Rap Against Junta: A Propaganda War Machine for Freedom
It was a thrill to get to speak to Ko Aye Win, the producer of Dickcouncil, just after its release, on our episode “Revolution As Art.” In the following excerpt, he talks about how the album utilized a 1990s New York rap battle style in bringing their fury at the generals who are ordering their soldiers to kill people openly on the streets. The result was the unprecedented dynamic of young Burmese openly dissing and flat-out disrespecting the supreme general of the land, Min Aung Hlaing. Ko Aye Win goes on to discuss other lessons that Gen Z hip hoppers have been picking up from years of listening to their favorite American tracks.
“Hip hop is good. They have their own music, their art, their fashion, and they have a proper package to start their own style.”
Ko Aye Win: The main thing about hip hop is when it evolves, it is supposed to be like, well do you know “Hip Hop Is Dead” by Nas? The instrumental is by African Bambara from Zulu Nations, that’s the way they made hip hop back in the day in New York, in the Bronx.
This is a way of protecting the younger people from the street, to get away from the drugs and the gun violence, and every situation like that. It is an art form in which we all unite and protect each other, and speak out on what the reality is, and what you feel about.
So most of the rebels in this Dickcouncil album, in interviews they said, ‘We don't know about politics, but we just need to speak out!.’
Before the coup I was a B-Boy, I liked to to battle a lot. But not anymore. Now I try to go to more into music. So my way of style is small, like battling moves. Hip hop rap battles, they always like to provoke each other and talk to each other. So I thought, how about we switch the arrow direction in Dickcouncil, to take on the military junta and Min Aung Hlaing or whoever, like every tyrant across the globe! So that's what it is.
Hip hop is good. They have their own music, their art, their fashion, and they have a proper package to start their own style.
Host: I'm glad you mentioned that, because that was something else I noticed when I was listening to this album, and reading the description of it. Traditionally, the way that conservative, hierarchical Myanmar society is constructed, is that the king or the ruler just has this built-in respect. And it's partly just in being this somewhat divinely Buddhist endowed king with great power paramis and karma, who is able to withstand all of the resistance he faces based on this kind of spiritual strength. From his past lives, he's amassed so much power that he's able to withstand anything! And with this title and artwork and lyrics, you're ridiculing him, you're tearing him apart, you're not showing any respect, you're not showing any fear! You're attacking him mercilessly! And so it struck me that you're using this adversarial battle form of hip hop to tear down someone who's not used to being spoken to this way, not only in current times, but going back 100 or 1000 years. The young people at the bottom who are nobodies, they are not supposed to be speaking like this to someone with power! And yet that's exactly what hip hop is. In my country, hip hop developed from the disenfranchised, the younger black people in the ghettos who were speaking in ways that they weren't supposed to, but they were doing it anyway to represent their reality to the people who didn't want to hear it. And that's what you're doing now in the most powerful way.
Ko Aye Win: Yeah, yeah. That's correct. Yeah, that's exactly what we are trying to accomplish. I did one project of trying to record the chanting of the protests, plus swearing at Min Aung Hlaing. During the record sessions, I asked if is good to say that, because it's just so much swearing. My friends and all those younger people in the studio, they said, ‘Just don't care about it. Just do it.’ From that point that they motivated me to like keep on, and don’t give a f**k to them.
Host: Right, yeah. And that that definitely shows!
Ko Aye Win: Yeah, just tear it down! Luckily the album was released two days before this drive-by shooting video on internet, and so we're glad that we released it earlier. I guess it’s kind of like a lucky draw, like if we produce it on a day that something might happen, then there is an internet war. I think about us as being like a propaganda war machine for the freedom.