TY - JOUR
T1 - Burmese Super Trouper
T2 - How Burmese Poets and Musicians Turn Global Popular Music into Copy Thachin
AU - Ferguson, Jane M.
PY - 2013/6
Y1 - 2013/6
N2 - Copy thachin, or Burmese cover songs of international hits, dominates the popular music scene in contemporary Burma/Myanmar. These songs in Burmese often retain melodic and stylistic patterns with international popular hits, but have lyrics rewritten by Burmese poets with varying degrees of fidelity to their original meaning. As I will argue, because of its explicit transience, copy thachin constitutes a mimetic transcription device whereby Burmese poets and musicians can engage an international other, but do so in a way that points to-yet does not always reveal-the global character of popular music.
AB - Copy thachin, or Burmese cover songs of international hits, dominates the popular music scene in contemporary Burma/Myanmar. These songs in Burmese often retain melodic and stylistic patterns with international popular hits, but have lyrics rewritten by Burmese poets with varying degrees of fidelity to their original meaning. As I will argue, because of its explicit transience, copy thachin constitutes a mimetic transcription device whereby Burmese poets and musicians can engage an international other, but do so in a way that points to-yet does not always reveal-the global character of popular music.
KW - Burma/Myanmar
KW - Ethnomusicology
KW - Popular Music Censorship
KW - Rock Music
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84878629009&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/14442213.2013.787449
DO - 10.1080/14442213.2013.787449
M3 - Article
SN - 1444-2213
VL - 14
SP - 221
EP - 239
JO - Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
JF - Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
IS - 3
ER -