Burma’s Spring: Real lives in turbulent times (19 page)

I knew that I shouldn’t really be giving credence to a four-dollar-a-session palm reader, however impressive his pedigree, but Min Wai’s words were exciting. When I had arrived in Burma it was a country stripped of hope. An uprising had just been crushed; the despotic rulers seemed immovable. It would be another generation before the people could summon the courage and the energy to rise up again, political analysts had said. But in the hot season of 2011, although we hardly dared acknowledge it, we were starting to see signs of creeping change. March had seen the swearing-in of Burma’s new president, Thein Sein, up to then known only as a pallid, bespectacled army general, content to follow orders, who had played his role in quelling the Saffron Uprising. But in a surprising inaugural address on 30 March, the now civilian President Thein Sein sketched out a vision of democratic rule and economic reform, and made conciliatory overtures to the opposition. The government
proposed peace talks with armed rebels and had begun to free up restrictions on the press. In the new parliament building in Naypyidaw, a confection of tiered roofs and elaborate pillared pavilions, legislators stood up to demand improvements for their constituents – better roads, schools, hospitals.

A few months after he came to power, Thein Sein suspended the construction of the Myitsone Dam at the head of the Irrawaddy River. The dam was to generate electricity not for the energy-starved Burmese, but for the southern Chinese province of Yunnan, and the project had been deeply unpopular for its potentially adverse environmental impacts and the displacement of local people, all for the benefit of the Chinese economy. The suspension of the dam’s construction, a rare concession to public pressure, was one of the first indicators of a genuine change. On the streets, people admitted to small improvements, a wary, intuitional sense of new freedom. But they had been disappointed before. These were small steps, and the people were still trying to work out whether the country’s transition from military rule to what the state media described as ‘discipline flourishing democracy’ was real.

To have faith in the reforms, it seemed Burma’s people needed a clearer understanding of their leaders’ motivations for unwinding decades of authoritarian control. It was nearly four years since the uprising had been put down, and now the streets were quiet. There were few examples in history of military dictatorships voluntarily relinquishing power. Why was it happening now? The Burmese people and their rulers had lived in seclusion for half a century. For years, external pressure from other governments and the criticism of human rights groups seemed to have made little impact on the generals. But it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the desperate state of Burma’s economy relative to its Asian neighbours – average income per head was less than $900 per year, and even lowly Laos had
overtaken Burma in the development rankings. The Arab revolutions had unnerved the world’s remaining autocrats, and General Than Shwe had confided to aides that he feared being marched off to an international tribunal. Squeezed by Western sanctions, the country’s nationalistic leaders were developing a growing distaste for their heavy economic dependence on China. It appeared there was an earthly alignment that had persuaded the generals they had to change course. But Win Mai’s explanation was written in celestial terms. ‘People think that they change things by marching, voting, making speeches, but it comes from the stars,’ he said. ‘Only the stars.’

*

Sitting with a cup of green tea, enjoying the scent of the frangipani flowers that had wound themselves around the wire mosquito grille, I hung around for a while, to watch Min Wai work. Soon he was drawn from his global prophesies to the more mundane grist of life. His front room office became busy with clients, none of whom seemed to require the privacy that others might seek when discussing their most personal affairs. A couple, who looked to be in their thirties, sat at Min Wai’s desk for their consultation, their palms upturned. ‘How many children will I have?’ the wife asked.

‘There will be four children,’ Min Wai replied. ‘First two daughters and later two sons.’

The woman concurred that she already had two daughters, but as her husband had been sterilised, she did not anticipate the sons. Min Wai’s customary tact seemed to desert him; he was insistent, certain that two sons would follow.

The husband grew angry. ‘Well you may have your two sons,’ he told his wife. ‘But those sons won’t be mine!’

The couple began to fight, and the family waiting behind them looked down at their feet, sucking in their cheeks, stifling their giggles.

ELEVEN

Girl Power and the Revolution

The Me N Ma girls are running late. We are cutting across the north of town in a cab. I am scrunched up on one side, my left hip jammed up against the car door. Squashed to my right is a lavishly scented tangle of smooth long limbs and glossy black tresses of hair – three members of the band. Manicured nails flip open compacts; the girls scrutinise, retouch and preen and scold the driver for choosing the wrong route. They worry about me. ‘Are you sure you’re okay there, do you have enough room? Window up or down?’ they purr. ‘Would you like a cookie?’

