MUSIC-BURMA: Exiled Singer Makes ‘Freedom’ Music

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Prangtip Daorueng

CHIANG MAI, Thailand, Sep 15 1998 (IPS) - Mun Aung made a name for himself in his native Burma in the 1980’s, with his songs of young romance but, while he remains popular with fans in the land of his birth, he no longer lives there. Today, freedom for the Burmese people is the predominant theme in his music.

Mun Aung left Burma in 1988, just after the release of his fourth – and most popular – album in Rangoon. That was the year of massive student protests and urban uprising in Burma. It was also when the country’s military rulers decided to impose a “constructive culture” policy on local artists.

“Under this policy, every musician must have one constructive song (for) every four songs in his or her album,” Mun Aung said, in an interview with IPS in this city in northern Thailand, after the informal launch of his latest album.

“Constructive song means a song that supported government policy and national stability,” he explained. “So we had some singers singing about traffic rules or health. Some songs came out very funny, but at the same time it was very sad too.”

“Our songs are like our babies,” added Mun Aung.”We gave birth to them. So when I saw some people who just read it once and said that they didn’t like it, I felt it was unfair for artists. They didn’t have any sense of art. They only wanted to follow the rules and I couldn’t take it anymore.”

And so he just left one day, heading for the Thai border. But he found he could no longer write and sing songs of love, especially after a military crackdown left Burmese dissidents dead or ‘disappeared’, and members of the opposition imprisoned.

His first album in exile thus ended up as a collection of songs and poems that were especially meaningful to his people. He went further in his second work, devoting it entirely to the 1988 movement and to those who died fighting for democracy.

Both albums have since been copied by the thousands back in Burma, where they are certified “underground” hits. His latest effort is called ‘Path of Freedom’, which was recorded in the Netherlands where he is now based. He made it a point to go near the Thai-Burma border – the closest he can get to his homeland – to celebrate its completion.

Although all his albums are now banned in Burma, Mun Aung is confident that his people will soon be enjoying his newest songs.

To be sure, they are not the love songs that the Burmese had heard from a much younger Mun Aung, who is now in his late 30s. But they do have his trademark mix of Western pop and Burmese traditional music.

More importantly perhaps, they are also not works done under a state policy that Mun Aung says thwarts creativity and tries to control artists’ thoughts and feelings. Indeed, the “constructive policy” that had driven him, at the height of his popularity, far from Burma is still in place.

“We do have really good artists but they can’t express their feelings,” says Mun Aung. “No quality artwork could be produced under this kind of policy. It is scary to think that this situation has been going on for more than 10 years now. And what do we have left for the new generation in terms of culture?”

He tried to work around the policy at first, relying on double meanings to hide the “real” message of his songs. This was why no song in his Burma-produced albums was ever censored. But the pressure became too much for him to bear, he told IPS.

At the same time, Mun Aung added: “My image as a singer with long hair and blue jeans became something (like a) threat to national security because they said I represented Western influence over the youth. I also sympathised with the student movement and it showed. So I thought it was time to leave.”

Significantly enough, he chose to name his last Burma-produced album ‘8/82 Inya’ – the title of the song that had catapulted him to popularity when he was starting his career.

Mun Aung cannot help but smile whenever he talks about the song that was a huge hit with Burmese students more than a decade ago. “The song was written in 1984…8/82 Inya’ was the name of university girls’ dormitory,” he recalls. “Then, female university students were not allowed to go out after 10 at night. The song was about a guy who couldn’t sleep because he missed a girl who lived in the dorm.”

“I wrote it for fun but it went around the campus,” said Mun Aung. “I put it in the first album after graduation and decided to make it the title of my last album before I left Rangoon.”

To this day, the song is still hummed in Burmese streets. “Once I came to the border, a junior military man recognised me and he was so glad. He sang ‘8/82 Inya’ to me. He was a student (when it was first released) and (he) still remembers it,” recalled Mun Aung.