Poe Ei San | Nan Taw Shay Yet Ganewin

Reupped in case you missed it the first time, here.

Originally posted in December 2012.

Listen to track 1

INTERVIEWER: What do you think of this first bit?

RESPONDENT: It's like this chick is smashing a car when she might be singing a song about "I love you, baby." Is she saying the car is evil and the music is in "the" background? It's like she's out there reading poetry with this little green and gold robe on while smashing an M.G. ...


Listen to track 7

INTERVIEWER: Have you heard this one before?

RESPONDENT: I've heard the beautiful lights but they don’t sound like they did before. This is nicer, a nice little cat in her own groove, all about flowers and people wearing golden underwear. I like that nobody is going to listen to it. It's really groovy, but her group ought to be a little less creative. These days everybody thinks everybody else has to have trips, and people are singing about trips.


Listen to track 8

INTERVIEWER: She's just making up words at this point.

RESPONDENT: Yeah, it's like we're all being filmed. As we listen to it, shivering, the night and the ice descend. The chill air maybe picks this one up. Like this was not part of the formal trip, so she could just rap, because this isn't where she is at all. And that--that's where we're going, man.

[Don't miss Bodega Pop's 10 Best Albums of 2012.]

Mandalay Thein Zaw | Burmese Folk

Reupped in 320 glorious KBPS, here.


Listen to the fabulous fifth track

[Originally posted on March 15, 2012.] Why anyone would listen to 20th century western classical/avant garde music when Burma exists is beyond me. Well, okay; in all seriousness: There really isn't any music quite like Burmese, at least Burmese music toward the more folk end of the spectrum. (They do, like everyone else on planet Earth, have their own brand of western-influenced pop and rap.)

As regular readers of this blog may remember, last August, Peter Doolan, who curates the insanely great Monrakplengthai , invited me out to visit Thiri Video, a Burmese media store in Elmhurst, Queens, that he'd gotten wind of a few weeks prior to contacting me. (Get the CD I found that day here.)

It took us well over half an hour to find the place, and this was after we had already unwittingly passed it. It turns out there is no store front; it's actually in a garden-level apartment. After confirming that we were, finally, at the right place, we removed our shoes and went in.

There is nothing like Thiri Video anywhere else in New York--at least, not that I'm aware of. I'm guessing there's nothing like it in the rest of the U.S. as well. (Please correct me if wrong; and include an address, as I would love to visit it, if it exists.)

Rather than rely on my groggy descriptive capabilities (it is, after all, not quite 5:00 a.m. as I write this), let's take a look at Thiri Video's promotional video, shall we?

I love that video. If my exhortations thus far were not enough to get you to watch it, or if a lack of subtitles frightens and intimidates you, I'll explain: A young Burmese man and what I gather are his or his girlfriend/wife's parents check out the time and wonder where Dude's significant other could possibly be.

As often happens in this kind of situation, a woman bathed in eerie blue light, whose midsection has been replaced with a midriff-sized chunk of silver, drops by, telling the young man to forget his bride/bride-to-be, and regaling him and the rest of the family with tales of Thiri Video (including numerous shots of the shop). Obviously, he doesn't, at least at first, believe her. For how could such a Paradise on Earth exist, even in fabulous Elmhurst, Queens?

Well, I'm here to emphatically tell you that it does, indeed, exist, as I just visited it for the second time last Sunday. I'm also here to offer you one of the most insane, shit-eating-grin-fabulous CDs I've ever found anywhere.

Yi Yi Thant & Win Win Aung | Mya Buddha, Akha To Nei Mya

Reupped, because it pains me to think of you without it, here.

[Originally posted March 2013.] Is innocence, as Graham Greene once quipped, a kind of insanity? I don't think so, but then why do I feel, whenever I listen to traditional Burmese music, like it's the most pure, but also the craziest, music I've ever heard? I mean, besides whatever Edward Said might have to say about that.

