Open Your Ears: Musical Bridge to Burma

I recently heard about an very interesting musical event – a concert in aid of Link Emergency Aid & Development of Burma, which brings young Western composers and classical musicians together to play traditional music, and music inspired by Burma.

Burma (officially now called Myanmar) is a country of about 50 million people, bordering China to the North and Thailand to the East. It has an ancient musical tradition, which in recent years has been adapted to accommodate first Western classical music, then rock, and most recently hip-hop and rap.

The concert, “Musical Bridge”, is the brainchild of Zaw Lu Aung, a Londoner who was born and raised in Burma and has been speaking and writing on Burmese issues for several years. I won’t attempt to address the political and social situation in Burma here – but please follow some of the links at the bottom of this post to read more about it, and learn how some young people in Burma are speaking out through music.

A brief audio glimpse

I was intrigued by the concert’s concept, and not knowing much about the music of Myanmar, I set out to explore – with Spotify as my atlas. Click to read the rest…