Music of Burma

The music of Burma (or Myanmar) has similarities with and is related to many other musical traditions in the region.

Traditional music from Burma is melodious, generally without harmony, and usually in 4/4 time (na-yi-se) or 2/4 (wa-let-se) or 8/16 (wa-let-a-myan). There are "the segments combined into patterns, combined into verses, combined into songs [that] make Burmese music a multileveled hierarchical system...The Burmese musician manipulates the various levels of the hierarchy to create the song..." (Becker 1969, p. 272)

Orthodox Theravada Buddhism frowns upon music as being decadent. Despite this cultural backdrop, the Burmese monarchy as well as the infusion of different regional music styles, have created several classical traditions of Burmese music. The oldest influences may perhaps come from China, which shares a similar pentatonic musical scale as classical Burmese music. Other influences include Mon music (called Talaing than or "sounds of the Talaing [Mon]"), particularly in the Mahagita (မဟာဂိတ), the complete body of classical Burmese music.

A prevailing one is called Yodaya (ယိုးဒယား), which is essentially a class of Burmese adaptations to songs accompanied with the saung gauk and come from the Ayutthaya kingdom (modern-day Thailand) during the reigns of Bayinnaung (1551–1581) and Hsinbyushin (1753–1776), which brought back a variety of cultural traditions including the Ramayana. The primary indigenous form is called thachin (သချင်း).

Burmese classical music ensembles can be divided into outdoor and indoor ensembles. The outdoor musical ensemble is the sidaw (စည်တော်); also called sidawgyi (စည်တော်ကြီး), which was an outdoor ensemble in royal courts used to mark important ceremonial functions like the royal ploughing ceremony. It consists of a hnegyi (နှဲကြီး), a large double reed pipe and sidaw (စည်တော်), a pair of ceremonial drums, as well as the si (စည်း) and wa (ဝါး), a bell and clapper and the gandama, a double-headed drum. Today, sidaw music is played at festivals. Other instruments used in classical music include the saung (a harp) and pattala (a xylophone). The indoor form is the chamber music ensemble, which is basically a female singer accompanied by a traditional ensemble consisting of the saung (စောင်း), pattala (ပတ္တလား), migyaung (မိကျောင်း, a zither), palwe (ပလွေ, a flute) and in the past, included the tayaw (တယော, a fiddle) and hnyin (a small mouth organ).

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Wikipedia