Actually they’re not really cookies, they are paper-thin bits of wafer. From the front passenger seat, Ah Moon, her inky black eyes accentuated by long, curled, mascaraed lashes, has twisted round to hand out the snacks. She pushes a piece towards Htike Htike, who shrieks as if a poisonous snake has been shoved in her face. ‘That’s too big!’ she cries, and snaps off a corner. The two girls launch instantly into a shouting match in Burmese, but their playful expressions don’t match the indignation of their noisy exchange.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask Htike Htike, who is squeezed next to me.

‘Yes, fine!’ she laughs and points a finger accusingly at Ah Moon. ‘That girl is trying to make me fat.’

Boisterous and relaxed, and chair-dancing to R&B played on Htike Htike’s phone, the girls are on their way to a lunch meeting set up by their Los Angeles manager. Shades of green rush past the window as the taxi nips along the short cut running through Rangoon University’s decaying, overgrown campus. It all seems so
normal. But when I ask them whether three years ago, when they first met, they could have pictured such a scene, they laugh, then quieten, and munch their wafers.

*

There were signs from the start that the Australian dance teacher and the Burmese impresario didn’t share quite the same vision for Burma’s first girl band. Nikki May – blond, sun-kissed, exuberant – had landed in Rangoon almost at random. She was in her late twenties, backpacking around South-east Asia, and looking for somewhere further off the beaten track. She was on an adventure, keen to do some volunteering, to explore; she didn’t have anything in particular mapped out. She found an apartment to share, hooked up to the Rangoon party scene, and began working in city orphanages, teaching dance and music to love-starved children in her easy, open, Melbournite style.

Moe Kyaw was a Burmese music producer, a marketing mogul of the Rangoon pop scene, who had had some success promoting rock bands and pop singers in the country’s small but loyal popular music market. He had been following the rise of manufactured girl bands in South Korea and Singapore, groups modelled on the Spice Girls who sang upbeat dance numbers or harmonised ballads. Could the same thing work here? It was only when he got chatting to Nikki at a party that the idea really took shape. She had the artistic vision; he had the industry contacts. They knew it wouldn’t be easy, and in Burma’s conservative society there was a risk that it just wouldn’t work at all. But they booked an audition space, advertised for young, talented singers and dancers, and waited.

On a clear Rangoon winter’s morning in January 2010, 173 hopeful young women turned up to a bar named 50th Street, where the chairs were up on tables and cleaning ladies mopped away at the sticky, beery floor. There was to be an audition, X
Factor-style, in front of Nikki and Moe Kyaw. ‘Some were like models, just beautiful girls,’ Htike Htike recalled. ‘Some were shy, some were overconfident, some were just crazy.’ Many of the girls were easy to dismiss, with their painful flat notes and rhythmless dancing. But when it came to the girls who showed promise, the judges didn’t quite see eye to eye. Moe Kyaw was taken with the prettiest, most doll-like creatures, the ones with the palest skin, a trait demanded by the Asian perception of beauty; Nikki was looking for sass, energy and raw talent. In the end it was she who won the day. The demure girls went home disappointed, and five bright, feisty young women – Htike Htike, Ah Moon, Win Hnin, Cha Cha and Kimmy – were selected. A new band named the Tiger Girls was born.

*

They came from different parts of the country, each born just after the failed uprising of 1988. All were from humble beginnings, but all were blessed with attentive, ambitious parents, determined that their children should succeed in education. Their childhoods were strict and austere. Win Hnin lived in a tiny, wooden-framed house with bamboo walls. Ah Moon grew up in a thin-aired village in the Himalayan foothills. Htike Htike shared a small Rangoon apartment with three generations of her family. In 1990s Burma there was no notion of ‘pop stars’ and no glamorous role models to aspire to. In Britain, the Spice Girls, the inventors of ‘girl power’ and the prototype for the global explosion of girl bands, were rising up the charts. But the five young Burmese girls, whose lives revolved around home and school, were unaware even of its existence. Kimmy, the most gifted singer in the group, grew up in the rural depths of Chin state, where her father and uncles hunted wild boar and peacocks. Sunday school was the social highlight of her week. Kimmy didn’t hear a single pop song until she went to university. ‘In my village we made our own music. My family
are Christians and my father was the conductor of the church choir. I loved the choir. We always sang gospel songs and until I was about seventeen those were the only songs I had heard.’ The girls studied hard at their painfully underfunded government schools and they all made it to university, gaining degrees in modern languages, zoology, computer science, chemistry and mathematics.

