North Korea gig fits well with iconic Slovenian band’s image

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) — For a band inspired by art in totalitarian regimes, a gig in North Korea is a dream come true.

Slovenia’s iconic Laibach — whose music is described as a mixture of industrial rock and Kraftwerk-style electronics, but which is also known for its controversial use of authoritarian imagery — has recently announced it will play two concerts in Pyongyang next month.

The tour will coincide with the ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the Korean peninsula’s liberation from Japanese colonization, and will include Laibach’s own music as well as popular Korean songs, spokesman Ivan Novak told the Associated Press.

“Originally, we invited ourselves and then they invited us,” Novak said.

Formed in 1980, when Slovenia was still part of Communist-run Yugoslavia, Laibach immediately stirred controversy with its name — German for Slovenia’s capital city Ljubljana — and because it used a black cross as one of its symbols.

This alone was enough for an official ban by the regime born out of anti-fascist struggle during World War II, which formally came into force in 1983 after Laibach locked the door of a concert hall and played the sound of a dog barking extremely loudly for almost half an hour.

For the next few years, Laibach moved abroad. The group’s visual style included wearing military uniforms on stage and toying with Socialist-era imagery while playing almost martial-style songs, sung in a husky, deep voice.

Despite being criticized as too dark, the band has always insisted that it is in fact exploring the relation between ideology, politics and art. One of its main slogans states that “art and totalitarianism do not exclude each other.”

Over the years, Laibach has gained an important place on Slovenia’s art scene — the band’s retrospective currently is part of an exhibition of the Neue Slowenishe Kunst (New Slovenian Art) movement at the Modern Gallery in Ljubljana.

Novak said the band has always wanted to visit North Korea and remembers clearly the visit in 1977 to the country by then Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito. Novak rejected the possibility that the trip will amount to political support for the North Korean communist regime — viewed as an isolationist dictatorship in the West.

“We never support the regime anywhere where we perform … but we do support the people who live there,” Novak said. He explained that the band has found inspiration for its art in North Korea’s “big stadium events, with their human pixels for instance.”

“All Korea is practicing superb pop art. Superb,” he insisted. “From the point of view of art history, they should actually protect the whole country, they should put it in a museum of pop art.”

Laibach concerts on Aug. 19-20 are planned for an audience of 1,000 each time. Several pop singers and bands from South Korea have performed in the north in the past, while British singer David Thomas Broughton has said he performed once for expats in North Korea. Laibach’s performance, however, will mark the first encounter with a visually charged band from the West.

“We will adjust and adapt our program to the Korean situation and audience,” Novak said. “We will perform a gentle version of Laibach,”

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Jovana Gec contributed from Belgrade, Serbia; Kim, Tong-hyung and Kim, Hyung-jin contributed from Seoul, South Korea.

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