A military coup recently removed Myanmar’s civilian government. The protests and general strike have led to bloodshed, with one account of over 200 people killed since February.
Milwaukee artist Seah has a direct connection to Myanmar, “I lived for five years total in Southeast Asia, traveling and performing and doing workshops as a performance artist—most of the time with my tiny child tied to my body.” In 2012 Seah was arrested, detained and deported from the country.
The group was never told what they were being charged with. “We spent a very long day in interrogation that resulted in us being taken to a military outpost with no explanation as to what was happening. After two days, several of us were rounded up in an unmarked van with three soldiers and driven to Yangon, where we again spent multiple days in some secret location. Finally, we were driven to the airport.”
Make Noise Myanmar, a collaborative curation between Seah and Illinois artist Mykel Boyd, is a mixtape style compilation put together for the purpose of raising awareness about what is currently happening in Myanmar and raising money to support the resistance movement there.
The selections on the 62-track compilation are varied. They run the gamut from electronic to aleatoric; from found sounds to piano ballads-gone-ballistic (James Johnston’s “Dark Water”); from Jeb Loy Nichols take on Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee” to Phillipe Petit’s video game soundtrack “Kakiquinquin.”
