May Kha Lar ( my, မေခလာ, ; also spelled Maykhalar) is a Burmese singer who was one of the most popular

Burmese pop The music of Myanmar (or Burma) ( my, မြန်မာ့ဂီတ) shares many similarities with other musical styles in the region. Traditional music is melodic, having its own unique form of harmony, often composed with a (''na-yi-se''), a ...

vocalists in the 1980s. Her stage name is derived from

Manimekhala Manimekhala ( pi, Maṇīmekhalā) is a goddess in the Hindu-Buddhist mythology. She is regarded as a guardian of the seas, namely the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea as part of the mythology of Southeast Asia. She was placed by Cātummahā ...

, a Buddhist goddess. She is known for her

Burmese language Burmese ( my, မြန်မာဘာသာ, MLCTS: ''mranmabhasa'', IPA: ) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Myanmar (also known as Burma), where it is an official language, lingua franca, and the native language of the Burmans, the count ...

covers of Western pop songs as well as ''original'' Burmese songs.

Early life and education

She was born on 2 May 1963 to Phe Phe Kyaw, a pilot, and his wife Phyu Phyu Shein. Her childhood

pet name A hypocorism ( or ; from Ancient Greek: (), from (), 'to call by pet names', sometimes also ''hypocoristic'') or pet name is a name used to show affection for a person. It may be a diminutive form of a person's name, such as ''Izzy'' for I ...

was "Nge Nge" (ငယ်ငယ်). In 1983, she graduated with a BA degree in the

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 Yangon City Hall ( my, ရန်ကုန်မြို့တော်ခန်းမ; YCH) is the city hall of Yangon, the largest city of Myanmar, and the seat of the city's administrative body, Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC). The bu ...

Thingyan Thingyan (, ; Arakanese: ; from Sanskrit '' saṁkrānti,'' which means "transit f the Sun from Pisces to Aries) is the Burmese New Year Festival that usually occurs in middle of April. Thingyan is the first ever water festival celebrated in ...

pandal A ''pandal'' in India and neighbouring countries, is a fabricated structure, either temporary or permanent, that is used at many places such as either outside a building or in an open area such as along a public road or in front of a house. This ca ...

. 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 ''Kaiser'' is the German word for "emperor" (female Kaiserin). In general, the German title in principle applies to rulers anywhere in the world above the rank of king (''König''). In English, the (untranslated) word ''Kaiser'' is mainly ap ...

, 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,

, 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

* ''Pyan Pay Tot'' ပြန်ပေတော့ (1983) * ''Dan Nar Yi'' ဒဏ္ဍာရီ (1984) * ''Ar Lone Ko Kyaw Tet Khae'' (1984) * ''Yay Thu Ma'' ရေသူမ (1984) * ''Lay Yin Pyan Daisy'' လေယာဉ်ပျံဒေစီ (1984) * ''Fashion'' ဖက်ရှင် (1985) * ''Ba Yin Ma'' ဘုရင်မ (1985) * ''Pyan Pay Tot 2'' ပြန်ပေတော့ ၂ (1985) * ''Pae Tin Than'' ပဲ့တင်သံ (1985) * ''Pyan So Chin Thaw Tha Chin Myar'' ပြန်ဆိုချင်သောသီချင်းများ (1985) * ''Baw Lone Goal Thwin Kaung Tae Ko Ko'' ဘောလုံးဂိုးသွင်းကောင်းတဲ့ကိုကို (1985) * ''Yaut Kyar Lay Phyit Chin Tae'' ယောက်ျားလေးဖြစ်ချင်တယ် (1986) * ''Fashion 2'' ဖက်ရှင် ၂ (1986) * ''Ba Yin Ma 2'' ဘုရင်မ ၂ (1986) * ''Su - Pyan So Chin Thaw Tha Chin Myar 2'' ဆု - ပြန်ဆိုချင်သောတေး ၂ (1986) * ''Ma Pyaw Chin Lo Kyi Nay Dar Kyar Pyi'' မပြောချင်လို့ကြည့်နေတာကြာပြီ (1986) * ''Moe Kaung Kin Htae'' မိုးကောင်းကင်ထဲ (1987) * ''So - Pyan So Chin Thaw Thi Chin Myar 3'' ဆို - ပြန်ဆိုချင်သောတေး ၃ (1987) * ''Ant Yaw Ant Yaw'' အံံ့ရောအံ့ရော (1989) * ''17'' ၁၇ (1991) * ''Let Thee Htoe Kaung Tae Ko Ko'' လက်သီးထိုးကောင်းတဲ့ကိုကို (1993) * ''Chit... Moe'' ချစ်...မိုး (1994)

With various artists

* ''Ko Ko Yay Nway Yaut Pyi'' ကိုကိုရေနွေရောက်ပြီ (+ Zaw One) (1980) * ''A Hpyay Pay Par'' အဖြေပေးပါ (+ Khin Maung Htoo) (1981) * ''Koe Lan'' ကိုယ့်လမ်း (+ Khin Maung Htoo) (1982) * ''Thone Bet Myin A Chit'' သုံးဘက်မြင်အချစ် (+ Playboy Than Naing & Pearl) (1984) * ''Soe Lwel Tay 3'' ဆိုလွယ်တေး #3 (+ Hlwan Moe & Khin Maung Htoo & Mie Mie Win Pe) (1992) * ''May Khalar Nya'' မေခလာည (2004) * ''Years 25th'' (2008) * ''Thu Nge Chin Thone Yaut'' သူငယ်ချင်းသုံးယောက် (+ Kaizar & May Sweet) (2014) * ''Hnoht-Ma-Hset-Ne Ngo-Gyin-De 1'' (

Lashio Thein Aung Lashio ( ; Shan: ) is the largest town in northern Shan State, Myanmar, about north-east of Mandalay. It is situated on a low mountain spur overlooking the valley of the Yaw River. Loi Leng, the highest mountain of the Shan Hills, is located ...

Tribute) * ''Hnoht-Ma-Hset-Ne Ngo-Gyin-De 2''

References

External links

* {{authority control 20th-century Burmese women singers Living people Burmese pop singers People from Yangon 1963 births