Daw Ngwe Pan Phyu has been possessed by Brahms' "Ein Deutsches Requiem" and Elgar's Enigma (Nimrod) for some years. Whenever she sees images of wars and suffering of people all over the world, she is haunted by these masterpieces.
Western Europeans have grown up in the latter part of the twentieth century. Germans, French, English and Russians are no longer slaughtering each other. There are only very rare symbolic tribal conflicts among their national football supporters. Or has Europe again become a war zone or a semi-militarised zone of some sort? There is already constant security surveillance in all European cities and ports. However, Daw Phyu still feels safe living in London, a war-free European city. Unlike peaceful Europe, civil wars are still being fought in many other parts of the world. People are still slaughtering one another just to benefit arms manufacturers and various opportunistic unsavoury pro-war characters whose luxurious existence and careers partly or wholly depend on conflicts all over the world.
Daw Phyu has three recordings of "Ein Deutsches Requiem" on CD, two recordings on DVDs and an LP. All were conducted by Herbert von Karajan. She is also proud to have both an LP and a CD of a historical recording of Karajan and his Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in 1947. At this first performance of this masterpiece by Karajan in 1947, the whole Western Europe mourned the dead and injured in the WWW II. Brahms actually composed EDR for the death of his mother. The other CD recordings are 1964 recording with Berliner Philharmoniker with Gundula Janowitz and 1985 recording of Opus 45 with Wiener Philharmoniker. Daw Phyu tends to listen to 1964 recording more. Of her two DVDs, she slightly prefers 1978 recording with Berliner Phiharmoniker with Janowitz and Van Dam to Opus 45 with Wiener Philharmoniker. All recordings have the same effect on Daw Ngwe Pan Phyu in her empathetic moods towards the fallen of all sides and the suffering civilians.
Before Daw Phyu discovered Brahms, Bach's Matthew Passion and Verdi's Nabucco Act III Va Pensiero (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) were her sole therapy whenever she suffered extreme grief and ridiculous persecution complex in the past. Recently, she saw The Metropolitan Opera's Nabbucco on a DVD and was overwhelmed by the chorus.
In 2010, she discovered "Sag mir wo die Blumen sind" by Marlene Dietrich on YouTube. Some comments for this video were seen to have been deleted. Sadly, some people are still fighting the WWII. Marlene left Nazi Germany and she sang this song for the fallen soldiers from all sides, not just for the German.
In 1980 or 1981, Daw Ngwe Pan Phyu was given a TOTP compilation album on a cassette tape by her Kachin friend MDB whose father was an ex-army captain. She and a group of other Kachin girls lived in a private hostel on the edge of the University campus in Rangoon in the seventies and eighties. They had already graduated from various universities but could not let go of their fun days. Daw Phyu, an estranged daughter of a retired Burmese army officer, was emotionally supported by these wonderful Kachin friends, a Kayah friend and a Chin friend while her own Burmese community could not understand her disobedience and failure to observe her filial duties. Daw Phyu who is actually of Burmese, Mon and a trace of Chinese origin, never shared a room with anyone else in Burma but with a Chin friend named K for six months. She did not even share her room with any of her siblings. Her Chin friend, K, was a daughter of an ex- army Lt. Colonel in the Burmese Army. Her insurgent brother died at the hand of another insurgent in the jungle in the early seventies. The family could not even grieve publicly because the father was still working for the Burmese Army at that time. Daw Phyu lived with these fun-loving friends in that hostel for nearly ten years.
One of the songs in the album given by Daw Phyu's Kachin friend MDB was Jona Lewie's "Stop the Calvary". Daw Phyu kept on listening to this song for days because it sounded Christmasy and catchy and not because of its anti-war message. She was also given a John Lennon's album containing "War is Over". Daw Suu also shared a few albums by Joan Beaz and Bod Dylan with these friends. She loved looking at the picture of Joan Beaz on the album cover while listening to her songs. Daw Phyu shared her love for jazz only with a Kachin friend, a singer named Mg. This peace-loving friend is known for her generosity, kindness and piety. She shared her food and latest international bestsellers from an expensive book rental shop in the Inya Road with Daw Phyu.
