The Day the Music Died
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“We have to get rid of this military dictatorship. Otherwise the whole country and the coming generations will be in a really troubled situation.”
Mun Awng, born in 1960 in Myitkyina, Kachin State, Myanmar, is a renowned Kachin singer, songwriter, and pro-democracy activist. He grew up in a modest family — his father was a teacher and headmaster, and his mother was a nurse. His childhood in northern Myanmar was shaped by the ongoing conflict between the Burma Army and the Kachin Independence Army, and his family often prepared trenches to shelter from fighting. Growing up amid such instability, Mun Awng found solace in music, singing in church and learning by ear from what he could catch on the local radio. “We only had shortwave radio that I could listen to, so that was my main source of knowledge about music," he notes. Western pop and rock — particularly The Beatles — inspired him, even though such influences were condemned under General Ne Win’s regime.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, Mun Awng began performing publicly, playing at community events and church fundraisers. His band, The Rhythm, gained a following for performing original songs rather than copying Western tunes with Burmese lyrics, which was the norm at the time. In 1984, with the support of his family, he released his debut album 8/82 Inya, which became widely popular among university students. The album featured collaborations with several notable musicians, including Lieutenant General Rukhkyawng Hkawng Lum of the Kachin Independence Army, who played bass guitar. Despite strict censorship and government suspicion of musicians, 8/82 Inya marked a new chapter in modern Burmese music.
Mun Awng’s growing success coincided with a period of political repression. Censors demanded that artists include songs about religion or national pride in every album. Lyrics were reviewed line by line for political content, and anything critical of the government was deleted. Over time, Mun Awng became disillusioned with the system. He famously failed his final university exams deliberately so he could devote himself to music. By the mid-1980s, he realized that true artistic freedom was impossible under the dictatorship, which viewed musicians as dangerous or subversive.
In 1988, when mass protests broke out across the country, Mun Awng joined the demonstrations. He witnessed friends killed during the crackdown and eventually fled Rangoon to escape persecution. Many of his bandmates joined the armed resistance — one later became Chief of Staff of the Kachin Independence Army, another its Vice Chairman. Mun Awng himself joined the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF) on the Thai-Myanmar border, where life was harsh and resources were scarce. Despite the hardships, he continued to write and record music that became central to the democracy movement. Mun Awng’s time among the student fighters also shaped his political convictions. “We believe that armed struggle is the only way that we can eliminate or remove the military dictatorship," he says. "You cannot just have dialog… they answer with guns. That's what I have believed in since '88." Reflecting on how this shift in thinking began to impact his music, Mun Awng explains, “I started singing political songs only after I left Burma.”
Among his most iconic works are Battle for Peace and Tempest of Blood (Thway Mone Din), recorded in Bangkok in 1991 with lyrics by student leader Min Ko Naing and music composed by Ye Ni. Possession of these songs in Myanmar was a criminal offense — people buried cassettes underground to avoid arrest. “It was quite difficult to smuggle it into Burma," Mun Awng recalls. "Some people hid it under the bottom of the luggage. But slowly, the songs become quite known.” Indeed, they spread rapidly and became anthems of resistance known by one and all. Another landmark composition, Moment of Truth (A-Gyi-Bi), written by composer Tun Than and arranged by Mun Awng, became a marching song for generations of activists from 1988 through the 2021 Spring Revolution. It invoked the “peacock spirit,” the historic emblem of Burmese student resistance symbolizing courage and unity.
Mun Awng went into long-term exile and was granted asylum in Norway in 1996. From there, he continued to use music as a form of activism. In 2004, he contributed Tempest of Blood to the international album For the Lady, produced to raise funds for the U.S. Campaign for Burma. The album also featured artists such as U2, Pearl Jam, and Avril Lavigne, and introduced his music to a global audience. Throughout his exile, Mun Awng performed across Europe, North America, and Asia, mobilizing the Burmese diaspora to support humanitarian and pro-democracy causes.
In 2016, after 27 years abroad, Mun Awng was finally allowed to return to Myanmar to perform. He appeared at a peace concert in Yangon, performing Tempest of Blood publicly for the first time. For a brief moment, it seemed as if the nation had entered a new era of openness. However, Mun Awng remained skeptical. When President Thein Sein visited Oslo, he protested, warning that Myanmar’s so-called democratic transition was cosmetic and still dominated by the military. He argued that foreign governments were misled into supporting a regime that had not relinquished real control, and he criticized Norway’s peacebuilding funds as being wasted on what he called a “military-managed peace process.”
After the 2021 coup, Mun Awng again took up his role as an artistic voice of resistance. He regularly performs at diaspora events and fundraisers for displaced people, using his platform to support those fighting for democracy inside Myanmar. His concerts attract both veterans of the 1988 movement and young people born long after it, many of whom know his songs but not his face. To this new generation, his music represents both memory and inspiration. Mun Awng often witnesses this connection firsthand at his concerts abroad. “When I was in Australia and London, when I sang on the stage, it's two different generation, the '88 generation and then just young generation," he says. "The '88 generation, they sang along during the concert. Someone said, 'I feel 40 years younger!' Music can do that."
Mun Awng continues to emphasize that his motivation has not changed since his youth: to contribute to his country’s struggle for freedom through his art. He believes that revolutionary music remains essential in a society where public dissent is silenced; his songs, mixing Western rock with Asian melody and Burmese lyricism, continue to embody resilience under repression.
He often frames his purpose not as rhetoric but as a call to collective endurance. As he tells listeners and comrades, “We have to unite… we have to give our life for the country, to be ready to sacrifice and give our life until we achieve the ultimate victory.”