Zay Yar Thaw, a rapper from Burma who has been a political prisoner since 2008, was one of the 47 political prisoners recently released as part of Burma’s military-backed government’s “prisoner amnesty”. Over 2,000 political prisoner remain locked-away behind bars.

Rapping on the frustrations of life in Burma

http://www.mizzima.com/edop/features/5327-rapping-on-the-frustrations-of-life-in-burma.html

Thursday, 26 May 2011 17:20 Phanida
(Feature) – Burmese singer Zay Yar Thaw’s hero is the late American hip hop star Tupac Shakur.

Zay Yar Thaw. Photo: Mizzima

Shakur died from a hail of bullets in Las Vegas in the United States in 1996, the result of a gangland killing, part of the nether world the African-American singer inhabited–caught between stardom and the gritty realities of no-hope black gang street life.

Zay Yar Thaw was only 15 at the time of Shakur’s death, but the American ‘rapper’ and his genre of hip hop music deeply influenced the young Burmese boy growing up a world away on the streets of Rangoon.

Today, they have rap, testy lyrics and jail in common.

Burmese rapper Zay Yar Thaw is reveling in his new-found freedom having just been released from prison on May 17 after serving more than two and a half years of a six-year sentence for belonging to a political youth group and a foreign currency offence. Unlike his hero Shakur, jailed over a sexual offense, Zay Yar Thaw was put behind bars for what pro-democracy activists believe was a laudable reason–challenging the Burmese regime’s right to govern.

The singer was met by members of his family after his release, part of what the Burmese government touted as an ‘amnesty for prisoners’, but in reality a one-year commutation of sentences for 14,600 prisoners.

The 30-year-old Burmese hip hop singer is used to attention but little did he realize when he starting out ‘rapping’ and singing about the frustrations of youth in Burma a decade ago that he would end up on Amnesty International’s worldwide list of ‘prisoners of conscience’.

It all started innocently enough. ‘One of my dreams was to become a singer’, Zay Yar Thaw told Mizzima. ‘During my childhood, my dad forced me to learn to play the piano, and with my friends I used to play reluctantly, eventually quitting’. But music had taken a hold, as did poetry and art.

He said he was ‘bewitched’ by hip hop music in his teens. He spent his pocket money on a variety of music albums, especially foreign music albums. ‘Although I did not understand the lyrics, I liked the albums’, he said.

One album caught his attention, in that the words were spoken, not sung. ‘I was very fond of that kind of music’, he said. ‘When I asked my friends about the music, they told me it was “rap”. That’s why I went on to release rap albums. I also listened to other rap albums. As far as I remember, I bought a music album of Niggaz With Attitude and Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. After I listened to those albums, I came to understand rap music’.

As Zay Yar Thaw explains, hip hop originated in the African-American community in the United States in 1979. ‘The word “negro” is offensive, so they called themselves “Nigger”, he said, turning a normally derogative term on its head as a way to refer to their community. ‘Hip hop is rooted in young black people’s anger against racial inequality. The essence of hip hop is expressing the feelings of the oppressed. The benevolent attitude can raise the artistic quality of hip hop, I think’.

Rap and hip hop–largely interchangeable terms–were initially a fad in Burma, the latest cool foreign trend for young people to jump on. As Zay Yar Thar points out, rap grew in popularity from 1992-93.

‘In those years, young people used to do break-dance to the hip hop music in the mornings. Then, for some people, hip hop music became monotonous and they moved into other kinds of music. But, we stuck with the hip hop music. But, at that time, I didn’t know the word ‘hip hop’. I knew it as rap music. Some of my friends moved into heavy rock and heavy metal music. But, we have adhered to the rap music and listening to rap music has provided the inspiration for creating rap music’.

Zay Yar Thar found black American rapper and movie star Tupac Shakur an inspiration. Shakur sold more than 75 million albums and was considered a poet and ‘outspoken advocate for the poor and overlooked in America’, according to the website run in his memory. Zay Yar Thar had the poetry and the communications skills, even though he lacked the negatives of Shakur–gang shootings, run-ins in with the cops and the late-night drive-by shooting that cut short the legendary American rapper’s life.

Zay Yar Thar joined forces with Anaggha, Hein Zaw and Yan Yan Chan to form Burma’s first hip hop group called Acid in late 2000. That year, Acid released an album, Sa-Tin-Gyin (Beginning) that Burmese music critics blithely said would bomb. It rocketed to the No. 1 position in the album charts and stayed there for more than two months.