Daw Phyu's father was a musical snob; he introduced her to some western classical music, jazz and Hollywood big band orchestras but banned her from listening to even Elvis. He also allowed her to listen to only Burmese classical songs, the orchestral instrumental music and a few Burmese oldies. When she came and lived with these Kachin friends, she could bring only a few of her father's records with her because she did not have a cassette or a record-player of her own at first. BBC World Service classical music concerts and jazz programmes on her powerful shortwave radio were played every week. These were offensive politically to the untrained ears of Daw Phyu's next-door neighbours, the ultra-nationalist Burmese from areas such as Pegu and the surrounding areas. They could not understand why this Burmese and her Kachin friends loved these strange sounds of "decadent" western music. The walls of the hostel were not sound-proofed. Daw Phyu did not want to listen to their noisy idle gossips on the other side of the wall and they definitely did not want to listen to this decadent music.
At the hostel, Daw Phyu was fiercely protected by her Kachin friends even from a small wardering green snake one day. One Kachin girl entered her room and saw the snake hanging on the window iron railing above Daw Phyu's head. She left quietly as she entered while Daw Phyu was reading a book. Daw Phyu did not notice the slithering snake above her head. Daw Phyu thought her friend did not want to disturb her reading. Then she came back with six other Kachins with huge bamboo sticks to kill the snake. Daw Phyu tried to prevent the slaughter of this harmless green snake which subsequently escaped to the roof. Her friends were furious at Daw Phyu for not allowing them a chance to kill this bad Satanic creature! Then the snake reappeared in the next room a few hours later. Now it was the time for the Buddhist hostel porter to rescue the wandering snake, infuriating the Kachins again. This incident became a favourite talk among the girls for months!
In the sixties and seventies, Daw Phyu _ like other Burmese _ did not have a television to watch Vietnam war footages. And when she was still living with her family before 1979, her father always censored images of war and victims of holocausts in Life, Times and Newsweeks before they reached Daw Phyu and her siblings. However, her father introduced her to BBC World Service English language news as early as 1962 but she had not seen television footages of destructions and casualties of wars in Burma as well as in other parts of the world. She did not sense her mother's worry whenever her father was sent away to the front as an electronic expert.
In 1979, she was taken to a military hospital by a Chinese friend who wanted to visit give her friend, a matron, for some medical advice. They made a wrong turn and found themselves in a wing where they were not supposed to be. There she and her friend shockingly saw so many disfigured soldiers without limbs; some were reduced to vegetative states hidden from the public view probably forever. Her friend fainted and they had to return home in a taxi rather than by bus. On her way home, Daw Phyu also thought about the number of fatalities of civilians as well as soldiers during this civil war.
At that time, the ballads of John Lennon, Jona Lewie, Bob Dylan and Joan Beaz were the only popular songs for her to listen to whenever she was in her anti-war mood. She had not heard any war-protest songs in Burmese but only songs about bravery of warriors and soldiers. When she was only four or five, her father introduced her and siblings to Western classical music and jazz on records and some music on the radio. He talked about the dragon, the gods, the hero and their battles on some records. Now Daw Phyu knows these were highlighters of Wagner's Ring. What do you expect from an army officer father? She loved listening to the secular music of Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Mozart on BBC World Service and on weekly World Music programs (both in Burmese and English sections) from the State-run Burmese Broadcasting Service. However, she did not discover the delight of choral music of Brahms and Bach until she came to the West in 1984. In Burma she and her father considered them to be in the domain of those with Christian faith.
The sight of an army of limbless torsos in the military hospital in 1979 also triggered her childhood memory in the mid fifties. A four-year old Daw Phyu was excited to see frightened crows circling overhead after the sound of salutary gunfires. These sounds came from the nearby war cemetery. It broke the silence and tranquility of the field at the foot of a hill covered with wild jasmine bushes. She lived with her family in a barrack at the foot of this hill between between 1955 and 1961. She did not know why these guns were fired almost every day at that time. Throughout her life, she also kept on hearing the husky voice of the ghost of a young Christian Karan army officer who frequently visited her house at that time. He taught her the first poem when she was about four. At that time, her father was attached to the same military hospital which she visited years later. Similar sights of mutilated bodies in this military hospital was what her peace-loving cowardly father was forced to see every day during this purgatory period. He was said to have done misappropriation for handing out six army uniforms to six army officers who just came back from the front without written authorisation. All sorts of allegations followed and he was demoted from the rank of an army captain and was paid with half a salary of a lieutenant for many years. Years later, Daw Phyu learnt that her father was said to have interfered with the decision of a kangaroo court judge to save his communist brother when many areas of Burma was overrun by a motley of insurgent groups.