This album is so beautiful, beautiful in so many sometimes even conflicting ways, that it almost hurts me to listen to it. I feel like I'm simultaneously floating in a celestial pool of warm, dark-chocolate-and-mushroom-flavored saline AND having the insides of my bones scraped out by mallets made by stupid people preoccupied by stupid thoughts about how dumb mallets look.

Also, it makes me cry. I feel like McTeague, after hours weeping in his Polk Street Dental Office. Except there's this layer of consciousness where I can see clearly that innocence and insanity are not really bedfellows but rather hate each other just like humans. Which makes this music even more impossible, like "how can I get at this flypaper sticking in my head"?

Found a year or so ago at Thiri Video, Elmhurst, Queens, with Peter Doolan, who graciously transliterated the artists and title.

Unknown Burmese Woman | Yellow Album

 

Listen to the stunning second track of this wonderful album 

Pluck the whole thing from "the cloud" or whatever, here.

This is an older CD I found at Thiri Video in Elmhurst that I hadn't gotten around to posting yet. There are a lot of Burmese CDs I need to either reup or post in the first place -- sounds like an admirable goal here at the Bodega for the first few weeks in September, eh?

I've got a lot of news to share with you, but will do that a bit later. It's all good. (Not as good as this record, though.)

Mar Mar Aye | Ein Shin Ma

Reupped by reader request here. (And thanks to Peter Doolan for the image above.)


[Note: Since this post was written last year, Mar Mar Aye did in fact return to perform in Myanmar. See video just below.]



Honestly, I can almost not stand to listen to "Achi Yei" from this album, it is so devastatingly beautiful. There are only a handful of songs that can still make me feel this way, what with goosebumps rising on skin, eyes tearing up, fingers poised at keyboard as though I might be some digital age Lester Bangs readying myself to pour heart out into 1,000 heavy, soulful words on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks:

• A mawaal by Najwa Karam, "Baladeeat," from her first album
• Kazim Al Saher's "Waneen"
• SD Burman's "Jaye To Jaye Kahan" from the Taxi Driver soundtrack, sung by Lata Mangeshkar.
• Fairuz's "Mush Qasah Hay" 

So, as I've been hinting at lo these last few days, my Burmese connection, Zaw, recently called me, intoning our mutually agreed upon code phrase ("the hibiscus-secreting pink top in Pixie Hollow is circumscribed in invisible 'chaw-NEE-naw' ink") followed by the pound sign (#), to let me know that the artists whose CDs I requested he burn for me (@ $1.50 ea.) were ready to be picked up. Wait, no, I fucked that sentence up. The artists weren't ready; their CDs were.

Where was I? Oh, right; Astral Weeks. So when I arrived at the magical, mysterious Thiri Video, Zaw stepped forward to greet me and usher me across the hardwood floor of what, essentially, is his and his wife's apartment, past the kitchen, to the computer table near the back door, from which he scooped up a stack of SONY CD-R 700 MB discs in white sleeves (the image on the right being the very one you're downloading now). "I got everything I could by Mar Mar Aye," he explained--a dozen albums, as it turns out. He also burned three Poe Ei Sans and six Ni Ni Win Shwes. It's so symmetrical--12, 6, 3--I worry, frankly, though Zaw assured me that was a coincidence. (By saying absolutely nothing about it because, to be honest, I didn't ask him anything about it.)


Making the trade (cash, CDs), we exchanged our secret handshake (facing each other, each with right arm extended, bent upward at elbow to make an L, hands waving back and forth) and bid each other a pleasant afternoon, as I walked back out into the greatest city in America, Lester Bangs's "Desolation, hurt, and anguish are hardly the only things in life; they're just the things that we can most easily grasp and explicate" weaving in and out of my memory.


Postscript: Several days ago, a Burmese poet and Facebook friend posted to let us know that, after years in Exile here in the U.S., Mar Mar Aye will soon be making her first trip back to Myanmar.

Mar Mar Aye | Aung Na Mate

Reupped by request here.

