Episode #52: Punk Revolutionary
Kyaw Kyaw has been a revolutionary about as long as he can remember.
His own political awakening occurred long before the collective consciousness-raising now spreading through the Burmese protest movement, and it came through an unlikely influence: punk culture. “Punk is being yourself. It’s a rebellion against injustice,” he tells us. “It’s standing for human rights and standing for freedom.”
Kyaw Kyaw got his first glimpse of real-life punks when he was 18 years old, during Water Festival. Initially he had no idea what he was seeing, and asked his friend who those “strange” people were. After being told they were punks, he had many more questions about their culture and ideology, but no one knew any more, and Internet wasn’t available yet in Myanmar. Sometime later, while perusing a black-market CD stall, he came across a band whose name he recognized on t-shirts, but whose music he had never heard: the Sex Pistols. Little did Kyaw Kyaw know at the time that the one dollar he spent on that album would forever change his life!
While he loved the Sex Pistols’ music, Kyaw Kyaw was especially enamored with their style, fashion, and attitude. He recognized a kind of freedom in their expression that did not seek out society’s approval. He would soon abandon his previous favorites, like Linkin Park, Avril Lavigne, and Slipknot, for more classic punk bands like Ramones and The Clash, and eventually turned his interest to the Indonesian punk scene. While he appreciated the rebellious attitude of Western punk bands, Kyaw Kyaw realized that those artists were living in free societies where human rights were guaranteed, while the Indonesian punks were facing restrictive conditions more similar to his own in Myanmar.
A key turning point in Kyaw Kyaw’s life came during the 2007 Saffron Revolution, when he personally witnessed violence for the first time. Seeing live ammunition go off shook him to the core, and he knew he had to respond, to find some way of expressing his rage at the military’s brutality, and show his support for the democratic movement. He concluded this could best be accomplished through his talents as an artist, and so he formed his punk band, Rebel Riot, where he is the lead singer. With this platform, he learned how to channel his creative gifts towards calling out injustices in his country, and the punk mentality he had adopted gave him the confidence to do so without caring who he might offend in the process.
Kyaw Kyaw’s fearlessness eventually found a special target: those nationalist monks in the anti-Muslim Ma Ba Tha sect, who he called out on his famous track titled, “Fuck Religious Rules.” While aware that he was treading in sensitive territory as a lay person so publicly attacking monks, he makes clear that he has great respect for the Buddha and those teachers and practitioners who try to abide by his teachings, and that his criticism is for any organization that creates rules for others to follow. But he reserves his greatest anger for those using Buddhist rhetoric to justify brutality, and his outspokenness on this and other issues, including the Rohingya crisis, resulted in several death threats.
Kyaw Kyaw takes his own meditation practice seriously. As one would expect from a rebel, he has devised his own form of mindfulness, having rejected the idea of attending any of the silent retreats offered at monasteries and meditation centers throughout his country, noting that he has rarely seen positive effects in friends who have joined such courses. Practicing both formally and informally throughout the day, he tries to watch the contents of his mind, observing as they jump from one object to the next. So unique is his artistic and spiritual philosophy that a documentary was made about him, “My Buddha is Punk.”
Kyaw Kyaw’s unique combination of Dhamma and punk were further synthesized when he decided to become more involved in serving impoverished communities. Realizing how much time was being wasted on weekends by getting drunk, throwing up, and sometimes even sleeping on the streets with his friends, he decided instead to devote that time to delivering food to poor communities. So he set up a regional chapter of Food Not Bombs, and collects donations to fund his outreach.
Up until recently, Kyaw Kyaw was living as a revolutionary, just without a formal revolution. This all changed on February 1st, when the military initiated the coup in Myanmar, and suddenly the act of rebellion was taken up by most of Generation Z. Like many Burmese, Kyaw Kyaw didn’t know how to respond at first, but gradually began to venturing out to join the protests. Given his fame, he was immediately recognized, and photos and videos began circulating of him at the front of crowds, flashing the three-finger salute. This soon put him under the watchful eye of the security forces, and Kyaw Kyaw learned that he was soon to be arrested. Unlike many others who have gone into hiding to avoid arrest, he bravely remains in his home, knowing he is vulnerable and could be detained at any time. As luck would have it, on the day when a group of soldiers actually did come for him, 3,000 workers went out into the streets on strike, and those security forces were diverted to a different part of Yangon.
As the protests turned violent, like many others, Kyaw Kyaw stopped going out as frequently, but his participation in the rebellion has not slowed. He joined forces with other Burmese punk artists to make “Cacerolazo: The Night Will Not Be Silenced,” and following that, produced “One Day.” Amazingly, both these videos were recorded post-coup on the streets, with Kyaw Kyaw, his band, and the recording crew venturing outside in the early morning hours to quickly get the necessary footage before the military could spot them.
Kyaw Kyaw notes that another popular artist, the Karen reggae singer Saw Khwar Phoe, has been arrested. So despite his own worldwide celebrity and the massive support he receives from punk fans everywhere, he knows his fame and standing as an artist is no safeguard against the military should they decide he is causing them too much trouble to be allowed to remain free.