The 58th National Art Festival of Schoolchildren was held in April this year, where the participants with exceptional artistic talents competed with one another.
In the festival Kye Hyon A, aged 11 and a pupil of Ryonhwa Primary School in Central District, Pyongyang, took the first place in the category of national instruments (kayagum).
She won applause from the kayagum experts, the jury and the audience by skilfully playing the kayagum solo Spring of the Post.
With curiosity, I visited the aforesaid primary school to meet the girl.
There Kim Myong Sim, who taught Kye how to play the kayagum, told me the following story.
One day a woman took her daughter by the hand, and entered the kayagum circle room of the school, and said that she wanted to teach her daughter how to play the kayagum.
Kim asked the girl, “Do you want to play the kayagum?”
“Yes, I’d like to play it,” answered the girl with twinkling eyes.
She taught the girl some methods of playing the instrument, and learned that the girl had an inborn aptitude for the kayagum.
In this way, the girl entered the kayagum circle.
Recalling the first days of learning the instrument in the circle room, Kye said:
“At first it was very hard for me to learn how to play the kayagum. The fingers were so painful that sometimes I felt like crying. However, I wanted to continue to play it.”
And the teacher was always concerned for this little kayagum player to implant patriotism in her mind.
She would say to her as follows:
The kayagum is easy to learn because of its simple structure and tuning based on bridges. It is elastic, yet its sound is soft and elegant and the execution posture is rhythmic and beautiful, so our people like it. The main thing in sustaining such excellent points of the instrument is to have a deep understanding of the characteristics of the traditional tunes of our nation and retaining tremolo as you press the strings at the left side of bridges.
Her instructions brought about a great change in the girl’s learning.
Now she had formed the habit of deeply grasping the requirements of the theme of music and even delving into the ordinary playing of the instrument, before thrumming the strings.
Her skills had risen considerably with each passing day and she was able to play a solo one year later. She then participated in different art performances of schoolchildren.
According to her teacher, what is characteristic of the girl is her tenacious character.
Whenever she sees the performance by famous kayagum players, she never has a rest until she plays the instrument perfectly with a determination to follow them. And as she studies assiduously, she also never yields the first place in the ranking of the school.
Her unusual passion plus natural aptitude made her won the first place at the recent festival two years later.
A member of the jury of the festival said that she, a kayagum expert, could not help but admire the girl’s natural talent, and that she was very glad that a brilliant kayagum player had been produced.
The girl’s parents have this to say:
“On her return from the festival, she said she was told that she has inborn talents. How can we attribute it to her natural talents? But for grateful socialist educational system, which discovered and trained in time the aptitudes and talents of our daughter that her parents had failed to notice, we would not be able to think of our present-day child.”
Today, the girl has become an envy of other little kayagum musicians and their rival.
Not content with the success, she is redoubling her efforts to become an excellent kayagum player.
People expect much from the little kayagum player.
Article & photos: Kim Ryon Hwa