The young Karen bachelor officer was among a very few loyal friends who did not forsake Daw Phyu's father at that time. Her family was housed in a rundown WWII barrack with a concrete floor and an outdoor open toilet while the other officers' families were living in style in lovely Western style semi-detached houses nearby. The concrete floor of the barrack with a leaking roof was often submerged from fresh floods from the hill nearby during endless rainy days. And there were also accidental man-made floods from the huge water tank on top of the hill. However, young Daw Phyu thought these days were full of fun. She even anticipated such deluge. She imagined swimming in a beautiful lake full of tiny silver fish! The flood from the tank always brought these tiny silver fish. The tank stored the water from a reservoir. When her brother first learned to walk barefoot on the cold and wet concrete floor, Daw Phyu helped him so that he would not fall and injure himself. This six year old girl really loved looking after her tiny baby brother in this barrack which she called home. Only when her brother did not come back from the hospital after catching a cold, she felt the dampness, the mould and the cold of the barrack. Her brother died at the age of one year and eight months. That was in early August 1959. It rained nonstop for nearly three months. He shed two drops of tears before he gave out his last breath, Daw Phyu's mother said.
Although these were the years of humiliation and hardship for Daw Phyu's parents, Daw Phyu was very extremely happy until the death of her young brother. He was the very first person she had bonded with. There was another one, that Karan army officer who taught her nursery rhymes during his visit to her father at that time. She had no playmates because she did not bond with her second sister and her cousin who acted like biological twins as well as with her third sister. Her mother and her aunt, a single mother, were consumed their self pity and busy with four younger children. Every evening and weekends, her father and his friends were always busy in his electronic lab which he curved out of from a huge area from the barrack. They even forgot to send her to school until she was six and a half. However, Daw Phyu was not worried about being forgotten by everybody. Before she started taking care of her baby brother, she preferred roaming alone on the hill, hearing the music that she had heard in her mind repeatedly, picking jasmine flowers and edible berries from some evergreen bushes. She also liked to sit quietly under the large black tank watching ants and insects. She loved chasing butterflies among wildflowers on the hill. She liked to smell the sweet fragrance of the earth just after the first showers of the raining seasons. Occasional visits to a nearby army cinema where she saw Hollywood big-budget musicals always delighted her. She did not need a music player to listen to these songs again; they were played repeatedly in her mind when she was roaming alone on the hill.
Other officers in the posh neighbourhood on a higher ground did not socialise with Daw Phyu's disgraced father and her mother at all. Only this young Karen officer, three Shan officers and a Shan sergeant working in an army kitchen always visited her father. Her father always talked fondly of this gentle Karen officer who liked teaching children poems and the kitchen chef who brought a box containing cans of condensed milk and eggs for Daw Phyu and siblings every time he visited her father. Now Daw Phyu knows how much this childless Shan sergeant and his wife and this officer cared about this young Burmese family in disgrace.
In the early seventies, the Karen officer and his jeep were blown up into pieces near Paan. He was a major at that time. His own brothers on the opposing side "got" him eventually for taking side with the Burmese national army. He was survived by his wife and very young children whom Daw Phyu has never met. She would like to see them one day. She would like to meet them to hug them and to recite the first Burmese nursery rhyme she learnt from their father before they were born.
