Colour festival returns to Peaople's Park
FOR the second time in Myanmar’s national history, a colour festival is coming to a park near you.
Just seven-and-a-half months after the first-ever Myanmar Colour Festival, Developing Music is bringing their massive plumes of coloured powder back to People’s Park.
The party runs from 4pm to 8:30pm at People’s Park on Saturday, November 5, and aims to promote cultural acceptance through music, playfulness and colour, according to the Developing Music company webpage. Organiser and strategic communicator Adam Nicholas said the key is promoting something more accessible than the usual concert festival.
“A lot of those fail because they’re incredibly specific, and they’re not fun, and people don’t come,” he said to The Myanmar Times. “So our idea is to make it affordable – more people can come – but also make it a really low-barrier activity, such as throwing coloured powder.”
The event bills itself as family-friendly due to the absence of alcohol or religious overtures and hopes to contrast with the rowdier Thingyan water festival celebrations held during Myanmar New Year each April. With performances by hiphop starlet Ah Moon and local DJs Karl Ross and Kendrick, a full spectrum of Myanmar hip-hop, deep to deep-deep to tropical house, trap and dubstep music will form the sonic backdrop to the bursting bags of colour.
“Our theme is, ‘one people, many colours’,” Nicholas said.
More than 2000 people showed up for the wholesome fun in March, but some attendees offered mixed reviews.
“I really liked the festival because it was amazing to play with the colour in the music,” said Sandy, a university student who lives in Yangon and attended the first iteration. “But the colour packets were small and very expensive.”
Tickets cost K8000, but each extra bag is an additional K500. Though Nicholas said each pouch packs a colourful blast, some attendees grouched after the first festival that the bang wasn’t quite bright enough for the buck. Most, however, reported having a blast. “The girls are so hot,” said Myo Min, a 23-yearold businessman who clearly enjoyed himself the first go-around. “I will definitely go with my friends.”
As for the cleaning contingent on playing around in coloured powder for four hours?
“I chose a white T-shirt last time,” university student Arkar Wai Yan. “It was fun to see the colour gradually spread on the fabric as the festival went on, like it was set to music.”
