist. In my childhood I dreamed of singing in fine attire on the stage of a theatre with an auditorium of hundreds of seats and under flickering illumination. But whenever the builders waved to and applauded me from the high-rise apartment houses, I realized again the weight of each song I sang."

There is a song about an old couple on a visit to their daughter’s home in Pyongyang, which was composed decades ago. The couple see with wonder at the changed appearance of the city where apartment houses mushroomed here and there and say that all people smile thanks to the benevolence of the Party.

The song rendered by a male quartet of the Mansudae Art Troupe at the time is still popular among people as wonderful new streets appear one after another and people move into new houses, enlivening the whole country.

A harmonica quartet of the team plays the music of the song, winning great popularity.

Many pieces of music performed by the team are mosso and throbbing in rhythm. To the tune of their music, the speed of the builders’ shovelling and steps grows fast and the construction site seethes with great enthusiasm and thus the builders carry out their tasks at one go.

The members of the team give a performance several times a day, but this is not an easy job.

They have to prepare scripts and numbers to suit different venues for performance and practise through the night and give performances here and there in a day.

But they say they are satisfied if their singing encourages the builders and makes a contribution to the construction of the new street.

Kim Tong Uk, head of the team, said, “We will continue to give stirring performances so as to help the builders perform greater feats at the house construction site in the capital than the young people of preceding generations who dedicated their patriotic sweat and conscience everywhere across the country.”