Singing softly in Myanmar

It isn8217;t a renegade hip-hop crib, or a blue-hazed den of protesting folkies, just a small rehearsal hall of plywood and particle board where children peck away at piano keys and a chorus of university students sings with enough heart to raise the low roof.

What riles the government is that the music school depends on foreign support, especially from a group of Yale University students and other American donors. Some of the generals8217; enforcers suspect a dangerous plot.

After 45 years of military rule, that isn8217;t as weird as it sounds. Xenophobic propaganda is one of the ways the generals rally support and scare off dissent.

The students at the Gitameit, or 8216;Music Friends8217;, school take their direction from the more universal language of music. They studiously avoid politics, but that isn8217;t always enough to escape the probing eyes of the government.

Founded four years ago, the school is one of the few places, outside of a temple or church, where people can go to learn how to play a Western musical instrument or read music in Myanmar.

When the school opened, neighbours told the students they wouldn8217;t last long. They were still going strong last year, and a few foreign visitors began dropping by, so intelligence agents started showing up. They reminded the students that Myanmar8217;s security laws hold them responsible for anything their foreign guests do, and if the outsiders strayed into politics, the locals would go to jail. 8220;Some people are using you for propaganda purposes,8221; the agents warned. 8220;We8217;re going to watch your every move.8221;

There wasn8217;t all that much to see. A 9-year-old girl, with pudgy cheeks and an infectious smile, comes regularly for piano lessons. Young men and women, Buddhists, Christians and Muslims among them, spend hours each day focused on sheet music, coaxing melodies from guitars, violins and pianos.

Choir director U Moe Naing, 40, explained that the group wanted to be good enough to perform for the public. Naing, a pianist who once studied to be a geologist, didn8217;t want trouble. So he followed orders and reported weekly to the neighbourhood intelligence agency office on any visitors and the school8217;s activities. Yet the spies kept the heat on. They showed his picture to people, interrogated his friends.

Since the student-led protests of 1988, the government has treated universities as potential threats to its rule. So the generals have reduced college campuses to facades. Many of the Gitameit8217;s students were living life in a demoralised daze before they began making music for several hours each day.

It8217;s frustrating for young people desperate to get ahead in a stagnating economy. And that8217;s the way the government likes things8212;it doesn8217;t need a lot of intelligent people asking too many questions.