Myanmar's greatest singer--one of the greatest singers in the world--Mar Mar Aye turned 70 today. Being as how I still have this ridiculously rich stack of Burmese CDs I've yet to share with you, including a dozen or so by Auntie Mar, it would seem unconscionable for me not to post at least one of them tonight, no matter how tired I am from work.

I chose "Aung Na Mate" for a couple of reasons: It's one of her best, at least of those in my possession, and--look!--I happened to find music videos of the title song as sung by two other Burmese superstars, Soe Sandar Tun and Yi Yi Thant:

Soe Sandar Tun

Yi Yi Thant

... so it's like a mini bonus video festschrift. (Did I spell that right? Do you care?)

Happy 70th, Mar Mar, and thank you for sharing your awe-inspiring voice with us.

Mar Mar Aye | Kauk Sike Ma

Listen to "Taung Thu Pyao"--which catapults itself from jaw-dropping classical Burmese piano and vocal to, four-and-a-half minutes later, upsettingly awesome funk groove--and learn everything you need to know about this supremely mind-blowing Burmese cassette from 1980.

Just reupped in 320 listenable kbps here.

Born in 1942 to a family of artists, Mar Mar Aye began music training at a very young age, recording her first hit record “Thet Tan Paw Hmar Kasar-mae” when she was 13 years old. Over the next four decades she recorded thousands of songs, acted in a couple of films, wrote a couple of novels, and became a member of Burma’s National Music Council. She is probably the most famous Burmese traditional singer.

A politically active artist who has written songs in support of the Saffron Revolution and advising citizens to “Vote No!” in a national referendum on a new planned military-backed constitution, Aye left the country for the U.S. in 1998 and has lived here ever since.

Watch Mar Mar Aye on Burmese TV in 1981:

And here she is in 1987:

Khine Htoo & The Phoenix

Listen to "Ah Way"

Get it all here.

Big thanks to Peter Doolan for sending this along for me to post. Peter, of course, is the guy who first told me about Thiri Video (where he got this and other cassettes and where I got dozens of CDs); we went there together for the first time last summer.

My computer has been in the shop for a few days--nothing horrible, relax. But that's why I haven't been posting. I'll start up again later this week or this weekend. Meanwhile, this rather delicious recording might, I hope, inspire a few of you to see Khine Htoo, along with other Burmese pop artists Tin Zar Maw, Chaw Su Khin and Supan Htwar this Saturday, June 30 at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center in Long Island City. (Get details here.)

More soon; I promise.

Bu-bu-bu-Burma Bomb | Myanmar Rap & Hip Hop

Sandy Myint Lwin, "Euu Ma Yar"

Burmese hip-hop pioneers, Acid, "A Sate Ein Met"

Unknown hip-hoppers, "TTC"

The first Burmese pop artist to rap (late 80s), Myo Kyawt Myaing, "Sat Thwe Mhu Area Pyin Pa"

Get all 18 totally kick-ass Burmese rap and hip-hop tracks here.

I know that one ought not look a gift horse in the eggs before they're hatched, but let's just cross our fingers and say that, inshallah, there might soon be a flurry of music from this insanely musically advanced culture hitting the aisles of your favorite bodega here.

Meanwhile, I've been going sort of crazy with FileTram. Y'all know about FileTram? Well, I'm sure there are other search engines like it, but for whatever reason, FT, which was just launched last year, is the one I discovered first and the one I presently feel most comfortable using.

Using. For what? Why, for finding music I can't otherwise seem to locate via Google, of course. What's beautiful about this engine is that whatever you type in, it will search not only sites like Mediafire and Rapidshare, but also the sites that link to the file, and both appear in the results. So, for instance, let's say you loved the Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her comp I posted last July and want to see what else is out there. You could do a search by the band's name and, say, "rar," and discover this. (But don't click through to any of the results; instead, cut and paste the URL in green and plop it into a new window. Trust me on that.)


N E Wayz. So, I've been doing a bit of hunting. And gathering. And sifting. And, now, posting. 


