Tourist Myanmar Entertainment

Nightlife and Yangon aren't usually used in the same sentence as tourist Myanmar entertainment. The main from of local Myanmar entertainment recreation is hanging out in Myanmar teashops or cold drink shops. While Bangkok makes an evening in Yangon seem quaint and provincial, Myanmar entertainment can be found in far-flung places around Myanmar, unfortunately much of it in large Myanmar hotels catering to foreigners. On Myanmar festival days, Myanmar local bands occasionally organize live out door concerts in Myanmar. No full moon parties in Myanmar! In the capital city of Myanmar "Yangon", sizable rock-music Myanmar entertainment shows are set up along Inya Rd and University Ave Rd and feature Myanmar local underground rockers during the water festival in April as a tourist Myanmar entertainment.

For most of nonurban Myanmar, local Myanmar entertainment involves sitting around with friends at home or in a local Myanmar teashop, telling jokes around recounting the events of the day. Myanmar religious and seasonal festivals are an important venue for Burmese folk drama and pop music Myanmar entertainment performances. Most Myanmar towns or cities have a couple of clubs or restaurants where live music Myanmar entertainment can be heard. Despite Myanmar cultural isolation, Myanmar has not been spared the karaoke boom. Even in the tiniest Myanmar towns there is a at least one rustic karaoke bar, usually open to the street, where young men sit, drink and bawl their favorite ballads at ear-splitting volume in Myanmar. Yangon and Mandalay have a handful of discos or dance clubs, often with live Myanmar entertainment music. Most are associated with Myanmar hotels but a few operate independently. Burmese language covers of western pop songs are usually mixed in with Burmese songs for Myanmar entertainment. Sometimes discos and karaoke bars are closed down because of police crackdown on prostitution. Prostitution has a long history in Myanmar but it's only recently that it has become associated with places that foreign visitors might enter. More highbrow Myanmar entertainment, such as classical musical and dance performances, can be seen at top end Myanmar restaurants and hotels.

Actually, Myanmar's truly indigenous dances forms are those that pay homage to the Myanmar nat(spirits). In special Myanmar nat pwe, one or more Myanmar nat is invited to possess the body and mind of a medium; sometimes members of the audience are possessed instead, an event greatly feared by most Burmese. Myanmar Nat dancing styles are very fluid and adaptable, and are handed down from older Myanmar pwe dancers to their offspring or apprentices. In contrast, few of Myanmar's classical dance-drama styles are entirely indigenous for tourist Myanmar entertainment. Most arrived from Thailand during periods of Burmese conquest of Thai kingdoms. Today the dances most obviously taken from Thailand are know as yodaya Zat(Ayuthaya theatre), as taught to the Myanmar Burmese by Thai theatrical artists taken captive from Ayuthaya by king Hsinbyushin in the late 18th century in Myanmar. So thorough is the public per caption that Thailand was the primary source for all court arts that the term yodaya can be applied loosely to describe any "elite" art from even today. Around this same period Zinme pannatha(chaing Mai Plays)were translated into Myanmar Burmese, providing the text for another entire dance-drama genre.

The most Myanmar Burmese of dances feature solo performances by female dancers who wear strikingly colorful dresses with long white trains, which they kick into the air with their heels quite a feat, given the restrictive length of the train. One wonders how a dancer could walk while wearing such a costume, much less dance in it. A zat pwe in volves are recreation of an ancient legend or Buddhist Jataka (life story of the Buddha) while the Yamazat picks a tale from Indian epic Ramayana. The arm and head movements often seek to mimic those of Myanmar Burmese marionette theatre. Myanmar Burmese dance scholars have catalogued around 2000 dance movements, including 13 head movements, 28 eye movements, nine neck movements, 24 ways of moving only one hand plus 23 using both hands, 38 leg movements, eight body postures and 10 walking movements. Myanmar Classical dance drama is occasionally performed at the National Theatre in Yangon and we recommend you to watch as a tourist Myanmar entertainment, where around a dozen amateur theatre groups regularly practice and perform yamazat. Myanmar Traditional yamazat can also be seen in Mandalay, Amarapura and Sagaing. In Mandalay, Yamazat Myanmar performers even has Myanmar own shrine, where masks of the principal Ramayana characters receive offering of fruit and flowers. Shorter, excerpted Myanmar entertainment performances may be seen at large banquet style Myanmar restaurants in Yangon and Mandalay. Since Burmese Myanmar classical dancing emphasizes pose rather than movement, and solo rather than ensemble performances, it can soon become a little boring for TV-hyped western tastes in Myanmar. By contrast the less common, but more likely yein pwe features singing and dancing performed by a chorus or ensemble. Most popular of all is a nyeint pwe, a Myanmar traditional variety pwe somewhat akin to early American vaudeville or Thai li-keh. One of the easiest ways to tell a-nyeit pwe from Myanmar zat pwe or yamazat is that in both of the latter the Myanmar entertainment musical instruments sit on the floor(or on the ground in an outdoor performance), while in a nyeint pwe the instruments are placed on a stage with the dances and Myanmar actors.

Burmese Myanmar music, which features strongly in any Myanmar pwe, can be rather hard for unaccustomed western ears to enjoy. As with other Asian music, Myanmar entertainment music is very soft on the harmony so important in western music and tends to sound "harsh, tinkly and repetitive", as one early observer described it. The perceived harshness is probably due to the fact that Myanmar Burmese scales are not tempered as western scales have been since Bach. As in Western music, the Burmese diatonic scale has seven tones, but they are arranged equidistantly within the octave, and there is no tempering or retuning of the 4th and 7th intervals as with western scales.

Traditional Burmese Myanmar music is primarily two dimensional in the sence that rhythm and melody provide much of the musical structure, while repetition is a key element in developing this structure. Subtle shifts in rhythm and tonality provide the modulation usually supplied by the harmonic dimension in western music. These techniques have been "rediscovered" in western musical trends, as in the minimalism of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Brain Enothere is also a significant amount of improvisations in live Myanmar entertainment performance, an element traditional Burmese Myanmar music shares with jazz. Our Myanmar travel agency www.guideformyanmar.com also arranges for the best Myanmar traditional dance performance as a tourist Myanmar entertainment in Myanmar.