The films on this page are also incorporated into a two-week online course unit on Burmese spirit mediumship, a collaboration between Lauren Meeker (SUNY New Paltz) and  Ne Myo Aung (Director, Gitameit Music Institute, Myanmar), with support from the Asian Cultural Council.

Growing Rhythm (2019)

This film by Alyson Hummer and Lauren Meeker documents the formation of the first Burmese Hsaing Percussion ensemble in the United States under the direction of Kyaw Kyaw Naing. Naing is the former director of the Burmese National Orchestra. The Naing Ensemble was founded at SUNY New Paltz in 2019 and is composed of faculty, students, and community members.

For more information see my blog post for AsiaNow:

“Growing Rhythm,” #AsiaNow, Published by the Association for Asian Studies; 12/10/2019.

Ko Gyi Kyaw (2021) 

This film by Lauren Meeker and Alyson Hummer, in collaboration with Kyaw Kyaw Naing, documents the Naing ensemble, the first Burmese Hsaing Percussion ensemble in the United States under the direction of Kyaw Kyaw Naing, acclaimed Burmese pat waing drummer and former director of the Burmese National Orchestra. The film follows as the ensemble learns and records a piece called Ko Gyi Kyaw, whose title is also the name of one of the 37 Nat spirits of the Burmese Nat religion. The piece is played at the beginning of theatrical performances to ask for success and is derived from the music that accompanies Burmese spirit mediumship ceremonies. The piece was originally written a long time ago by a dancer at the Burmese Ministry of Culture, but the rhythm sections were written by Kyaw Kyaw Naing. In the film, Thin Thin Hla, professional dancer and Naing’s wife, dances a theatricalized version of a spirit mediumship dance, the end of which symbolically represents a trance state.

The American ensemble members reflect upon their own relationship to the spirituality of the piece and the accompanying dance, as outsiders to the tradition, and Naing, a devout Buddhist, discusses how he approaches the music as a religious outsider. Through these reflections, the film raises important questions about the relationship between music and spirituality; music and culture; and about how cross-cultural dialog happens through music.

The ensemble was originally scheduled to perform the piece at SUNY New Paltz in Fall 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic changed everyone’s lives. The pandemic pushed the ensemble into a condensed rehearsal schedule; instead of a live performance, they made a recording of the finished piece. The film and filming process reflects these unusual circumstances.