Western Myanmar - Myanmar (Burma) - page 707

Pop, Rock & Rap
Western pop music's influence first came in the 1970s, when singers such as Min Min
Latt and Takatho Tun Naung sang shocking things such as Beatles cover versions or 'Tie
a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree'. This led to long-haired, distorted-guitar rock
bands such as Empire and Iron Cross (aka IC) in the 1980s. Over two decades later, Iron
Cross are still rocking - try to see them live (you're sure to see them on videotape at
teashops or on all-night buses). Another long-running band is Lazy Club, who played
concerts in the US in 2009.
Bands can have a stable of several singers who split stage time with the same backing
band. Iron Cross, for example, features one of Myanmar's 'wilder' singers, Lay Phyu,
but it can also tone it down as a backing band for the poppier stuff of other singers. One
local aficionado explains: 'There's no competition between a band's many singers. They
help each other. Our rock singers don't throw TVs out the windows. On stage they jump
around and all, but offstage they're very good-natured.'
Female singers like Sone Thin Par and actor Htu Aeindra Bo win fans for their melod-
ies - and looks - but the most interesting is rapper Phyu Phyu Kyaw Thein, a sort of
'Sporty Spice', who has fronted both Iron Cross and Lazy Club. Other rappers include
Min Min Latt's son, Anega, now busting beats with other big-name rappers Barbu, Myo
Kyawt Myaung and heart-throb Sai Sai. Songs often deal with gossip, or troubles
between parents and kids. Thxa Soe is a popular hip-hop singer whose 2007 hit 'I Like
Drums' merged nat music with trance.
Current darlings of the local pop scene are the Me N Ma Girls, a toned-down Spice
Girls-style troupe. Although dismissed initially as pre-packaged pop, the Girls have gone
on to somewhat distinguish themselves by clinching an international record deal and
playing a show at New York's Lincoln Center in 2013.
Yangon is the best place to catch a show; look out for advertisements in local publica-
tions and on billboards and leaflets.
Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets , co-edited by James Byrne and Ko
Ko Thett, is the first anthology of Burmese poetry ever to be published in the West.
Literature
Religious texts inscribed onto Myanmar's famous kammawa (lacquered scriptures) and
parabaik (folding manuscripts) were the first pieces of literature as such, and began ap-
pearing in the 12th century. Until the 1800s, the only other works of 'literature' available