Saito Art and Christian Conversion in the Jesuit Missions on the Spanish South American Frontier Myanmar’s Nation-Building Cultural Policy: Traditional Music and Political Legitimacy

in Rangoon (Yangon), providing a rare opportunity to observe a musical collaboration between foreign and Burmese musicians. The Japan based AFO is an ensemble that incorporates multiple Asian and global musical styles and a wide array of contemporary and traditional instruments (keyboards, violins, saxophone, bass, cello, shakuhachi, fue, erhu, guzheng, bansuri, tabla, etc.). Throughout the ASEAN Asian Fantasy Tour of 2003 the musicians met with local artists at each stop and arranged a number of collaborative pieces for performance on the night of the concert. The nature of the Rangoon collaboration revealed much about how both contemporary and foreign musics are situated in Myanmar’s (Burma’s) present musical landscape. The first half of the concert began with the AFO presenting their diverse, well-rehearsed global fusion of contemporary and traditional sounds. An hour into the performance a traditional Burmese saing waing orchestra rose from the orchestra pit of Rangoon’s modern new concert hall (a gift of the Chinese government) to play a few songs. Most of the AFO musicians left the stage except for four musician