IMNA Update News
(1) Village Headman Demands Money from Villagers
(2) Traditional Mon Musicians Found A Musical Instrument
Maintaining Committee
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Village Headman Demands Money from Villagers
============================================
Chan Mon& Chan Aie
The Chairman of USDA Kroke-pi (Kroke-poi in Mon)
village,
per villager who return back from
workers, according to the people
who have to pay.
“The Chairman, Nai Car Thorng is
collecting 10, 000
Kyat per person. He claims that the
police will
locked-up them if they refuse to
pay the demanded
money. That’s why every villager
who return back from
ten people arrived the village
within one day,” a
villager told IMNA.
Many villagers returned back and visited to their
parents to
travel in summer season, said a
villager who had to
pay 10, 000 Kyat on 19th
February. This village was
recognized as ‘Union of Solidarity
and Development
Association (USDA) Village’ by SPDC in January 2005.
About 100 migrant workers from
some days approximately 200-300
workers returned to
“The people returned back from
the taxes to the Burmese
checkpoint,” said Nai Kong
Sakar, a broker in
Burmese Immigration Department demanded 700 Baht per
head soon after the migrant workers
across the border
from Thai soil into
had to pay every checkpoint set up
by the Police and
the local battalion, and but the
amount of money are
not set and have to pay accordingly
to their demands.
The people who returned from
ferry fee from
their villages in
take responsibility to pay tax for
every checkpoint.
However, the passengers have to pay taxes for the
assortment of goods that they
carried along with them.
Because of economic deterioration in
thousands of young people from
lower
into
their remaining families in
those migrant workers also have to
levy taxes to
village headmen, military and
police and other SPDC
authorities during their migration
back and forth
between
****
Traditional Mon Musicians Found A Musical Instrument Maintaining
Committee
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Chan Mon & Loa Htaw
Traditional Mon musicians from Mon state and
founded a committee with a purpose
of organizing
traditional musical consultants to
work together
maintaining their musical
instruments, playing
technique and dance style at the
first Smar-Kwaie
Seminar in
The committee was founded with 34 traditional
musicians and New Mon State Party
senior leaders after
they contributed idea to work
together and discovering
traditional music, playing
technique and dance style
on February 24 in Wae Zin village, Ye township.
The two-days seminar was leaded by
Party’s General Secretary Nai Hong Sar and they
discussed about traditional musical
style and how to
develop traditional musical concert
to be
professional.
“Smar-Kwaie needed to be on stage,
to run as business,
to develop it, to discover dance
style, to maintain it
and teach to young
generations. These are very
important in the current situation
because Smar-Kwaie
nearly become disappear in our
communities,” said Nai
Hong Sar.
Nai Ba Zan,
a chairman of Joint Mon Literature and
Culture Committee (
like this for organizing traditional
musical
consultants should be founded for a
long time and we
have to encourage the group to be
founded because
modernized (westernized) musician
groups are already
founded.”
“We also wanted Smar-Kwaie as a
part in our Mon
Heritage Culture VCD project that produce for
maintaining and performance of our
culture,” he added.
According to the musicians presented, some Smar-Kwaie
groups do not have Mon musical
instruments and cannot
perform it in the show. Some groups
such as Duya
(Durae in Mon name) village Smar-Kwaie
is training to
young boys and girls for
maintaining Smar_kwaie.
But a Wijatay
group from
its activities and performance for
three years ago
because it has had no enough
instrument players,
singers, dancers and available
instruments.
To prevent this main tradition from disappearing and
to overcome the appeared problems,
the musicians
decided to help each
other. The musicians satisfied
with the decision of forming the
coordinating
committee.
Mi Ong Sorn,
a famous Smar-Kwaie singer and dancer
from Durae village of
Kalarmasein in Mon community said,
“I am very happy
that we the artists from different
areas can join and
work together.”
An old famous dance performaner
from Durae village,
Nai Kyaw Sein, 73, suddenly
standup and loudly told to
the musicians with emotion, “If you
wanted to learn
Smar-Kwaie, come to me, I will
share you with the
techniques that I have all.”
Nai Kyaw Sein and all of musicians
discovered some
musical style, Zae,
literally mainstream style of
playing music, singing and
dancing. Zae is the main
style of Mon traditional musical
playing and musicians
also explained that there are two
kinds of Zae, which
is Zae Dort (minor style), and Zae Janort (major
style). In Zae Janort, musicians in the
seminar have
discovered 12 styles of traditional
musical playing.
To continued discovering styles and helping the
Smar-Kwaie groups, musicians
selected Nai Tun Ya from
New
Vice-Chairman in the Committee, musicians representing
from Durae village (Ye Township), Yaung-Daung village
(
from Wijatay
village (
the Committee.
For further information, please contact to Independent
Mon News Agency
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