Acid struck a chord. They were different from the pop and rock bands in Rangoon. While on the surface the baggy trousers, over-sized T-shirts, baseball caps and sunglasses mimicked their ‘Nigger’ counterparts, their rapped lyrics spoke of what one Western newspaper said was ‘the mundane’ but ‘their lyrics inevitably touched on the hardships of life in Burma, drawing them into dangerous territory’ when it came to a military regime oversensitive to any hint of criticism. Acid drew the crowds and their success attracted other hip-hop artists and groups, now known as the ‘first generation’ of Burmese hip-hop.

‘I’m a singer, so I’m in touch with the people through my performance. I came to know about their feelings and pain. I thought that what I could do for them. Then I have participated in politics as much as I can’.

The Burmese rapper found a voice in reaching out to his audience. ‘Our young people need to lead in demanding fairness. I don’t have the heart to ignore injustice, that’s why I have taken part in the politics. For some time I have thought that the pain and feelings of our people were also mine because I’m one of the Burmese people. But, I had to take enough time before I took part in the politics because I needed to ask myself whether I could make personal sacrifices or not’.

Zay Yar Thaw raised money with poets Saw Wai and Aung Way for a charity run by the now-jailed comedian Zarganar to help HIV-positive orphans. He also went with rapper Nge Nge to the orphanages to teach the children English.

While they drew the pulsing crowds, Zay Yar Thaw’s music and lyrics hung on the razor’s edge of censor acceptability but he scraped by.

Then came the 2007 ‘Saffron Revolution’, when monks led people onto the streets in protest against the military government.

The young hip hop star said he was connected to the people through his group’s concerts and songs. And when people’s protests and aspirations were brutally crushed by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), Burma’s military rulers, rapping at concerts was not enough.

In October 2007, Zay Yar Thaw co-founded with three other activists an organization called Generation Wave, a youth movement that called for change. He had a way with words and before long a tongue-in-cheek campaign was launched to put CNG stickers on cars. CNG stands for ‘compressed natural gas’ but Generation Wave made it known that it also stood for ‘Change New Government’.

They also enlisted Rambo to fight for change. The group copied and passed around anti-government films including Rambo (or Rambo IV), a Hollywood movie that premiered in January 2008 in which actor Sylvester Stallone’s character fought against the Burmese military in Karen State. The film was banned by the Burmese authorities because it depicted Burmese soldiers in a particularly negative light as brutal murderers and rapists. The movie was reportedly a hit with the Karen, who even are said to have adopted Rambo’s ‘Live for nothing, or die for something’ call.

Rambo’s frenzied shooting up of Tatmadaw soldiers may have been the last straw. It was not long after bootlegged copies of Rambo made the rounds that Zay Yar Thar was arrested in a restaurant in Rangoon on March 12, 2008. The game was up. Although he doesn’t speak publicly about it, Amnesty International claimed he was beaten during interrogation.

According to media reports, he told reporters before his sentencing: ‘I feel sad, but not because of my imprisonment… I feel sad for the future of our country and people when I think about these facts’.

He told the reporters he had a message for the people: ‘Have the courage to reject the things you don’t like, and even if you don’t dare to openly support the right thing, don’t support the wrong thing’.

On November 20, he was charged under section 6/88 of the Unlawful Association Act and section 24/1 of the Foreign Currency Act and sentenced to six years in prison. Later, his sentenced was commuted to four years. His fellow Acid band mate Yan Yan Chan was also arrested and jailed.

Prison was hard. For the young singer who had grown up with music, the ban on listening to music in prison as a political prisoner was particularly tough. ‘Because I was a political prisoner, I was detained in the extraordinary prison ward. We were not allowed to watch TV while other prisoners were allowed’.

But the musician could not be silenced. ‘I sang the songs I liked’, he told Mizzima. ‘In the prison, I analyzed which songs I really liked, which songs I learned off by heart, and which lyrics I really understood’.

Zay Yar Thaw served time for a cause. ‘There were both good things and bad things in prison’, he said. ‘But, I wanted to make a three-point demand. I told the prison officials to be frank, treat prisoners with mutual respect and shoulder responsibilities. If the prison authorities fulfill our demand, the conditions in prisons will be better than the current conditions’.

Today, the Burmese rapper is free. But his thoughts lie with his fellow political prisoners who are still behind bars. Their punishment is not over.

By FRANCIS WADE
Published: 18 May 2011

Zayar Thaw was released yesterday after three years in prison (Generation Wave)