Wise Guidance to Writing of Life-reflecting Songs

A song is not only a companion of life but also a symbol of revolutionary optimism.

That's why, on occasions, Chairman Kim Jong Il instructed songwriters to write as many revolutionary and popular songs as possible which can be sung with pleasure in conformity with the demands of the Korean people.

Chairman Kim Jong Il said:

"Poets must become singers and buglers of the times."

On February 25, Juche 79(1990), Chairman Kim Jong Il met senior officials in the field of music and art and gave earnest instructions to write revolutionary songs our people would love.

At that time, good songs reflecting the varied life of the working people were not being written. Acquainting himself with the situation, he energetically led the officials in the field of music to redouble their efforts to write life-reflecting songs.

Highly praising "The Song of the Sea" written in the period of building a new democratic Korea after the liberation of the country as a good song reflecting the working life of the fishermen, he said that in recent years he saw to it that a song based on Jo Ki Chon's poem "Whistle" was released and disseminated in order to help the working people with their cultural and emotional life. Indeed, what he said touched the heartstrings of those senior officials.

He also said that other songs about women, girls and children as well as those to be sung in congratulation of bridal couples should be well composed.

He continuously said that as there were few congratulatory songs for bridal couples, people sang mainly the song "We Are the Happiest in the World", of course, it wasn't so bad for them to sing such songs in the sense of loyalty to the Party and their leader, remembering the benevolence of the Party and the leader who brought them up in the embrace of love, but on wedding days they had better sing songs to congratulate bridal couples as it was the main thing to celebrate their marriages.

Bearing in mind his earnest remarks, a poet went to a co-op farm and worked there for life experience, thus writing a song "A City Girl is Married into the Countryside" for rural young people to sing in congratulation of bridal couples.

The text of the song was completed by the guidance of Chairman Kim Jong Il.

He highly praised the song on several occasions, saying that it was written with a simple content that a city girl was married into the socialist countryside, but it well reflected the idea that rural villages were changed like the cities under the guidance of the thesis on the socialist rural question set forth by President Kim Il Sung.

As soon as it was released, with its good text and melody, it was sung in buses, at wedding ceremonies and everywhere else.

As the song was good on the whole, the film makers produced a feature film, the namesake of the song, which soon became popular, thus delighting Chairman Kim Jong Il.

In fact, the words of the song portrayed the ordinary country life which underlies the greatness and vitality of the socialist rural theses of our country.

Therefore, whenever the issues of writing life-reflecting songs were discussed, he had the song as a model.

One day, in hearty response to the instructions of Chairman Kim Jong Il to write songs to be sung in congratulation of bridal couples at weddings, a female poet wrote a three-stanza song "Let Us Drink a Toast".

She presented it to Chairman Kim Jong Il and waited for his assessment impatiently.

After a while, she received the text of the song personally read and revised by Chairman Kim Jong Il. She was very pleased at first, but shortly afterwards she got serious.

It was because there were too many traces of thoughts and efforts made by Chairman Kim Jong Il in the text of the song line by line. The more she thought, the more she felt ashamed.

Inspecting the text of the song, Chairman Kim Jong Il said that the words of the song had been written in an interesting way as a whole, but the idea should be obvious and clear even in life-reflecting songs. And he changed the phrase "the marriage bond is good" in the refrain into "the Workers' Party is good".

As a result, the words of the song, while keeping its taste of life, became more ideological and sublime with a blessing to the marriages of new generations who have grown up under the care of the Party.

In the second stanza of the text, the first baby was predicted and depicted as a golden daughter from the subjective viewpoint of the songwriter.

Chairman Kim Jong Il, saying that from olden times our people had regarded the birth of a cute boy as a great pleasure of their family, rectified the phrase "a golden daughter" into "a gem of a boy" so that the traditional sentiments of the Korean nation could be echoed in every wedding hall.

In the third stanza, he changed the phrase "only love as today" into "in eternal love", thus ensuring the philosophical quality of poetic lyricism and musically perfect the rhythm of poetic sentences.

As a result, the song lyrics has become the famous ones our people adore today.

The poet learned how to generalize the typical sentiments of the times and the nation from Chairman Kim Jong Il,

Today, our people sing the life-reflecting songs – those completed under the outstanding guidance of Chairman Kim Jong Il – at home, at work and everywhere else in the whole country.