May Kha Lar Explained

May Kha Lar
Origin:Yangon, Myanmar
Genre:Burmese pop
Occupation:singer, actress
Years Active:1980–present

May Kha Lar (Burmese: မေခလာ, in Burmese pronounced as /mèkʰəlà/; also spelled Maykhalar) is a Burmese singer who was one of the most popular Burmese pop vocalists in the 1980s. Her stage name is derived from Manimekhala, a Buddhist goddess. She is known for her Burmese language covers of Western pop songs as well as original Burmese songs.

Early life and education

She was born on 2 May 1963[1] to Phe Phe Kyaw, a pilot, and his wife Phyu Phyu Shein.[2] Her childhood pet name was "Nge Nge" (ငယ်ငယ်). In 1983, she graduated with a BA degree in the Burmese language.

Music career

During her second year in college, she was encouraged by faculty to sing a cover of Nwe Yin Win's "Love Is..." (အချစ်ဆိုတာ) at the Yangon City Hall's Thingyan pandal. Myint Lwin was persuaded by her performance to produce music on her behalf. Following the success of her music career after 1980, famous composers like Kaiser, Naing Myanmar, and Win Min Htwe composed music for her. Maykhala's hits include "Leave Now" (ပြန်ပေတော့), "Loving That Much" (အဲ့သလောက်တောင်ချစ်ရသည်), and "Once at University" (တစ်ခါက တက္ကသိုလ်).

Personal life

She was briefly married to a popular singer, Kaiser, in the mid-1980s. She has been married to actor Yan Kyaw since 1995.

Album discography

Maykhala released most of her albums during her heyday in the early to mid-1980s. The following is a partial list.

Solo albums

With various artists

Notes and References

  1. News: ၅၀ ပြည့် မေခလာ သက်စေ့ငွေလှူဒါန်း. ကြူကြူဟန်. 5 May 2013. 7 Day Daily.
  2. News: စတီရီယို တေးသံရှင် မေခလာ. တက္ကသိုလ်အေးမြစန္ဒာ. ရုပ်ရှင်ကြေးမုံ ဇာတ်လမ်းစုံ.
  3. Web site: Maykhala's songs . myanmarmp3.net . 6 July 2008 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20090218230821/http://myanmarmp3.net/artist.aspx?ArtID=326 . 18 February 2009 .