Yangon Renaissance: Poets, Punks and Painters

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We go inside Yangon's booming counter-cultural art scene to reveal the city as seen through the eyes of the young artists on the front line of change. Until censorship was lifted in 2012, dissident artists, musicians and poets lived with the threat of jail for speaking out against the military regime that had gripped Myanmar, or Burma, since 1962 and turned it into a police state. Now, from modern art to punk rock to poetry, a new vibrant youth culture is flourishing - inconceivable only five years ago, when there was no internet, no mobile phones, no freedom of expression. We meet the emerging artists and performers breaking through and forging a new Myanmar.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Yangon Ranessels, poets, punks and painters on the BBC World Service.
0:07.0	Life in Yangon has changed since censorship was lifted by the government in 2012.
0:16.0	Now we are at liberty to write what we want, make the music we want, and paint exactly what we want.
0:22.0	In theory, but sometimes the rules are not. and paint exactly what we want in theory.
0:22.8	But sometimes the rules are not always clear
0:26.6	exactly how open we can be.
0:29.7	We stand at the front line of change in our country.
0:32.4	Seeing how far we can push it.
0:34.0	Foreigners don't always know a lot about life here in Myanmar.
0:38.0	It is a vague vision of golden temples and silver mist.
0:42.0	Or some people get across when you call it Burma or Rangoon,
0:46.0	because it reminds them of the old British colonial days,
0:49.0	but I don't care.
0:50.0	We are here, living and fighting in its most changing city.
0:55.0	That has withstood the onslaught of the centuries.
0:57.8	We want to show you our city, Yang Gong.
1:00.5	Yang Gong. Yangon. Yangon. It was a dead.
1:11.0	It was a dead zone five years ago.
1:14.0	There was nobody on the street.
1:16.0	They weren't allowed to be on the street.
1:18.0	I used to feel like I was alone on the sidewalks.
1:21.0	And now it's everyone's out. That's a beautiful thing. My name is
	...

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