ZAW WIN HTUT: ROCK OF AGES
To all Myanmar, Zaw Win Htut is a perennial renegade hero who needs no introduction. A behemoth of rock whose musical legacy spans almost four decades, he has indelibly influenced the fashions and emotions of generations of Myanmar’s people. Myanmore visited his excellent new F&B venture - the rock and roll styled 1964 Gastro Pub - in an attempt to fathom how one survives over thirty-five years of headbanging in The Golden Land. TEXT: SAM D. FOOT PHOTOS: ZWE WINT HTET
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hen in Yangon, by far my largest pleasure is gained from rocking out to the anthems I encounter as I go about my day-to-day: fabulous guitar wails and questioningly sweet vocals emit from taxis and trucks, from phone shops and grocery stores, and from booze-halls the town over. When greeted by the opening bars of Min Shi Tae Myo, A Mae Lite A Ka, or Way Twar Lal, I am triggered - a Pavlovian urge to strut and spit out lyrics incomprehensible to any language becomes me, and all is good in the world. I know you expats feel the same. To this, we owe gratitude to one man: Zaw Win Htut. It is no exaggeration to say that without ZWH - and his band, Emperor - Myanmar would be an entirely different, altogether less musty, less edgy, and less melodic place.
ROCK OF AGES Zaw Win Htut is Myanmar’s great musical centrifuge, the most influential singer in a country of fifty-five million people. Of unquestionable musical
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pedigree, he was born into music, spent a life in music, and has provided the soundtrack to the lives of generations of Burmese.
Alice Cooper - all that good stuff.” To a boy growing up in 1970’s Mandalay this must have felt like being given access to the secret source.
His grandfather, the composer Shwe Daing Nyunt, is a national treasure who, before his untimely death at the age of thirty-three, notated a number of lingering Burmese anthems - not least Only The Army Can Save The Country, a patriotic ditty that you may have heard this recent Armed Forces Day. ZWH’s mother, Tin Aye, or simply “Hta,” is also a golden girl of classical Myanmar music. Various other relatives, including his brother, Emperor guitarist Zaw Myo Htut, and son, the bluesman, Ito, are prominent musicians in Yangon.
“I spent twelve years in Mandalay. At the time, nobody had heard anything like this. Slowly, as we lived on the Irrawaddy, sailors coming from abroad would bring us cassette tapes. Still, none of my friends at school listened to rock music - just me, my brother, and my father. Down south, in Yangon, the rock movement had already started with Min Min Latt (the father of rapper Anegga, founder of Myanmar’s infamous original Hip Hop crew, Acid.) He set it all up and, later, in 1990, he produced my first music video, the first ever music video in Myanmar. This came before MTV, and was recorded on a VHS that we passed around.”
A grounding in folksy, courtly, and martial music could not have prepared anyone for the rock and roll attitude that Zaw Win Htut unleashed upon an unsuspecting Myanmar in the 80’s. How did his illustrious musical forebears feel when he came out rocking? “Well, my father was a medical doctor who loved all kinds of music. In 1973 he spent a year in the UK and returned with arms full of vinyl - Deep Purple,
Magazine | NR 42, 2020
ZWH’s early learnings in music were received from his mother, the classicist training him in the burmese harp and xylophone (on which, he counters my scepticism by imparting this enlightening wisdom: “You think Myanmar classical music is all noise and improv? Try memorising those incredibly long
patterns!”) However, after moving to Yangon in his early teens, he fast began imitating the first wave of Myanmar rock bands, most of whom were playing covers of songs heard over the BBC World Service. In the early 80’s ZWH and his brother formed their first musical vehicle, Oasis, in the process laying claim to being perhaps the first of at least two sibling-led bands to coin the name. “We had a female lead singer, Phyu Thi, who is now very famous independently. She was stage-shy, so eventually we decided to change it up.” Oasis became Emperor. In 1983, ZWH and his brother laid down their first album, Mercury Nya (Mercury Night) - produced by their medical doctor father. “I sang six tunes, and my brother sang six. There were only one or two studios and LPs were made on a tape reel recorder then offered to the shops. The shop would decide which songs to buy - sometimes only one track - then they’d copy it to sell on cassette.” Imitating Queen’s genius guitarist, Brian May, the brothers built their own guitars and effects.
