Is music necessary for life? With so many crises happening all over the world, is music still essential? A look at Myanmar might suggest that the answer is “yes.” Despite the fact that the Southeast Asian country is deep in the throes of one of its worst national conflicts to date, a small underground electronic music scene has cropped up in spite of the turmoil around it—with several parties, producers, and DJs creating spaces for themselves in the capital city of Yangon. Red Room is a club dedicated to underground dance music. FTV is a roving hard techno party throwing events everywhere from traditional clubs to abandoned office buildings. Groove Culture sticks to the house side of things. LnHD is a fairly new producer who combines traditional sounds with rave music. And Heft has been making music low-key for years with a focus on atmospheric, immersive sounds.
Although this is the first time the country has had a dedicated electronic scene, there have been a few other scattered musical movements in the past. Myo Kyaw Myaing was a famous trance producer in the early ‘00s whose music—along with a few others, like DJ Jay—became the soundtrack for the annual water festival, Thingyan. Thar Soe is another local icon who combined house with traditional Burmese drums in the mid-‘00s—which was controversial among the elite. But although the music sold swiftly, no community grew up around it. Even after EDM blew up in 2014, resulting in some of the first real clubs in Yangon, the playlist consisted of Western music almost exclusively.
Ironically, it was the pandemic—followed almost immediately by a coup—that propelled the underground electronic scene to grow. While under lockdown, locals were exposed to new types of music online through platforms like TikTok and Boiler Room. As the coup unfolded, universities closed down, many high schools stopped operating, and jobs became hard to find. This created a thirst for personal expression during extremely difficult times.
Red Room opened in early 2023 as a techno club, but it grew rapidly as they familiarized their crowd with more underground sounds, progressively getting weirder and more open as they went along. These days, the audience is intentionally open-minded and expects to hear new things when they go out. “We can create our own genres and not care about catching up with the rest of the world—we have to do our own thing,” says Lalit, who helps run Red Room and also offers DJing and production classes. “We want to create innovative electronic music alongside our own cultural sounds instead of just copying. Why can’t we come up with our own new music?” they ask. Red Room is an inclusive space—they go out of their way to be welcoming to people from all walks of life. As Lalit puts it, “We pride ourselves on having Myanmar’s first safer space policy. We care about inclusivity. Everything isn’t rainbows and unicorns, but we want to keep it underground and relatively free. It’s not just a queer club, the only label that really works is underground.”
Heft has been playing music since childhood, and started seriously making electronic music in 2017. He was part of the collective Noise In Yangon, who would throw small events at cafes and the like. His style now is heavily focused on sound design, and he’s developed along a parallel path to this new, post-pandemic scene. “I pay attention to what’s going on but kind of keep to myself,” he says. “I think my music also exists in a different space and is hard to discover.”
Lynn Nandar Htoo, also known as LnHD, is a producer who learned to DJ from Lalit and has leaned into combining Burmese sounds with electronic music. Her recent EP focuses exclusively on mixing these sounds. “I don’t want to feel pressured to make certain music, like techno,” she says. Htoo is a member of ALIGN.ONLINE, which was created by Kuala Lumpur’s rEmPiT g0dDe$$ as a digital home where people can feel comfortable experimenting with new sounds. It’s also dedicated to platforming Southeast Asian women and femme artists in particular. “We need to be able to grow together. We need a community to feel safe and support each other.”
When FTV got its start in 2022, they knew it would take some work to teach people about the harder side of techno. Their first party was at a KTV spot—basically a karaoke bar where you rent a private room, but have a DJ booth instead of doing singalongs. They’ve become popular across Yangon, and they’re the afterparty spot of choice. But FTV’s first event did not go well. “People were like, ‘What the fuck is this?’” cofounder DEVASIX laughs. “Some people couldn’t even listen to it.” That didn’t deter them. FTV kept building, going bigger and harder as they grew. One of their most memorable experiences was renting out the 26th floor of an abandoned office building in collaboration with Groove Culture. It was dusty, dirty, and empty, but they split it up into three sections with different themes, rented sound and lights, and packed it out with over 1,000 people.
One upside to growing an underground scene in the middle of a crisis is that people tend to go very hard. Musically, that allows for the growth of rough, underground sounds like industrial techno. “We can’t do anything about the war or coup,” DEVASIX says. “So we just want to make techno. You can see the energy in the audience, there’s so much anger. They throw their feelings into the music.” It can also lead to community, as people bond over shared struggle. The curfew, which is currently from 1 AM to 3 AM, adds to this feeling; but the vibe carries on to the afterparty. “Everyone in that one room all together? The energy is strong,” says LnHD. “The people take care of each other, if someone is not OK, we get them water. We’re in this together.” That’s only if you’re in the right place though, adds Lalit. “I’ve gotten quite upset after curfew. Some clubs don’t have any quiet areas, so if you don’t like the music or the sound is bad, there’s nowhere to escape. If you’re hungry and there’s no food? All kinds of stuff can happen.” At Red Room, they make an effort to ensure people can always find a comfortable space.
In recent months, most parties have seen dwindling audiences. While Red Room used to host 100–200 people, that number is down to 20 or 30 these days. And while FTV peaked less than a year ago, the party isn’t even active in Yangon anymore. In addition to mandatory military conscription and a widening civil war, there are also major fuel shortages, a currency crisis, and fast-rising poverty. Many people have fled the country as a result. Necessity may birth creativity, but it certainly has its limits.
Despite those struggles, international clubgoers and artists still visit Yangon, particularly those living in or visiting Southeast Asia. Bangkok artists like Tanfa and DJ Yumiverse have performed in Myanmar recently. When asked about her experience at Red Room, Yumi was all smiles: “The crowd was so open and wild! They mix so many sounds together, which gave me ‘me’ vibes so much. After experiencing that, I will definitely lean more into it.”
After all this, what is Myanmar music? Although Heft’s sound doesn’t include any local instrumentation, nor does it lash out against the spiraling state of affairs, it’s a deep exploration of what it means to be from the country. “What is Burmese? I read history, listened to every type of Burmese music. I found no answer and was very disappointed,” he recalls. Then one day he remembered a poem they taught at high school about the countryside that felt happy and sad simultaneously. “After that, I went back to everything and it all had that similar contradiction. We’re not allowed to be happy or sad. Look at what’s going on; if you’re happy, that’s weird. I think that’s our identity; that contradiction. That polarity. That’s Burmese.”