From 1962 to 1972, Daw Phyu's family lived near Ahlone Road in Rangoon. There were eight officers' families living in two rows of large wooden houses with large fruit gardens. When Daw Phyu's family first arrived at this Garden of Eden, they found a Karan Christian officer's family living in the house facing theirs. The officer was in detention for allegation of divided loyalty and espionage at that time. Daw Phyu's father talked about the absurdity of the allegations. The officer's wife and her sister seemed to be hiding in the house for months initially. However, the children came out playing with Daw Phyu and her siblings a few months later. KMA became Daw Phyu's very first neighbour who is also a friend. Daw Phyu had a lot of friends at school but she did not have any playmates at home when her father was in the same situation as KMA's father some years ago. By the time, she got her first neighbour, she was already ten. KMA was two years younger. She and KMA were filled with sorrow when both families were transferred to different locations again. Daw Phyu often bumped into KMA's older brother at the Rangoon University. KMA's family was transferred to Thaton area where she got married and had a child before finishing her high school. In 1973 or 1974, Daw Phyu was visited by KMA unexpectedly at her house in the Bogyoke Road. She rushed into Daw Phyu's arm and cried uncontrollably. Her husband who was only a teenager was shot dead while hiding behind a well in Thaton; the town was overrun by Karen insurgents. He was there to sit for the matriculation examination. She talked about how he kissed her and her baby before he went to the examination hall that day. She said that it was an execution of a school boy. After this sorrowful visit, Daw Phyu lost contact with KMA.
Daw Phyu also remembers a Shan officer named SSP who provided her family temporary accommodation twice in a Shan village in a place called 9 Miles in Rangoon. At that time, her father was transferred to several places within a very short period. Without his help, there would have been so much inconvenience before Daw Phyu's parents found suitable accommodation for their young children. That was after her father's past sins against the national Burmese army were exonerated eight years later. SSP was very tall and slim; he was a spitting image of James Coburn, a Hollywood movie star. Daw Phyu's father and SSP were very good friends. However, my father seemed to have lost contact with them in the mid sixties.
In the early 1980s, T who was one of Daw Phyu's colleagues and university classmates lost her father in a very tragic circumstance. Her father who was a Buddhist Arakanese went back to the north Arakan State where he and his ancestors owned lands. He went there alone to negotiate with the squatters on his ancestral land. The squatters disembowelled him and tied him to a tree, leaving him to bleed to death. The whole department was shocked to hear this account from her. T's personal loss affected Daw Phyu deeply even though T was not very close to her like her Arakanese high schoolmate, MSO, who introduced communist literature (novels and poems from the former Soviet Union) to her at the school. This schoolmate risked serious punishments by smuggling these into classes probably at the request of her divorced mother's Communist boyfriend who came back from Poland after many years. Daw Phyu also smuggled them into her house under the eagle-eyes of her father who banned Communist literature at home even though his brother was a Communist.
The last one, but not the least, who Daw Phyu wants to talk about is her best friend, E, a Karen Christian (COE) friend she first met at the University. E introduced Daw Phyu to public libraries in Rangoon. Daw Phyu's father had a large collection of English and Burmese books of his own choice. However, she was never taken to a public library. In fact, her father did not even want his children to visit friends. Daw Phyu was allowed to visit her schoolmates only twice at the high school. The drivers who took Daw Phyu and her siblings to schools and evening schools also watched every step of Daw Phyu and her siblings.
When Daw Phyu went to the University, her family became very poor. They no longer had the luxury of being provided with free cars and drivers by the State. So her father had no choice but to allow her to use public transports for the first time. At the same time, her family was struggling to survive barely with her father's salary. Consequently, Daw Phyu had to work in the evenings and on weekends to support herself and her studies. She was a bit resentful that she had to work while her classmates were studying. She had been a bright science student at the High School; so she disliked being behind others at the University because she did not have enough time to study. To make matter worse, she was no longer studying physics or maths, her favourites subjects. She was struggling with English literature and other new subjects such as western philosophy, history, psychology, geography and economics taught in English. Then another blow struck her unexpectedly. She was diagnosed with a full-blown tuberculosis that she contracted in a summer camp just before she came to the University. She and her third brother whom she had infected with this disease were quarantined at home, missing more lecturers during her first year and second year at the University.
There were 28 classmates in her class; most were assertive and smart children of former diplomats, government ministers and very rich people. Daw Phyu became depressed among new friends who had nothing to do with her quiet social background. It was E and C, another Karen student who accepted Daw Phyu as their friends. They belong to Church of England. There was another Anglo-Burmese friend called M who was a Roman Catholic who became Daw Phyu's friend. E helped Daw Phyu with her studies. Daw Phyu and E became inseparable throughout her university days.
