In 2017, I published a book titled Burma, Kipling and Western Music, which looked at the role played by Western music (and particularly Kipling's ballad “Mandalay”) in creating popular images of Burma in the West. It also looked more broadly at Western music in colonial Burma. This study lent itself to later publication of an article about Christian hymns in and about British Burma for the Bulletin of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

During the 19th century, Burma was rarely associated in the public mind with Western music. It was too remote and too little known. Also, prevailing Orientalist attitudes demanded that it be viewed mainly as an exotic outpost of empire with its own distinctive characteristics. There was one field, however, in which Burma was given some attention by Western songwriters and musicians, and in which compositions by them made an important contribution to the country's changing soundscape. This was largely as a result of efforts made by Christian missionaries, who established a presence in Burma even before Great Britain began to conquer the country in 1824.

In Europe and America, Burma was occasionally mentioned in hymns composed for church services and other activities. Baptist missionaries leaving the United States (US) for Burma were farewelled with songs taken from The Psalmist, a popular hymnal compiled by the theologian Samuel Smith in 1843. While these works were usually of a general nature, a few made specific reference to “the barb’rous nation” of Burma. For example, a hymn composed in 1818 by Thomas Baldwin and titled “The Parting Scene” read in part: