MRTV4 will be screening a TV show in which singers from the 1960s-1990s are invited to perform.

“LOVE me with all your heart, that’s all I want, love. Love me will all your heart or not at all. Just promise me this. That you’ll give me all your kisses every winter, every summer, every autumn…”

Famous singer Rita Soe Win sings, her voice still as vibrant as her early performing days back in the 1960s.

She is singing for ‘Milestones of Contemporary Music’, a new TV program to be broadcast on MRTV4 in September. The program aims to capture the wide gamut of performers that performed from 1960-1990 and will feature interviews and live performances.

Rita told The Myanmar Times after her performance that she was ‘quite pleased’.

“Oh, I feel both happiness and sadness because I stopped singing a long time ago. So what I felt inside was ‘Rita, you are old. They [the fans] don’t want you anymore and they put you aside. You must live like this till your last breath.’ So when Ko Thit (composer Mg Thit Minn) called me, I was quite pleased,” she said.

“But it’s very chaotic. I forget the songs and lyrics and I had to receive help from every one close at hand. It feels so good to sing and be exposed to music again” she added.

The program producer Mg Thit Minn expects the program to last for about two years.

“We will broadcast an interview with a singer every week and a singer will sing at least two songs. At the interviews, the singers will share their experiences and difficulties, how they struggled to become a singer and the way they created music, reflecting on their time,” said Mg Thit Minn.

According to him, there were many English singing programs back in the 1960s such as “Local Talent Show” and it at this point that a lot of local artists began singing in English.

“Nowadays, the singers from that period are disappearing. Some are dead, some have moved to other countries and some are quite old so their health is not very good. This was all 30 or 40 years ago so today people don’t know much about what was happening in that time. We must reveal the past, when these old singers were alive,” said Mg Thit Minn.

“I think young contemporary artists also want to know more about the beginnings of the music they are making now,” he added.

K. Ja Nu who sings on the program expects it will attrach more viewers than other musical programs.

“You can think of this program as historical footage of the beginnings the contemporary music you hear today. An advantage of the program is that the new generation will know about the past music through the interviews. And we are also glad to meet and sing together again. We used to sing with youthful vigour but this time they are sung with the feeling of someone three times older!” 61 year old K. Ja Nu said with a laugh.

The first program will feature the female singers: Rita Soe Win, Sheryl Htwar, K. Ja Nu, New Yin Win (Joyce) and Tin Moe Khine.