Burmese musician (1988–2021)
| Raymondရေမွန် | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Raymond in December 2013 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Wai Mon Oo |
| Born | 26 November 1988 Yangon, Myanmar |
| Died | 23 June 2021(2021-06-23) (aged 32) Karen State, Myanmar |
| Genres |
|
| Occupation | Singer-songwriter |
| Instrument(s) | Guitar, vocals |
| Years active | 2002–2021 |
| Formerly of | Idiots |
Raymond (Burmese: ရေမွန်, born Wai Mon Oo (Burmese: ဝေမွန်ဦး); 26 November 1988 – 23 June 2021) was an eminent Burmese rock singer, songwriter and former lead vocalist of the boy band Idiots. He was well known as a vocal critic of Myanmar's ruling military junta, and his involvement in anti-coup protests led to an arrest warrant being issued for him.
Early life and education
Born into a musical family on 26 November 1988 in Yangon, Raymond was a son of Saw Khu Hser, a songwriter, and Khin Myat Mon, a singer and vocal trainer. His parents divorced when he was one years old. His mother remarried and had a daughter named Lapyae Gabyar, who is also a singer. He went to Basic Education High School No. 1 Dagon.
Career
Raymond started his music career in 2002, singing in harmony. In 2005, he co-founded Idiots, a rock band, together with Aung Ye, Phoe Lone and Kyaw Khine, and the band released several songs and mix-tapes.
Under the name of SIR Rock House, Idiots collaborated with other rock bands to release albums and performed music concerts at various locations throughout the region.
In 2011, Idiots released their first album Lu Ah Gita. It was followed by a second album Khit Thit Kyaut which was released nationwide in July 2016. The album achieved considerable success and established him as a popular singer in the Burmese music scene. The album became one of the best-selling albums in the Myanmar Music Store and listed on the top ten in the three local radio channels. It also hit second in Top Ten Best Selling Albums of all City Marts in Yangon.
On 16 December 2017, Raymond performed a major duo concert "Reason To Be Idiots," alongside Aung La from Reason band, at Hmyawzinkyun.
Featured by Kyar Pauk, Han Nay Tar and Novem Htoo, a popular song "Headshot" was his last work. The song highlights the bullies of Myanmar military and the courageous protests of the people. On 27 August 2015, he became a brand ambassador of Tuborg Myanmar.
Throughout his music career, Raymond released two albums as a collaboration with Idiots, many singles and wrote several popular songs. His popular works among Burmese youths include "Chan Khae" (ချန်ခဲ့), "Wan Nae Tat Tae Chit Thu" (ဝမ်းနည်းတတ်တဲ့ ချစ်သူ), "Su Latt" (ဆုလာဘ်), "Thay Lo Ya Tal" (သေလို့ရတယ်), and "Tway Ya Tar Wan Thar Del" (တွေ့ရတာ ဝမ်းသာတယ်). He also created the Metal Rock and Burmese musical instruments fusion cover of Clean Bandit's "Rockabye".
Social works
As a member of the non-profit group Clean Yangon, he donated rice and cooking utensils to needy families during the COVID-19 pandemic in Myanmar. He was also involved in charity works with the charity organization We Love Yangon and donated food to poor families.
Political activities
Following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, he participated in the anti-coup movement both in person at rallies and through social media. Denouncing the military coup, he took part in protests, starting in February. He joined the "We Want Justice" three-finger salute movement. The movement was launched on social media, and many celebrities have joined the movement.
In April 2021, the military junta, the State Administration Council, issued him an arrest warrant under Section 505 (a) of the Myanmar Penal Code for speaking out against the military coup. Along with several other celebrities, he was charged with calling for participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) and damaging the state's ability to govern, with supporting the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, and with generally inciting the people to disturb the peace and stability of the nation, which prompted him to flee to the jungle.
Death
He died due to a peptic ulcer on 23 June 2021 at the age of 32 in an area controlled by ethnic armed forces in Karen State bordering Thailand. His funeral was held on 25 June 2021 at the KNU Brigade Area 6 in Velhikalaw Village Cemetery.
In memory of Raymond, the "Raymond Tree" campaign launched on 27 June 2021.
Prominent songwriter Sangpi wrote a tribute to Raymond's loss:
"I'm not very friendly with him. But according to the new history of Burmese music, he was a true artist who can be described as an important pillar of the musical era."
References
- "A decade of rock". The Myanmar Times. 3 June 2013.
- Win, Leanne (15 May 2018). "ရေမွန် ပြောပြတဲ့ Idiots အဖွဲ့ရဲ့Busking ဖျော်ဖြေမှုအကြောင်း". Popular News Journal (in Burmese).
- "နယ်သာလန်မှာ ဂီတကျောင်းသွားတက်မယ့် အဆိုတော်ရေမွန်". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 31 October 2019.
- ^ "Myanmar coup latest: Security forces brace for attacks in Yangon". Nikkei Asia.
- Bangkok, Philip Sherwell (27 June 2021). "Punks and poets join the resistance to Myanmar junta". The Times.
- "ရေမွန် အပါအဝင် တော်လှန်ရေး ရဲဘော်တွေကို ဂုဏ်ပြုဖို့ ဆောင်းဦးလှိုင် အကြံပြု". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 25 June 2021.
