Underground Yangon: punk, metal, rap and hip hop music flourishing after end of military rule
The alternative music scene is buzzing in Myanmar’s biggest city, where until recently fellow citizens would beat up punks on the streets; we discover the bars where bands play, and why some gigs happen under expressway flyovers
Twenty years ago punks would get beaten up on the streets of Yangon by their fellow citizens “simply for dressing up weird”, says a veteran of the scene, and police would harass them even when they had done nothing. Today the only violence punk rockers face is from rappers, says Thet Khaing, better known in the Yangon punk scene as Skum, and even mortal musical enemies come together to put on gigs.
It’s a measure of how far Myanmar (Burma) has come since free elections in 2015 ended decades of repression under military rule.
At 36, Skum, the vocalist for anti-authoritarian punk band Kultureshock, is approaching the status of elder statesman in Burmese punk circles. He says the movement there started with the fashion, rather than the music. Men and women at music festivals donned the combat boots and Mohawk hairstyles they saw in foreign magazines and on the covers of bootleg CDs.
Now punk bands are free to perform – if they can find a place to play.
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“Punk-only shows are still a rare thing here, about three or four gigs per year,” says Skum. “But punk bands can also play in local underground gigs where a variety of punk, metal, hip-hop and rock acts play together.”