Question re: Naang Naang album - eligibility

[hwex9000]

Question about the 1978 album by Myanmar artist Naang Naang (album title translated here as Le' Ywei Sin Tei Mya): while looking up information about the artist and album, I found that Rate Your Music has classified it as a bootleg/unauthorized release. As reluctant as I am to ask this: if there's no authorized release information available, does that make the album ineligible to be listed on BEA? Pink Floyd's Live at Pompeii was removed a few years back for this reason.

[Romanelli]

[hwex9000]

[albummaster]

Thanks for reporting, album now flagged as suspect

[MadhattanJack]

I'm taking it upon myself to move a more recent discussion from this other thread over here to this one...

This album is not a "bootleg," and it's only "unauthorized" in that the Burmese government wouldn't allow it to be manufactured and sold the way pop records in the West were. The word for this album is underground, in the truest possible sense of the term.

After the military takeover in 1962, the Burmese government became extremely anti-Western, ultra-nationalist, and isolationist, banning all imports and exports — not only of LPs, but everything from the West, including any form of audio/video technology. By the early 1970s, wealthier Burmese citizens and businesses were able to buy some hi-fi and recording gear manufactured in China and other non-Western countries, but it was still illegal to sell any music, literature, films, etc., not approved by the military government, which included all pop music. (Dead Can Dance didn't exist at the time, otherwise their heads might have exploded.) There were no record labels, and all facilities for pressing or tape duplication were nationalized and government-controlled.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio..._Pop_Music

So by 1978, what pop groups like Naang Naang had to do was to go into a "music production shop," where they were allowed to record pretty much whatever they wanted on whatever gear was available. Once they had a finished tape, the shop would then make a few copies of it, and the band could then give (not sell!) those copies to whoever they wished — typically, owners of tea-shops and diners that had stereo hi-fi systems. Most people couldn't afford anything more than a cheap transistor radio, so they'd hang out at tea shops just to hear music through a decent hi-fi. If you could get a tea-house owner to play your tape, someone who heard it might hire your band to play at a party or a wedding, and you could maybe make some money.

https://turnaround.home.blog/2019/05/22...elic-rock/

Le' Ywei Sin Tei Mya is one of those tapes. For most people accustomed to Western pro recording standards, it's practically unlistenable, barely reaching the level of a 4-track Portastudio demo or In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. But considering the risk and effort that must have been required to produce it, it's quite a remarkable achievement, and to de-list it simply because it wasn't manufactured and distributed by a Western-style "record label" would be a terrible injustice.

It would be nice if there were a way to recompense these musicians directly after all these years, but first you'd have to find them, and many of them are probably deceased by now. Regardless, they'd probably be happy knowing that people can still listen to this material and enjoy it.

https://www.isupportmyanmar.com/

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

လက်ရွေးစဉ် တေးများ [Le' Ywei Sin Tei Mya] by Naang Naang

[Romanelli]

[MadhattanJack]

[albummaster]

Thanks for your thoughts on this album. The site has a no bootlegs policy to prevent *any* album, from any source, from being added to the site, and therefore makes BEA easier to administer. I appreciate the back-story on this album and the way it came to be (very insightful and shows how badly repressed some parts of the world are - thank you).

That said, physical releases on BEA need to have been directly released, published, authorised by the artist or label AND available for general release (which this album couldn't be, for the reasons mentioned). I'm not sure how we could introduce this album onto the site without breaking those guidelines and creating a precedent for less contentious albums to be added.

[MadhattanJack]

[albummaster]

Happy to debate this further as might help to improve the guidelines. A general release in my mind would be the release of material authorised by the artist and/or copyright holder to the general public in a format that can be owned by the consumer. A release could be self-released, as in the case of the band themselves releasing the material, or the release could be performed via a third party, such as a record label. In either case, the method of distribution could be physical or digital.

The fact that the album was authorised by the band, and publicly distributed (in a limited way) might possibly override the unconventional release channel. However, it's still classified as an unofficial release on both RYM & Discogs, so something still feels a bit wrong about not classifying it as a bootleg here (normally, an 'unofficial' designation on both of those sites would preclude an album being listed here) .

On the first point made, if an album becomes hard to find over time, it doesn't make it a bootleg, nor does it stop it becoming an album. If Bandcamp ceases to exist in 20 years, it doesn't mean the material never existed, nor that the band themselves, or the holder of the rights, can't re-release the same material somewhere else (in whatever format they choose). Likewise, plenty of record labels have come and gone over the years, but their music is still available to purchase second hand on Discogs, eBay etc (or the material is re-released on a different label etc) and evidence of those releases (even if they can't be purchased easily due to their rarity) can be found all over the internet (and offline), and not likely to go away any time soon.

EDIT: FWIW, in the Discogs mod history- "According to Nang Nang, the company that released this tape didn't get her permission, nor gave her any compensation."
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