4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful Guardian Of The Islands, April 12, 2000
This review is from: Spellbinding Piano of Burma (Audio CD)
This is a cd that is impossible to describe...well, maybe I could describe it in a superficial way, but I could never do the music justice. This is piano music that you never imagined existed. This is a style of piano playing that is totally outside Western music (and Western ears).
This isn't just piano though, it also includes Burmese percussiona and vocals on some tracks. Make sure you know that this is traditional Burmese music. Although it will not sound at all "traditional" to you. Beautiful and new but not traditional. With so much "world music" being New Agey synthesizer-heavy techno-pop, cd's like this are even more cherished. Aside from the piano being a Western instrument, there is no Western or "popular music" influence on this music at all. This is pure, unadulterated cultural expression through music and it is sure to take you to places your imagination hasn't yet.
If you'd like to musically taste Burma but don't want it to be all piano, I suggest another cd in this same series, it's called WHITE ELEPHANTS AND GOLDEN DUCKS. This cd has tracks by Sandaya U Yee Nwe (the pianist on this cd), and it also has tracks by Burmese mandolinists, acoustic slide guitarists, Burmese Harpists, and various other instruments. Once again... you may know and love Hawaiian-style slide guitar and you may love mandolin, but the Burmese musical masters in this series of cd's have incorporated these "non-traditional" instruments so thoroughly into their musical vocabulary that they are reconfiguring how these instruments can be played. The musical importance of these cd's can't be overstated, they are truly beautiful.
(edited for space january 2007)
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
weirdly beautiful, October 6, 1999
This review is from: Spellbinding Piano of Burma (Audio CD)
The only other recording of Burmese piano music I know of was a French disc featuring the legendary Ko Ko. This one's better -- better playing and a much better recording. The way U Yee Nwe takes those ripping, percussive melodies from traditional Burmese saing waing and applies them to the western piano is, well, like the title says, spellbinding.
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