Burma’s Pop Music Industry: Creators, Distributors, Censors

Burma’s Pop Music Industry is the first book to explore the contemporary pop music industry in a country that is little known or understood in the West. Based on years of fieldwork in Burma/Myanmar, Heather MacLachlan’s work explores the ways in which aspiring musical artists are forging a place within the highly repressive social and political context that is Burma today. It deals sensitively with issues such as negotiating local and global styles,performance contexts and practices, and, more importantly, with ethical issues such as the anonymity of informants and the place of Western ethnomusicologists in countries outside the West. Drawn from interviews conducted from 2007 through 2009 with Burmese composers, performers, producers, concert promoters, journalists, recording engineers, radio station employees, music teachers, and censors in Yangon – Burma’s largest city and the locus of all pop music production – Burma’s Pop Music Industry represents a significant contribution both to popular music studies and to Southeast Asian studies.

Heather MacLachlan is Assistant Professor of Music, University of Dayton.