The Road to Mandalay: Orientalism, "Burma Girls" and Western Music

Abstract

Over the past 70 years, considerable attention has been paid to the ways in which Burma was portrayed during the colonial era (1826-1948). However, to date no-one has looked in a systematic way at how Western music played a role in influencing and reflecting popular perceptions. This is curious, as during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries music was a powerful cultural vector, strongly affecting public attitudes to foreign places and events. Images of the "Orient," and of Oriental women in particular, were conveyed thr ough songs a nd popular ent ertainments. T o a sur pr ising ext ent, this included portrayals of Burma, and "Burma girls." From the publication of Rudyard Kipling's enor mously popular ballad "Mandalay" in 1890, until Burma regained its independence from Britain in 1948, more than 180 songs and tunes were published with Burmese themes, helping to create a codified image of Burma's women as demure, attractive and available. In doing so, however, these compositions probably revealed as much about contemporary Western society as they did about the "Far East."The Research ProblemFor decades, scholars and commentators have tried to answer the questions: how was colonial Burma perceived in and by the Western world, how did people in countries like the United Kingdom (UK) and United States (US) form their views, and how were they manifested?Historians led the way, not only by infor ming Western audiences about developments in Burma but also by describing how European contacts over the centuries gave rise to a wide range of myths and misconceptions.1 Other social scient ists ma de useful contributions. In 1985, for example, Josef Silverstein discussed the portrayal of Burma in a number of novels by European and American authors.2 Clive Christie and Stephen Keck later surveyed the travel literature produced during the colonial period, and weighed its impact on Western perceptions of Burma.3 Deborah Boyer searched through Victorian-era periodicals for references to Burma and its role in the British Empire.4 In 2009, this author examined the way in which Burma had been represented in Hollywood movies and how this might have influenced views of the countr y. 5 Others ha ve comment ed on the paintings of Bur ma a nd Burmese people produced by British artists during the colonial period. 6 Engravings, photographs and picture postcards also influenced the way in which Burma was seen in the UK, US and elsewhere.7To date, however, no-one has looked in a systematic way at how Western views of colonial Burma were influenced by popular music. Indeed, music has been absent from almost all overviews of the country.8 This is surprising, as during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries songs and tunes were powerful cultural vectors, highly influential in shaping not only attitudes to domestic developments but also perceptions of foreign places and events.9 As well as live performances, both in public and in private, broadsides and commercial sheet music were important means of conveying ima ges and ideas about the countries and peoples that were being conquered as part of Britain's second great burst of imperial expansion. The transmission process rapidly increased in scope and pace after the turn of the twentieth century, encouraged by the development of gramophone records, commercial radio stations and "talking" pictures. Music became an even more important vehicle for reflecting - and influencing - popular perceptions.This phenomenon has been recognized by cultural historians and musicologists in other fields, but so far its implications for Burma seem to have escaped their attention.10One r eason why Bur ma s eems to have been over looked as a discr ete subject for analysis in this regard is that it was never seen as a noteworthy example of wider historical and socio-cultural trends. The nineteenth century was a time of far-reaching political, economic and social change. It was also a time of vigorous Western expansion into other parts of the world, including the so-called "Far East. …