E's widowed father and brother worked for the government to support E whose mother died when she was eight. They were very poor because her father salary as a legal clerk at the High Court and her brother's salary as a military clerk were barely enough for them to survive. She was fiercely independent because she had been mostly left alone to defend herself from the very young age. Her brother and father had to go out to work to support her.
E's father was a theosophist and pacifist. E and her father took Daw Phyu to Insein seminary and many other theosophists' lectures and public libraries. Daw Phyu's father became increasingly uneasy to see his daughter's close friendship with Christians. He was worried that Daw Phyu would convert to become a Catholic or a Protestant. Ironically, what he had not realised was that Daw Phyu had silently lost her religion a long time before she met E, C and M. She just kept her atheism to herself in order not to upset her mother and friends. There were rows between Daw Phyu and her father regarding her religious outlook. Her father's busybody Buddhist monk unwisely got involved in this conflict which led to Daw Phyu's leaving her family a few years later.
While Daw Phyu was living with the Kachin, E visited her one day unexpectedly. She wanted Daw Phyu to persuade her father, Pa Pa, to cancel his peace mission to the rebel-controlled area. She was worried that her father would be torn apart by his brothers on the other side. At that time, Rangoon was hit by a few bombs. Railways lines between Pegu and Thaton were also bombed. Security was tight and travellers suffered delay and those who had Karen facial features were harassed at checkpoints. Daw Phyu and E tried to talk to her father who had already packed his rucksack for his peace mission. Then suddenly, he had a stroke and took months to die at the Rangoon General Hospital. After his death, E requested Daw Phyu to live with her at her house in the outskirts of Rangoon. She was too scared to live alone. Her brother was no longer living in Rangoon. Daw Phyu let her down in her need because she did not like to commute to her work daily in unreliable buses. And she liked living near the University with her new Kachin friends. Daw Phyu still feels guilty about this. E like her father wants peace in her birthplace, Thandaung. Now she is a retired civil servant and was last heard two years ago when she was planning to work for an NGO. Daw Phyu knows she is always preaching the gospel of peace like her father Pa Pa that Daw Phyu loved and respected so much.
For the last twenty-two years, there have been more displacement, destructions and loss of lives in countryside as well as in some areas of towns and cities. Daw Phyu hates wars and those celebrating war conquests.
Military conquests are celebrated with pomps and ceremonies by winners and "the good". At the same time, their own "collateral damages of wars" should be best forgotten and hidden if they could. Atrocities committed by losers and "the bad" must be recorded carefully for further witch-hunt of the perpetrators and their families in the conquered areas. Many say; our fighters are heroes; but theirs are war criminals. Some of our methods we use in our fight against our enemies save lives and therefore they are justifiable means to achieve the end _ "peace and our ideals". However, we must condemn the other side to use these methods. It is crude and inhumane to stab an enemy with a bayonet while it is viewed OK to press a button in a plane in safety high above to roast tens of thousands below. And we still need to keep our nuclear weapons!
Daw Phyu yearns for peace in Burma and in the whole world. She wants to live on a nuclear weapon free planet. She wants to shout and shout: "Please stop killing each other. Please stop killing animals and trees. Please stop killing the planet that we share with other life forms."
She also wants to scream at promoters and punters of these dogfights or cockfights between divided people; "Stop inciting wars and hatred between groups of different racial and religious origins. Ask all sides to stop fighting and arming themselves. And also please, please get rid of all nuclear weapons on the whole planet." However, she knows that these people will not listen.
Daw Phyu also wants to share the music that she love with others who feel the same about wars and conflicts.
Some of those reading this blog already know these composers and their works. So they are requested to forgive Daw Phyu for writing about music that they know. However, there may be some readers who still have not discovered them. And please also forgive Daw Phyu for her love for Wagner which she first heard when she was still a child of four if you find Wagner too German. Bach, Brahms, Beethoven and Mozart were German too. Music belongs to the whole mankind.
Here are the links which Daw Phyu hopes to work.
To sample Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg7sU5B_ibM
To sample Bach's Matthew Passion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_LLFfFXaUA
To sample Verdi's Nabucco III Chorus of the Hebrew Slave: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjxncnQ6iLI
Elgar - Enigma (Nimrod) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUgoBb8m1eE
Marlene War Protest Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3ET1b0ymZs
Stop the Calvary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zngTrdW-vio
War is Over: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etbucgvjhwo
