Burmese Super Trouper: How Burmese Poets and Musicians Turn Global Popular Music intoCopy Thachin

Abstract

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.

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