In Jamadevi, sound artist Lynn Nandar Htoo skilfully blends pulsating rhythmic work with the depth of a well-constructed soundscape. Poetic compositions revolving around the coup d’état that brought Burmese society under the yoke of the army in 2021, the seven tracks also demonstrate the richness of the counter-culture that often emerges from places we don’t hear much about.
Indeed, we know cruelly little about Myanmar (formerly Burma), apart from the tragic news that occasionally breaks on our screens. Yet, the ancient capital of Yangon is home to a vibrant experimental music scene. And the releases that emerge from it, like the present recording, leave nothing to be desired.
From the outset, the frames are made up of field recordings and samples which, dematerialized, evoke the elsewhere without telling us where we are or what we’re hearing. Is ‘Serene’ constructed from the sounds of Indonesian gamelan, or rather Burmese hsaing waing, another Southeast Asian gong orchestra? The abstraction of the sounds, once processed and worked on in the studio, mitigates the certainty that can be felt here and there while listening. One thing’s for sure: you can hear the sound sources change from track to track, adding to the variety of ambiences in which Jamadevi immerses its audience. The tracks remain fairly short, which curbs further formal development and consigns each track to a single musical tableau. Compact and digestible, the album heralds an interesting future for Htoo.
For Western ears, Lynn Nandar Htoo’s work is resolutely contemporary, satisfying a certain thirst for the unknown among the most cosmopolitan music lovers. But for the Burmese artistic community and, more broadly, for the country’s society, Jamadevi is part of a wider expression of trauma and political discontent.
