In the last two years, the Myanmar alternative music scene has made gains in the mainstream, with post-punk styles creeping from underground gigs into the oeuvre of pop stars.
Amid these hard-edged incursions into the insipid land of autotune emerges Pink Nation, an indie rock outfit whose debut album “Naing Ngan Taw” or “The Nation” was released in November to wide applause from Myanmar’s arts scene.
Formed in September 2019, the band has a crisp, clear sound, with lead singer Lwin Oo Maung, 36, echoing his own lyrics into the reverberating guitars, which are joined by an assortment of traditional Burmese instruments, including a harp and a flute.
Lwin Oo Maung, who also works as a visual artist, moved in 2015 to Taunggyi in search of some artistic inspiration in the mountainous Shan state capital. He found it in the form of his future bandmates: two guitarists, Thura Aung and Zaw Lynn; bassist, Pyae Phyo Win; keyboardist/pianists Aun Pha and drummer C Kyaw.
They played their first show in an underground event called Eastern Laboratory in December, 2019 and decided on the name Pink Nation as the de-facto musical state for their fanbase.
“It’s somewhere our fans can belong to,” Lwin Oo Maung told Myanmar Mix. “For the name of our album, our thought process was that a country doesn’t really exist—the borders, the government, and the laws are all made up by man and stuck in our minds. That concept is quite interesting for us, and we wanted to share our experiences and ideas in this ‘country’ with these songs.”
Lwin Oo Maung started penning songs for the album in 2017, beginning with “Act Well Kyaung Than Tha Yar” which roughly means “A Cycle of Cracks.” The track is one of two featuring fellow indie singer/songwriter Gabriel Phway.
The idea to combine traditional music elements with the modern, Lwin Oo Maung explains, came from his bandmates.
“I considered their decisions on instruments to have more weight as they were the ones playing them. It worked out well, I really like how we sound,” he said.
Lwin Oo Maung also makes use of the Myanmar melodic scale in some of his songs. For example, in the song “Tha De Ma Ya Lo Sate Ma Kaung Ma Phyit Par Nae” or “Don’t Be Sad Because You Miss Me,” the hook of the song is created using the melodic scale.
The Myanmar melodic scale, as explained in this article featured in The Atlantic in February 1958, “depends rather on the schematic arrangement of words with certain sounds recurring at fixed points.”
This means that timing and caesuras (a pause in the middle of a line) have great importance. In fact, in traditional Myanmar songs, the caesuras are considered even more important than the syllables or words in each measure.
Pink Nation counts Myanmar alternative rock pioneers The Ants among their biggest influences. Present for a short and sweet two years, between 1998 and 2000, The Ants conjure reflections of nostalgia and a simple life in solitude, says Lwin Oo Maung.
But Lwin Oo Maung does not want to tell his audience what their music represents or how they sound—that is up to the listeners themselves, he says.
“I’m an artist by trade so whenever I finish a painting or project, I leave it to my audience to decide what it means for them. The same goes for our songs,” he added.
As for your writer, "Kha Yee” or “Trip” is a stand-out song from the album, opened by handclaps and an enchanting ensemble of the flute and electric guitar that leads to Lwin Oo Maung’s descriptions of dewy grassy hills and sunlight seeping through the bright blue sky—his fantasy of a utopia that he dreams of visiting one day.
With the pandemic throwing tours and concerts out the window, Lwin Oo Maung says the band has been unable to “meet up and jam” like they used to.
“However, we aren’t really trying to be mainstream so not having to go on tours or playing at gigs doesn’t affect us as much as the other mainstream artists,” he said.
The singer paid tribute to the many friends who made the album possible.
“Our label Jam It really helped us out," he said. "They handled all of the business sides of things because, as artists, we really can’t focus on both financial and creative sides. My good friend Ba G made the album cover for us and he also helped us make the music video too. Things were very low budget, but the help I received made it worth a lot more.”
Pink Nation has already begun work on a second album and, according to Lwin, it will be “a totally new style of music.”
“We plan on not sticking to one genre or one concept and we hope you like our next project as well,” he added.