‘All of our families value education above everything else,’ said Htike Htike, a husky-voiced, plain-speaking twenty-five-year-old. ‘I could have gone on to do a master’s degree, but I stopped in order to become an artist. My family doesn’t see singing as a safe career. Becoming a star doesn’t exist in Burma. My parents have just about accepted what I do but there is still pressure. My aunty is always talking about it. She thinks a master’s degree is more important than anything.’ Ah Moon speaks Russian, English, French, Japanese, Burmese and her native Kachin. Her parents would have been intensely proud if she had landed a job at a foreign embassy in Rangoon, but instead, just as she began her job hunt, she heard about the girl band audition. ‘I think I had always wanted to be a singer. When I was young I used to write and perform my own songs. I would sing as if I was onstage to anyone who would listen. But I never thought that could be my career, I didn’t know there was a job like this.’

The Tiger Girls had a standard look: hotpants or short skirts, flimsy tops, sparkly heels. They were comfortable in their revealing clothes, confident in their graceful, lithe bodies. They were less comfortable about Moe Kyaw’s insistence that their outfits matched. Their first songs were so-called ‘copy tracks’ – well-known Western pop tunes overlaid with sentimental Burmese lyrics. They found a cheap rehearsal space and Nikki choreographed their high-energy, synchronised dance routines. Their first gig was in Mandalay in the hot season of 2010, at an open-air
festival to celebrate
Thingyan
, Burmese New Year. It was a big shock to the audience. ‘When we were walking to the stage, someone shouted “Where are you from?” They thought we must be from another country, we didn’t look like Burmese girls,’ Win Hnin said. ‘I shouted: “We are from Burma!”’ It didn’t go down well. The crowd threw plastic water bottles and slippers. There was a concern that the Tiger Girls were bringing foreign style to a country that had become insular and nativistic under military rule. ‘This is a very traditional place,’ Ah Moon said. ‘The authorities tried to ban us, they didn’t want us to appear in the newspapers.’ The censorship board vetted their outfits and famously banned them from wearing coloured wigs. The disapproval came from the top, and it trickled right down through society. ‘My daddy is a pastor,’ Ah Moon said. ‘In my village they are always asking him: “Why is your daughter doing this?”’

*

The girls don’t elaborate, but things quickly turned sour with their co-producer Moe Kyaw. There had been tensions from the start, over song choices, image and direction. The girls wanted to write their own material; Moe Kyaw, keen for quick commercial success, insisted on a stock repertoire of covers. But the main problem seemed to be that he still didn’t think they were good-looking enough, and was frustrated when they failed to secure a deal to appear in a Burmese television commercial. It wasn’t the band he had envisaged. None of the girls is classically beautiful – Kimmy is plump-faced and Htike Htike has a strong jaw – but they all exude a confidence and sexiness rare among Burmese women. With her liquid eyes and bee-stung lips, Ah Moon has a mesmerising look, which can switch from smiley to smouldering in the click of a camera lens. In 2011, Moe Kyaw and the girls split. The girls won’t tell me the details, but Moe Kyaw, still nursing his dream of creating the perfect band, threatened
to sue them over ownership of the Tiger Girls brand. Their mentor Nikki was still with them, but this was new territory, and a precarious time. Money was a problem, and the band members all tried to find other work to make cash for costumes and studio time. Kimmy crooned easy listening melodies in the lobbies of big Rangoon hotels; Htike Htike worked as a graphic designer. Most pressingly, the girls needed to find a new name for themselves. They all felt they wanted something that tied them to their country, and with Nikki’s help came up with the Me N Ma Girls, a play on the country’s official name.