An Eerie Take on The Sound of Music Reflects Hong Kong’s Upheaval

Description

Slovenian avant-garde music and music video group Laibach were drawn to The Sound of Music a not because of its cheerfulness, but because it represents one of the darkest moments of human history: the story of escape from Nazi invasion. The musical’s original songs were an aegis to at once transcend and obfuscate that horror.

Laibach began to reinterpret those songs during a trip to North Korea in 2017, rendering them strange and uncomfortable – a reflection of the current psyche of Hong Kong, whose political upheaval has led to a sense of struggle and repressed paranoia.