Word: burma
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...century, a Pagan King banned the sacrifice of animals at the rocky crag. He also started constructing temples and monasteries at its summit in an effort to curtail nat worship in order to establish Buddhism's dominance. He had only mixed success. Today, Popa Daung Kalat is one of Burma's major pilgrimage sites; visited by a steady stream of Burmese who turn to the nats to resolve problems in this life, and look to Buddhism for assurances in the next...
After the show, the biggest rock star Burma has ever produced stands on the concrete parking apron of a shabby hotel in Taunggyi in Shan state, alone in the cool midnight air. Zaw Win Htut's fans came by the thousands today to see him perform, chanting his name for hours before he took the stage. But they've left, and his band mates and family have retired to their rooms. He looks almost peaceful now, smaller somehow than when he was in front of the crowd. It's quiet, something the 38-year-old could get used...
...writes his own songs, too. They are mainly ballads about lost love. Several have the word dream in the title. He may want to perform more provocative material, but he knows he can't. Though their profession calls for them to strut onstage like rebels, Burma's rockers can only mime the anti-establishment part. Zaw Win Htut works in the sanitized vacuum of a country run by military rulers who view him automatically as a threat, a potential subversive, because he holds a microphone. Burma's cultural input is zealously monitored and artistic expression heavily censored. Musicians are controlled...
...were arrested in March on charges of plotting a coup against the current leadership. His family background has worked in his favor. His mother was a professional singer of traditional folk music. His grandfather, at the behest of General Aung San, Suu Kyi's father and the leader of Burma's independence movement more than half a century ago, wrote a song called When the Army Is Strong, the People Are Strong. It is still played at military functions. As a child, Zaw Win Htut listened to Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. His father, a doctor and a rock...
...Outside, vendors are hawking cheap sunglasses, fabrics, and Star Cola in bottles that ape the ones made by Pepsi?one of the many multinationals that once operated in Burma and have since fled. This office, which belongs to a friend, is less ersatz, less dilapidated than most. It is stocked with sophisticated soundboards and equipment, including two Mac G4s with big color monitors. An engineer cues up a video and Zaw Win Htut appears onscreen, earnestly singing and strumming on a river barge, then walking down a dusty road. This is interspersed with stills of his mother in her youth...