By Naw Liang
Mai soong kha!
I appear to be on a roll these days, apparently rejuvenated as the end of the year nears. Let's hope it continues into 2010 longer than most New Year's resolutions.
Although a short one today, it is no less important. The following posting promotes one of the world's up-and-coming Shan academics - Dr. Jane Martin Ferguson - who is currently 'rocking it large' in the Faculty of Asian Studies at The Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. Let's hope the groovy tone she has set spreads to bigger audiences.
Rocking in Shanland: Burmese Popular Music and Ethnic Insurgent Band Practice
The multi-lingual ANU anthropologist and academic presented a snapshot of her thought-provoking 2008 Cornell doctoral thesis at the University of California Riverside's Southeast Asia: Text, Ritual and Performance (SEATRiP) Speakers Series on 9 October 2009 to what was, I can only imagine, a packed house (see the flyer here). It is hoped, especially by this avid Shan watcher and reader, that the entire thesis will be available for publication soon. For now, though, we can direct our gaze to a summary of the lecture in Ferguson's own words:
"Although Burma has the dubious distinction of possessing some of the longest running internal conflicts in modern history, one often overlooked aspect is the role of popular culture and its consumption within these struggles. Although it might seem to be an anomaly, even the most adamant of ethnic Shan separatists can, and often do, have great affinity for Burmese popular music. Based on over two years' ethnographic fieldwork amongst a community of Shan insurgents and their affiliates, this paper will examine the ways in which a key genre of Burmese popular music, copy thachin is interpreted, played, and ultimately re-signified by politicised Shan amateur musicians in a rock band at the Thai-Burma border. Limited fieldwork carried out in Yangon amongst Burmese songwriters will flesh out the history and structure of the Burmese popular music industry. Finally, I will demonstrate that borderland zones constitute important generative spaces for certain kinds of popular culture practice, especially when these practices can, and often do, produce contentious political consequences."
The only thing I wonder about is how many encores she was called back for.
Jom lii kha,
Naw Liang
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