In Myanmar, junta cannot stop the sound of music

Yangon: The military government's tightening grip doesn't give people here much to sing about, and when they do feel the urge to make music, even that can be risky.

The generals who rule Myanmar have spies snooping for subversives in the most unlikely places, such as a small music school in a rented house sandwiched between a Hindu temple and a broomstick factory.

It isn't a renegade hip-hop crib, or a blue-hazed den of protesting folkies, just a small rehearsal hall of plywood and particle board where children peck away at piano keys and a chorus of university students sings with enough heart to raise the low roof.

What riles the government is that the music school depends on foreign support, especially from a group of Yale University students and other American donors. Some of the generals' enforcers suspect a dangerous plot.

After 45 years of military rule, that isn't as weird as it sounds. Xenophobic propaganda is one of the ways the generals rally support and scare off dissent, so Myanmar's people are bombarded with it. A billboard on a busy downtown street corner in Yangon, also known as Rangoon, declares: "Oppose those who rely on America, act as their stooges and hold negative views."

Coded message

Poet Saw Wai was arrested recently on suspicion of writing a coded anti-government message in a Valentine's verse published in a popular entertainment weekly. In Burmese, the first character of each word spells out: "Power crazy Senior General Than Shwe," referring to the military government's leader.

The students at the Gitameit, or "Music Friends," school take their direction from the more universal language of music. They studiously avoid politics, but that isn't always enough to escape the probing eyes of the government.

Founded four years ago, the school is one of the few places, outside of a temple or church, where people can go to learn how to play a Western musical instrument or read music in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.

Its students' struggle is a lesson in the often bizarre lengths to which the generals will go to maintain their hold on power. But they're not strong enough to stop music bringing people together and giving them hope.

When the school opened, neighbours told the students they wouldn't last long. They were still going strong last year, and a few foreign visitors began dropping by, so intelligence agents started showing up.

They reminded the students that Myanmar's security laws hold them responsible for anything their foreign guests do, and if the outsiders strayed into politics, the locals would go to jail.

Foreign musicians

Choir director U Moe Naing, 40, explained that the group wanted to be good enough to perform for the public. They were working with foreign musicians and getting some experience by showing their talents to foreign music lovers, he told them.

Naing, a pianist who once studied to be a geologist, didn't want trouble. So he followed orders. Yet the spies kept the heat on. They got especially pesky in May, when Naing's choir hosted a concert with an all-male a cappella group from Yale.

Twenty Yale singers were on a three-week tour of Southeast Asia, with a five-day stop in Myanmar, where a Yale graduate had been teaching at the Gitameit school.

Fifteen minutes before the performance, a captain from the Special Branch police came backstage to poke around, while 250 people sat in the audience.

The singers' butterflies morphed into terror that their show was about to be shut down as an anti-state activity.

"He threatened me, saying, 'Maybe I'll come back to take you away,'" Naing said. "I was really afraid."

He didn't show up. Fortunately." And the show did go on, and the spies have kept their distance in recent months.

"For the country, I can't do anything - only this little thing," Naing said, a piano tinkling softly in the background. "The students arrive with little confidence, but I see a lot of leadership coming out. It's really good to see."