“Despite the language barrier between one another, music can connect the souls of us. That’s how I create my music and how I wish the audience to feel it”, said Phyo Thet Htar. Hsu Myat Lin Naing meets this young girl who loves expressing her feelings through music, to talk about her activities, passions and love for the music.
Being a Christian, Phyo Thet Htar has always been in touch with music from a young age. She used to listen to hymns and sing along at church and that’s how her love for music started to grow. Her musical talent genetically runs in the family, with her grandmother from her mother’s side being a singer from Chin State.
When she graduated, she started her music journey towards the end of 2019. Before that, she didn’t know how to compose songs so she just did some covers and posted short clips on Facebook.
“Then I wanted to create my own song so I started writing when I was 18. I mostly listen to Pop genres so almost all of my songs turn out to be in a similar style.”
There have been around 30 of her own tunes and 4 of them have already been released.
“All of my songs have their own stories. For example, I wrote Khana Tar when I was 19 and I gotta admit, it’s my first sad heartbreak song that I wrote using my own experiences.”, said the young girl with a bashful smile.
Besides, her very first song I’m Fine, which became a hit song, received a lot of compliments from the audience and also from seniors.
Instead of opening her feelings to someone, she writes them down on paper and that is the creative process of her music. “Taylor Swift is my favourite artist. I watch her videos on YouTube and learn how she writes her songs or how she struggles to create her music.” Her favourite local artist is Raymond from Idiots band and she aspires to collaborate with him one day.
She has performed about 19 shows, including graduation ceremonies at her English school or Thingyan Festival held by SCBI. She performed at “An Acoustic Song Night” at One Cool Cafe where her friends and fans would gather to watch her perform every Friday night, which she mentioned as her favourite memories. In addition, she was also one of the Top Ten finalists in singer Ni Ni Khin Zaw’s RedGen competition.
Phyo Thet Htar is also in BPML, a girl band with 4 members. However, the youngest member in the group lives in Korea so the band will not be very active so she’s focusing more on her solo career.
She didn’t think of making music professionally at first. She took the IELTS exam and planned to study abroad but at the same time, she has been singing cover songs and playing guitar in her free time and that’s when she knew what she really wanted to do and had to choose between the two.
“I met a lot of people in the entertainment industry with difficulties and struggles which forced me to stop making music and go abroad again.” But then, an agency offered her to work with them so she made a contract with them. “After a year, everything changed.
The agency couldn’t support the talents anymore so I was depressed and had to face a lot of difficulties during that time plus my Facebook account which had 60000 followers was reported and deleted. But I didn’t give up. I chose this path already so I decided to keep working as much as I can.” said the young girl determinedly.
Not a surprise for a girl with a creative mind, Phyo Thet Htar, who is of Chin, Shan and Chinese ethnicity, loves painting in her free time and she loves to paint whatever pops into her mind. “I love watching supernatural movies and of course, eating!”, she giggles. “I would probably be a travel blogger if I wasn’t a musician because I love travelling and exploring new places and cultures”, she added.
“I don’t have much opinion on the music industry but I really hope the industry is getting better and gives a lot of opportunities and chances to new generation artists.”
She’s currently working on a group song with Phone Thiri Kyaw, John Derek and a duet song is also in progress. With many more activities coming up next, the only wish Phyo Thet Htar has is to connect with the audience through her music as much as she can.
Check our her music video of “Gone” here.
