We close today with music from Burma. That's not entirely accurate. Because a lot of Burmese musicians have found that in order to express themselves freely, they have to leave their country. Here's The World's Marco Werman.

If you're a Burmese musician living under the junta, here are a few words you will never be able to write in a song.

"Democracy."

"Human rights."

You can't even write a song where words like "tiny room" or "dark room" appear. They might imply the kind of conditions political prisoners have to suffer. And so the songs that are the staples of the small Burmese pop music industry sound something like this.

That is a singer named Khin Maung Toe. He's pretty popular in Burma. And this track's a love song. That's all you will find in Burma.

But even Khin Maung Toe has tried to use cleverly phrased metaphors to talk about freedom.

“He sang another song for example Ja Judasa. That song means a lot. It's a bird. Flying, they're flying in groups, and then they fly long, long haul, and a long way.”

That's Burmese musician Mun Awng. He can easily relate to Khin Maung Toe's song about birds flying away. That's because Mun Awng himself flew away. He's been in exile in Norway since the 1988 protests in Burma that resulted in more than 3,000 dead civilians.

In Norway, Mun Awng has no time to make music. He works in a factory putting finishes on wood trim. He says he misses music. But he does not miss having to take his songs to Burma's strict Press Scrutiny Board.

“Anytime when I want to release an album or like I want to sing a song we have to send all the lyrics to the censorship first. It's kind of like just some people sitting in an office and then they're just like...if they don't like a sentence or sometimes the whole paragraph or something, then they would underline with red ink, and then that means you have to change what has been written there.”

Mun Awng has had a few rare chances at making music since he settled in Norway. Last year, he performed in Japan with Burmese exiled actors.

They reenacted the 1988 massacre while Mun Awng sang a song that translates as Tempest of Blood. It's a song written by pro-democracy campaigner Min Ko Naing (nine) whom we heard about earlier in the program today. Mun Awng says that even though Tempest of Blood was written about the 1988 massacre, it's still relevant today. Take the first line of the song.

MA: The first line is "the blood that was shed on the streets will never disappear."

MW: Presumably a song like that can not be sung ever in Burma these days.

MA: No. No. Not at all. Impossible. Until we have democracy and freedom of expression there.

Mun Awng is fighting for that from Norway. There was a 2004 benefit CD supporting Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. It was called "For the Lady." And alongside tracks by the likes of U2 and the Indigo Girls, there was one Burmese artist. It was Mun Awng. And he was singing "Tempest of Blood" by Min Ko Naing.

For The World, I'm Marco Werman.