- "မြို့ကြီး ၈ မြို့ကို Music Tour သွားရောက် ဖျော်ဖြေမယ့် Idiots အဖွဲ့". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 30 June 2019.
- "Show ပွဲတွေ မရှိတဲ့အချိန် အကုန်လုံးထိခိုက်ကြရတယ်လို့ ရေမွန်ပြော". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 7 June 2020.
- "အဆိုတော်ရေမွန် တစ်ကိုယ်တော်မြူးဇစ်ဗီဒီယိုထွက်မည်". The Myanmar Times (in Burmese). 20 April 2018.
- "ဆယ်နှစ်ပြည့်အထိမ်းအမှတ် Nine Planets အဖွဲ့သားတွေရဲ့ ဖျော်ဖြေပွဲ အေးချမ်းစွာကျင်းပ". The Myanmar Times (in Burmese). 6 June 2013.
- "Raymond's "Khit Thit Kyaut" Music Album Pre-Listening Live Show". Myanmar Celebrity News (in Indonesian). 24 April 2016. Archived from the original on 29 June 2021.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - "Idiots ဟာပရိသတ်ကို ဘယ်တော့မှ စိတ်မပျက်စေရဘူးလို့ ကတိပေးလိုက်တဲ့ ရေမွန်ရဲ့ ခေတ်သစ်ကျောက်အောင်မြင်မှုအကြောင်း တစေ့တစောင်း". Trend.com.mm (in Burmese). 15 September 2016.
- "အောင်လ နဲ့ ရေမွန် ရဲ့ "Reason To Be Idiots" ဖျော်ဖြေပွဲ". Myanmar Celebrity News (in Burmese). 17 December 2017.
- ^ Khin, May Phyu (27 June 2021). "In Memory of a Rock Star, Raymond". Myanmore Magazine.
- "ကျားပေါက်၊ ရေမွန်၊ နိုဗန်ထူးနဲ့ ဟန်နေတာတို့ ဖန်တီးထားတဲ့ "Headshot" သီချင်း". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 10 March 2021.
- "Press Launch of TUBORG Myanmar Brand Ambassador, Raymond". Myanmar Celebrity News. 2 September 2015. Archived from the original on 29 June 2021.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - "Tuborg နှင့် ပူးတွဲဖန်တီးမှုအကြောင်း ရှင်းပြလာတဲ့ ရေမွန်နဲ့ ဆိုဖီယာ". Mizzima (in Burmese). 16 October 2018.
- "စိတ်ဖြောင့်ဖြောင့်နဲ့ ချန်ခဲ့တဲ့ အဆိုတော် ရေမွန်". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 23 June 2021.
- "Clean Yangon အဖွဲ့မှာ လုပ်အားပေးခဲ့တဲ့ အဆိုတော်ရေမွန် – myanmaplatform news". Myanmaplatform (in Burmese). 1 June 2020.
- "We love Yangonအဖွဲ့နဲ့အတူ နွမ်းပါးပြည်သူတွေကိုစားနပ်ရိက္ခာများလှူဒါန်းခဲ့တဲ့ ရေမွန်". Myanmarload (in Burmese). 7 April 2020.
- "ဂီတအနုပညာရှင်များစုပေါင်းကာ လူထုလှုပ်ရှားမှုတွင် ပါဝင်ဆန္ဒထုတ်ဖော်မှုများ ရက်အလိုက် ထပ်မံပြုလုပ်". Eleven Media Group (in Burmese). 15 February 2021.
- "အာဏာရှင်ဆန့်ကျင်ရေးလှုပ်ရှားသူ အဆိုတော် ရေမွန် ရုတ်တရက် ကွယ်လွန်". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese). 23 June 2021.
- "အဆိုတော် ရေမွန် ကွယ်လွန်မှုအတွက် အနုပညာရှင်များရဲ့ ဝမ်းနည်းစကား". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 23 June 2021.
- "တရားမျှတမှု We Want Justice ကန်ပိန်းတွင် အနုပညာရှင်များပါဝင် ဆန္ဒထုတ်ဖော် (ဓာတ်ပုံ)". DVB (in Burmese). 4 February 2021.
- "ရုပ်ရှင်၊ ဂီတ၊ စာပေ၊ သဘင်အနုပညာရှင်များက We Want Justice လက်သုံးချောင်းထောင်ပြီး လှုပ်ရှားမှုတွင်ပါဝင်". Eleven Media Group (in Burmese). 6 February 2021.
- "Idiots အဖွဲ့ဝင် အဆိုတော်ရေမွန် ရုတ်တရက် ကွယ်လွန်". Eleven Media Group (in Burmese). 23 June 2021.
- "အဆိုတော် ရေမွန်၏ ဈာပန ကျင်းပ". DVB (in Burmese). 25 June 2021.
- ""Raymond Tree" ကမ်ပိန်းမှာ ပါဝင်ဖို့ နိုဗန်ထူး ဖိတ်ခေါ်". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 27 June 2021.
- "ဂီတကြယ်ပွင့် ရေမွန်အတွက် တေးရေး စံပီး ဂုဏ်ပြု ရေးတဲ့စာ". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 23 June 2021.