Rap and hip hop were slow to catch on in Myanmar, though Myo Kyawt Myaing started rapping a bit in the 80s. It took the four-member band Acid to release the first all-hip-hop record, Sa Tin Gyin, in 2000. Since then, the genre has really caught on in the world's 24th most populous country; I was able to dig up dozens of single albums and rap mixtapes on FT, most of whose original homes (e.g., the websites that linked to the files themselves) had vanished.


This weekend, when I wasn't out basking in the sun and hunting down Issan restaurants, I weeded through my findings, ultimately boiling it all down to the comp you're quite possibly downloading for your own give-it-a-listen now.

Soe Sanda Tun | Unknown Burmese CD

Listen to a sample track

Make it yours.

The Myanmar Question: How WTF do you want your music?

Nearly every song on this utterly bewitching CD begins as though someone--some very, very bad boy or girl--had catapulted it into a giant lake of melted processed cheese, where it flails about, choking and gasping for air, its oversized Margaret Keane eyes imploring you to rescue it by turning off your stereo and going out and enjoying life.

Then, perhaps 20-30 seconds into the song, Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage, Paul Hindemith and Edgar Varese each takes his place at one corner of the Lake o'Cheese. Together, in unison, they kneel down, pressing their elderly chapped lips to the lake's orange bobbing surface. John and Paul gently suck the cheese toward them while Arnold and Edgar gently blow. Then, Paul begins to blow. And Arnold sucks. John blow-sucks, blow-sucks, blow-sucks. And in this way, these four cornerstones of 20th century avant-garde music cause the previously drowning song to lift and rise above the cheese, in exaggerated but nonetheless cool-looking feather steps, enchuflas, ronds and gonchos.

The moral of the story? When life catapults you into a lake of cheese, tell your thin-lipped avant-garde friends to suck it.

Po Ei San | Unknown

Listen to the first track on this inexplicably WTF-Fabulous CD

Get it all here.

I don't know how they do it, but the people of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar consistently be releasing the most amazing WTF pop music this bodega diver has ever poured into his aural canals. Chill, Bill & Jill Visitor, if you will, to the ill-yet-totally-legit sample above. Does it, tho its methods be swill, still not kill? 

How? How did they make it so?

Let's be honest here. The woman on the cover of this CD has purple sock puppets in her hair. Matching purple sock puppets. Beneath the "OK" finger sign near the cover's top, it says: DOLLAR MUSIC BAND. Assuming a person has not yet run away in fear, assuming a person is, in fact, the type of person who, when confronted by a woman with matching purple sock puppets in her hair and the words DOLLAR MUSIC BAND floating o'er the head of sock puppet-left, thinks: "Yes, perhaps I try" ... what can happen then? Anything? A thing worth sharing with others? On one's dorky music blog?

She was a Flower of the 24th most populous country in the world yes when she put the matching purple sock puppets in her hair like the Pyu and the Mon and I thought well as well the DOLLAR MUSIC BAND as another and then I asked her with my eyes to ask again yes and then she asked me would I yes to say yes and first I put her CD in my computer and yes and pressed play so I could hear her voice rise above the Indopop Casio Post-Lollywood Faux Tibetan Meditation Moment and drew her voice down to me ears so they could feel her song all Myanmar yes and her Burmese heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

As, I'm pretty sure, will you.

(Thanks to Peter Doolan for translating this singer's name.)

Mandalay Thein Zaw & Soe Sandar Tun | Mya Na Di

Listen to track from this sublime CD

Get the whole thing here.

Found at Thiri Video in east Elmhurst. Peter Doolan of Monrakplengthai had found out about this place a while ago and contacted me to see if I'd be interested in coming along with him on his first trip there. We finally met up today and made the trek.

I'm heading out the door, but I have another CD from the same store that I'll upload this coming week sometime, and when I do, I'll tell you all about our trip to Thiri.

Until then ... enjoy this insanely fabulous CD!