Myanmar Jazz Club: Sounds of Hope

Countries: Myanmar
Runtime: 2025

On 28th March 2025, a huge 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit Myanmar, causing thousands of deaths and many more displacements, in a country already destabilised through years of civil war, ethnic persecution, and military rule.

Just before the earthquake hit, we were approached by the Myanmar Jazz Club, a group of jazz musicians aiming to promote peace and community building in Myanmar through jazz. But after the earthquake, the nature of our conversation changed, and they asked us to train some of their musicians in our methodology, so that they could put this into practice with people displaced by the earthquake.

We said yes.

Trained music leaders

Workshop reach

Emergency response

The team of trained music leaders developed their own “Sounds of Hope“ project, delivering workshops to hundreds of children and families who had been displaced in the earthquake-striken region of Mandalay.

In a monastery being used for emergency response

Music and meditation in an emergency shelter

Performance in a heavily damaged monastery

“I was deeply moved by the sense of safety, affection, and attachment the child displayed. For a few seconds, I felt a kind of tender happiness I can’t quite put into words.”

— Sounds of Hope music leader

The power of connection

A photographer in Myanmar captured this heartwarming moment when a child who survived the earthquake hugged one of the Myanmar Jazz Club workers during a free expression workshop.

The children in this workshop were inside their school when the earthquake hit, and many were left traumatized after the building shook violently. These workshops are designed to address residual fear that the children may have around their school building, and facilitate their return to regular schooling.

The trainer said afterwards: “In that brief moment, I was deeply moved by the sense of safety, affection, and attachment the child displayed. For a few seconds, I felt a kind of tender happiness I can’t quite put into words.”

precious memories

In one of the camps for displaced people, the trainers found a little boy whose father tragically died in the earthquake. They found out that his father was a very talented guitarist, and asked if he knew any of the songs his father used to sing to him. He said that he did, and the trainers invited him onto the stage to sing that song for the whole community. It was a very precious moment.

Impact stories

“Two outcomes, in particular, took me by complete surprise. The first was the immense sense of connection that emerged within the team, both among themselves and with me, their trainer. In such a short time, the depth of mutual support they built was unlike anything I’ve experienced before. I’ve worked with teams who’ve been together for years and never reached this level of care and solidarity. They say trauma bonds people, but judging from the Sound of Hope group, so does music.

Even after the training ended, participants kept sending me updates, sharing their work, asking for feedback, adapting the techniques, and integrating what they had learned into their ongoing activities. Which brings me to the second outcome that stunned me: the sheer variety of settings in which the program’s methods were applied.

Although the training was designed specifically for earthquake survivors, within just one month I saw its practices show up in corporate staff training on assessment retention, kindergarten classes on emotional awareness, a rock concert fundraising dinner, an art class at a school for Rohingya children, and a counselor training program; not to mention the overwhelming positive reception from the earthquake survivors themselves.”

Supakarn, music therapist and partnership initiator